The mother offered comfort as I cried my eyes out, lying naked, curled in a ball at the base of the Stone, my bloody hand against it. The forest swarmed around me, birds and small animals showing themselves, forming a protective barrier between me and the rest of the world. I knew the depth of my agony was multiplied by a million hormones my body didn’t understand, but that didn’t make the pain any less real.
“What do I do, Mother?” I whispered.
“I already gave you the answer.”
“When?”
“When you came to us and asked the question.”
“The question?” I thought about it for a second, scraping a few leaves off my cheek to stop the slight itch there. “Do you mean when you said Jason was the answer?”
“Yes.”
I pictured that day—his smile—the way he broke when I said I would never be with him. “How is he the answer?”
“Finally,” she said, appearing atop the stone in the elegant form of her mortal self. “You’ve asked the right question.”
I sat up, drawing my bloodied hand away from the Stone and tucking it in my lap. The dirt and leaves shifted under me, cushioning my bare bottom, while the rich scent of soil grounded my floating heart. “Then tell me. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
“You’re supposed to follow your heart.”
“My heart still wants David.”
She smiled, her blue eyes, so like mine, shining bright with the life of the forest. “You are destined to be with Jason, Auress. It has been written now for some time.”
“No.” I shook my head, standing up quickly. “I love him. I can’t help but to love him. He’s amazing and kind and sweet, but it’s not right.”
She just nodded, her thin smile offering me no alternative.
“It’ll kill David.”
“No,” she said. “It will save him.”
“How so?”
“When the time comes, the love you offer that boy—that sweet Jason—will give him the strength and courage to save you all.”
“Save us?”
Her head moved down, then up, slowly.
“So . . . I have to love him to save David.” I frowned, looking down at the Stone. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Very little does in life before we cross the line of Fate and see everything for the lesson or important event it always was. Even the tiniest setback in life can often be for the greatest benefit.”
“But it is to our benefit—to be with Jase?”
“To the benefit of all.” Her form wavered a little as the cut in my hand healed over and the blood on the Stone faded.
“But . . . wait.” I tried to touch her to bring her back. “I’m not ready to let go of David yet.”
“Then talk with him,” she said, becoming an echo and nothing more than a flickering fog. “He will help you cross sides.”
“How?”
“Talk with him. You will be surer of your path every time you hear him speak.”
“But—” I stopped when my words fell on an empty forest. “I don’t want to lose him,” I muttered to myself. I didn’t want this path. I loved Jason because he was hard not to love. But I loved David no matter what, even when I hated him.
Why would the mother of Life ask me to throw that away?
I spent the better part of the day pacing the halls, thinking about my walk in the forest. When I passed Walt near the Great Hall and he said David had gone into town, I took the perfect opportunity to go and visit with Jase, who still hadn’t come out of his room. He hadn’t been locked in, like me, but he was keeping a low profile.
“Hoping to find something different to the last few hundred times you’ve read that?” I asked, leaning on the doorframe.
Jase sat up and tucked my suicide letter under his thigh. “I didn’t hear you come in. I’m sorry.”
“Well, that’s because I didn’t knock first.” I pushed up from my lean and wandered into his room.
“You don’t have to knock, Ara. You’re welcome in here any time.”
I smiled and sat down on the foot of the bed. “So, why are you still reading that letter?”
He drew it out from under his leg and flattened the page. “I’m trying to understand something.”
“What?”
“Why you said, and I quote, ‘I love you, Jase. I’ve loved you for so long and, in a different life, we would have been married, had a family, and lived together forever.’” He looked up from the letter. “How can you feel that and then, the minute you’re free from David, deny me the chance to be with you?”
“Jase.” I sighed, flopping back on the bed. “I’m not free. I told you. I—”
“You’re committing to him even if he doesn’t want you,” he said in a mock girl’s voice. “I know. I remember all too clearly. But why? I don’t understand why, after everything he’s done—the way he’s treated you, you can’t see that he’s not going to come ‘round, Ara.”
I thought about it for a second. “Forgiveness takes time.”
Jase laughed. “Ara, David and I are still fighting over who broke the bottle of Port in Uncle Arthur’s study sixty years ago.”
I laughed too.
“He can hold a grudge for hundreds of years—especially against a girl he let into his heart. He’s feeling exposed and damaged in ways even he doesn’t understand and, Ara, if he was capable of forgiveness. . .”
“It would be decades away. I know.”
