Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Liv had saved me, and she’d been my safe space.
“Kelsey, I’m sorry I said that to you.”
“Are you?”
She stared for a minute. “I know I should be. I know I should feel something.”
“But you don’t want to.”
“If I feel something, I have to feel the pain, too.”
I took a long breath, letting the pain sink into me because I’d learned long ago not to ignore it. Existing meant feeling. Everything. Love. Joy. Pain. Remorse. Anxiety. If you took one away, the others meant less. They balanced each other, defining the opposite emotions so they’re clear and real and we learned from them. Liv didn’t want the pain, so she was comfortable not feeling anything at all.
I might have to face the fact that I’d lost her all those years ago, and what stood in front of me was nothing but a ghost. The blood she’d been taking had made her more capable of looking at things in a logical fashion, but it couldn’t make her want to feel again.
“This is your choice?”
Her jaw tightened. “If I say yes, will you execute me? Do I have a right to exist if I don’t do what Kelsey Owens tells me to?”
A weariness threatened to invade my bones. It was too much. I was trying to solve every problem I had, and I was about to lose Gray again. Even a few days out of his original contract with Lucifer, he was a different person. He was happier and a better husband and father. I hadn’t been here when he’d originally worked for Lucifer, but I knew it had wrecked his relationship with Fenrir for a while.
Would this baby feel that pain?
At what point did I give up on Liv because she didn’t want to be saved?
“It means I’ll let Sasha deal with you. I assure you no one’s going to execute you. It’s not how the royals work.” I started for the closet. It looked like I would have to figure this out on my own.
I would have to mourn her. How could I mourn her when she was standing right there? When I could reach out and touch her? When I could feel her in my heart?
“So I stay a prisoner?” Liv didn’t seem ready to stop. She followed me.
I rounded on her. “What do you want, Liv? I can forgive you. I know you didn’t make those choices, but you are making this one. You are making the choice to be a coward. You think I left you behind? I didn’t make the choice to leave you, but this, what you’re doing here and now, is leaving me. Leaving Casey. Leaving everyone behind because you can’t handle what happened to you. I’m sorry, Liv. I thought you were stronger. I thought we could love you enough to get you through, but the truth of the matter is you broke and you don’t want to do the work to put yourself back together, and I can’t tell you how much that makes me ache.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know anything about my pain.”
I pointed her way. “I do. I know because I’ve had the strongest part of my soul cut from me, and it was you who did it. And I forgave you. Immediately. Wholeheartedly. Liv, you once sold me out to Donovan and I forgave you. You let me walk into a trap where the king was going to make the decision if I should live or die, and you didn’t give me a single heads-up. And I forgave you. I fell into another plane of existence and spent every second trying to find my way back.”
“You were stupid. You knew the prophecy. It’s your fault. You were so desperate to get Marcus back when you already had two husbands,” she seethed.
Oh, Myrddin hadn’t taken her anger. He’d left her with rage and hate and not a lot else. “He was important to me. Is. I would have done a lot to save him, but again, I didn’t choose to lose twelve years with my son and the husbands I love. Go away, Liv. It’s obvious you do feel something for me, and it’s not good. I could apologize a million times and without that piece of you it won’t matter. Nothing will be enough. I have to face the fact that you died that night. You died because you couldn’t live with what happened.”
She stared at me for a moment, so still I wondered if she was getting ready to attack. And then her shoulders came down. “I…I don’t know why I said that to you. I find this place unsettling. I suppose it has something to do with the tricks you’ve been playing on me.”
“Tricks? If you’re talking about what Evan did with Eddie’s blood, all I can say is don’t take it the next time she offers it.”