Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Then I fill in the blank he just dropped. “Syrsee.”
“It’s happening, Syrsee. I’m pretty sure that not only are we going to have sex, we’re gonna be best friends forever after it’s over.” He’s completely serious too. The banter is gone and so is the twinkle in his eyes.
This is when I notice that there is a gold mist swirling up from the floor. Dancing around the hem of my flirty skirt and filling the space between us.
I suddenly want to cry because it’s not real. And I want this to be real. “Something really bad is happening right now, Ryet.”
He looks like he wants to cry too. “I know, Syrsee. That’s why we’re here. I don’t want you to remember it. I don’t want you to feel it. I don’t want it to define you, or me, or us. So I brought you here. And you’re never gonna know what happened.”
“Won’t it… haunt me? This missing piece of my history?”
He nods again. And again, it’s slow. But now it’s also sad. “It will. But… I’ll do my best. I’ll do anything to fill that ugly emptiness with something good. Something good like this.” He waves a hand at what’s left of the library. Which isn’t much. It’s really just the hint of a library. “What’s happening in my cabin is not us, Syrsee. We are not a witch and a vampire. We’re just Syrsee and Ryet. That’s all there is to it. We’re not them.”
I nod. Swallow hard, still nodding. But I’m not sure I believe him. I want to believe him. It’s just… too big of an ask, I think.
Ryet reaches across the aisle, plucks Lovers Under a Bridge off the shelf next to me, then gives it to me. “I’m gonna get you all the books, Syrsee. That’s where we’ll start. You’re gonna get all the fucking books you want.”
I look down at the book in my hands, then back up at him. “But how? They’re locked up.”
“I’ll make a deal with them. With those Guild people. They can have me, do whatever they want with me, but in return, you get all the books.”
“If you do that…” I pause to take a deep breath. Then try again. “If you do that, Ryet. I will… I will want to kill them. If they hurt you—”
“It’s OK.” He places his hand on my cheek, staring into my soul with eyes that no longer twinkle. “I’ll be OK. They can’t hurt me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if they could, they’d have done it by now.”
“What if they’re… I dunno, working on some secret project? Something that will hurt you. And the last piece of the puzzle is you giving in. Wouldn’t you be trading yourself for something that will only make me temporarily happy? Because the books are a good idea.” I place a hand on his cheek, looking straight into his soul now too. “It’s a really nice way to fill the ugly emptiness that’s developing inside me right now. But I don’t want knowledge, Ryet. Not if I have to trade it for you.”
“We can… fix it. If anything goes wrong, Syrsee? We’ll fix it. We’re powerful. What’s happening in the cabin bedroom is disgusting and tragic. But it’s making us more powerful. We’ll… bide our time, the way Paul did. But we’ll never lose sight of the endgame.”
“Revenge?”
“No. That’s destructive. I don’t want to live for revenge, do you?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t either. It’s just the first option that came to mind.”
“Our endgame is us. On our own terms. Everything we do from now on is about that. Freedom. That’s our endgame. One day we will be free from these curses and we will never have to submit again.”
I like the idea. But I don’t want to live in a fantasy. So even if I don’t say this out loud to him, I need to say it to myself.
What he just described—being free from these curses—well, that sounds a whole lot like death to me.
I think Ryet is probably having the same internal conversation with himself because he wraps his arms around me, pulling me tight into his chest, and all the stupid little things that were coming between us when we arrived at the cabin cease to matter. Whatever I am to him—food or otherwise—and whatever he is to me—I’m not sure—none of that is important.
Because we are not each other’s enemy.
We are all we have left.
21 - Josep
There is only one way this ends.
Syrsee is writhing against me, mouth searching for more.
Paul is trying to comfort Ryet with words and soft touches.
I am… in shock, I think. That it actually worked.
We are in the dirt under Ryet’s cabin, all of us squished together in a shallow grave about six feet wide and two feet deep, covered in loose, rich earth.