Jase huffed, and I heard the drawer in his nightstand close, his shadow coming over my face a second later. I looked up into his smiling green eyes.
“If he. . .” He juggled the words in the back of his throat. “He can be mean, Ara. If he wants you to hurt, you can be damn sure you’re going to hurt.”
“I know,” I said positively. “I’ll be okay.”
“Yes, but . . . eventually he’ll do or say something to hurt you beyond repair. And I don’t want this to happen, Ara, but I have no control over it. Just—” He sat back, and I rolled onto my side to watch him. “If the day ever comes where you decide you don’t want his forgiveness anymore, do you think you’d—”
“I promise.” I reached across and cupped his hand.
“Promise what?”
“I promise I’ll marry you then.”
His face split into a wide, pearly grin. He looked up from our hands, making me smile too. “I will hold you to that promise.”
“You won’t need to. If I believe things are truly over for David and I, I wouldn’t hesitate to marry you, Jase. And it’d take hell to stop me.”
“Then—” He kissed my hand. “Until that day, I pray you fall out of love with him, but I hope it’s not for the cruelty he shows you. I don’t want you to suffer that way.”
I flopped onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, softly rubbing my belly. Then, quietly, without warning, the vampire beside me placed his hand over mine. It felt warm and safe and so comfortable I moved my own hand away and let him feel the baby inside me.
“I’m gonna take care of her, Ara. She’ll never want for love a day in her life.”
“So, you’d be willing to take on a kid that’s not yours?”
“Ara, she is a part of you, and that makes her a part of me. As far as I’m concerned, she is of my own flesh and blood.”
I pouted, half smiling. “Sometimes, I wish she was yours.”
He leaned down and kissed my belly, hovering there for a few seconds after. “Me too.”
My gaze left his lips and the soft skin of my belly under them, and moved onto the side of his face. So much had happened between us. His face was one I used to fear and yet, now, it was the one I looked for when everything was falling apart. I slid my thumb down his cheekbone, thinking back to the day I confessed our affair—how I found him bruised and beaten in the cellblock. “Hey, Jase?”
“Mm?”
“Who hurt you the day David had you arrested?”
He looked up, his smile blending with a frown. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Who didn’t tell me what?”
He laughed, sitting back. “Falcon.”
“What?” I sat up. “He did it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“He . . . he was pretty pissed off. As soon as David left you alone in your room, Falcon came down and made sure I paid dearly for every inch of flesh I ever touched on you.”
“Oh, Jase.” I touched his hand. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I kinda deserved it.”
“No, you didn’t. And why didn’t you tell me who did it?”
“Aw, Ara, I wasn’t gonna do that,” he said simply. “You love Falcon. I didn’t wanna upset you.”
“But I am upset. I can’t believe he’d—”
“Really?” he said smugly. “You really can’t believe he’d do that?”
I bit my lip, huffing my hair off my brow. “I guess I can believe he’d beat you senseless. But it’s not like him to take the law into his own hands.”
“He wasn’t really thinking then, Ara. You might say he was blind with rage.”
“Wait.” I grabbed Jase’s forearm. “He’s not bound by the Curse of Lilith, is he? Like Blade was—”
“No.” He shook his head, smiling. “He just cares about you and wanted to deck the guy who ruined your life.”
I relaxed a bit then. “Like a big brother?”
“Exactly. Come here—” Jase reached out and tugged my sleeve until I crawled over and laid between his legs, my spine to his chest, his back leaned against the bedpost. “Don’t tell him you know. Just let him have this one, okay?”
“Yeah, okay then.” I nodded. “I just can’t make sense of it, though.”
“Of what?”
“I really adore Falcon, but the Curse of Lilith is supposed to befall any man with a heartbeat who is unlucky enough to be cared for by me—”
“Unless they’ve been in, or are, in true love with someone else.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Falcon’s been in love before,” he stated.
“He has?”
Jase nodded once against the side of my face. “I read all of his thoughts—past and present—when he was laying in to me. He lost his fiancé, Felicity, a few years back.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“Serious?”
“Yeah. He called her over to help him sort out an argument with his sister, Annie. But she stormed off in a hurry before Felicity got there, didn’t even check the road before crossing it. She hit Felicity’s windshield and the car swerved into oncoming traffic. . .” His lips pursed into a thin line. “Felicity got just the smallest knock to the head, but she died in hospital shortly after Annie.”