Mark of Betrayal (Dark Secrets #3)

The longer I laid on the cold dirt, the clearer the sounds around me became; the lonely song of twilight hummed my heart to ease—the crickets, the buzzing of mosquitoes, the distant, sleepy ballad of a bird. I closed my eyes and let myself imagine home. Home. Mike. His smile, his smell, all powdery-smooth, and the warm, scratchy stubble on his chin that’d prickle my forehead when he’d kiss my brow.

Home is David. His eyes. Green. Greener after we’d make love and the electric blue surge of my uncontrolled passion had run free of them.

I shut my eyes tighter around the memory and held it all inside. Eventually these memories would fade, just like all the faces of my past. But right now, while I’d only been lost for a few days, they were as clear as a summer sky.

When I opened my eyes again, with the memory of summer so strong in my heart, midday actually filled out the forest around me. A sweet chocolaty scent ran through me with a deeper breath as I rolled onto my side, seeing a shape through the glare, like a beautiful man laying right in front of me, face to face. His green eyes stared into mine, but even though the day was so bright that sadness seemed misplaced here, his soul looked lost, broken. I reached up, slowly tracing my thumb over each grain of hair along his jaw, feeling every bump, every rise in his skin, stopping on a small scar at the base of his chin—one he got when his six-year-old brother kicked him for losing a paper boat he’d made.

“Jason?”

His smile was so filled with kindness that my heart burned with the almost forgotten feeling of being loved.

“Jase, are you really here?”

“Ara?” he said in that smooth, low voice. “You have to get up—you have to keep moving.”

“I—” My eyes rolled back, closing. “I can’t. I failed, Jase—”

“No. You only fail if you don’t get up.”

“But I didn’t find it—hope. I thought I did, but…it was only a thought—an idea, and I keep losing it. I just keep losing it.”

“Hope was never to be found, Ara. Hope is something you always had in you.”

“But, I'm not what my people needed me to be.”

“No, because you are more than they hoped you would be—capable of more than they allowed you to believe.”

I shook my head against the dirt. “I couldn't finish the walk. I'm no good to anyone, now.”

“You’re still as valued as you were when you left. You never needed to prove anything to them about your worth, sweet girl—you only need to prove it to yourself.”

“But it’s all gone. Everything I was supposed to be—supposed to do—all gone.”

“I don't know what the future holds for you when you return, Ara, and I don't know what your people will say, but I know that no matter what you’re worth to them, you will always be everything to one person in this world.” His shaggy hair fell loosely in the dirt above his brow, and his sparkling grin, as he ran his fingertips along my face, made me feel as if he was really here. “Find your way home, Ara—find your way back to that one person, and you will never doubt yourself or your worth, ever again.”

“Well, who are you talking about? What one person?”

“Your true love.” He shuffled a little closer; I felt his knees against mine. “He will hold you, kiss you and adore you—come what may.”

“David.” I smiled.

“Perhaps.” He stroked the tip of his thumb down my nose. “Or perhaps not. Perhaps he is much closer than you think—waiting for you to return to your dreams again, so he can hold you there, in his lonely reality—for eternity.”

“You?”

“Come back to me, Ara.” He took both my hands. “Come back to me…”

Dark splotches distorted the image of Jason’s face; I blinked a few times, trying to make it clearer.

“Come back to me…” His voice echoed away.

“Jase?” His touch dissolved. I sat bolt upright in the dark of night. “Jase?” Stay.

But he was gone again, leaving me battling with the deepest part of myself that loved him once—loved him, but never got to say goodbye. I wish I could’ve told him how I really felt—wish I could’ve told him in a room where it would have mattered.

But each time that battle began in me, screaming at the heavens, telling me to love him, I fought it down—sent it away. The girl I saw in my dreams was right; I loved him once, and I didn't want to grieve him. I could grieve my mum, I could possibly even grieve Mike, but…just not Jason.

I covered my face, trying to sneak back into the world he and I shared. But it was always only a dream—one that equalled reality in all five senses. I wanted to go back there—to him. And that scared me. Because I knew, of all things I had to face here, facing that truth was the worst.

I got up, got to my feet and started walking again.

He asked me to come back to him. He was here—if that was a dream or not, I didn't care. I felt home—felt him, and I just wanted that back again. Death, dream or reality. It didn't matter anymore.

The trees thickened around me as I scuffed gracelessly over the dirt. Each entangled finger of branches seemed to deliberately slow me down—touching me, grabbing me, snagging on my dress and arms.

“Stop it.” I shoved a dry, twiggy talon off my flesh. “Stop. Touching. Me!”

But none of them listened. They had me. They owned this part of the forest, and I wasn't allowed to go there.

I swiped my tears away and stood still in the crowded cage of dense shrubbery.

Maybe the trees were right. Maybe I was headed in the wrong direction. In my mind, I was walking to him—to Jason, but I was supposed to be walking home—to David. My husband. The one who has stayed with me, married me, put up with all my temper tantrums and stupid ideals. The one who always would.

Maybe I was supposed to walk back to him. Maybe I could never go to Jason because the road to the underworld was guarded by things unseen.

I had to turn around. I had to get back home—to life, to my people—to David.

Somewhere up in the night sky, the moon had risen, offering a pale glow to the darkness, illuminating the base of the trees in a soft, dull-blue—giving everything a dreary, grainy appearance. I looked along the length of my forearm and twisted it to see my elbow; the tattoos glowed, as if the moon was calling to them, and they were answering. Perhaps they had a clue, a message of some kind that would tell me how to get out of this forest.

Everyone seemed to have had their own theories before I left; ‘Follow the North star,’ Walter said. ‘Walk the path before your feet and don't look up,’ someone else had said, and Emily quite simply said, ‘Let your heart guide you.’

I looked behind me then to the path I’d been heading—to Jason—noticing that the trees had closed in, blocking that trail, making it impossible to get through.

Was that it? Follow my heart? Was I walking toward my heart?

I thought of David—saw his secret smile in my mind, felt the warmth of his love and let it fill me up from inside my chest, branching out like climbing vines.

“David.” I spun around then, in a completely different direction, but I knew it was the way. Walk toward what your heart desires.

“David,” I said to myself, and as I took a step, something cracked under my foot—the sound making my eyes wide before my hair and arms went vertical and my feet carried my body on a direct path downward.

I squealed, grasping at every branch to stop myself falling, coming to rest with a thunderous impact on my knees, my hands, then my head….

A rushing sound, like an express train in a subway, forced my eyes open. Small needles of dry pine blurred my vision for a second; I blinked them from my lashes, my eyes focusing on the waning daylight, while a woodsy, earthy smell dried my nostrils with each breath.

I lifted my face from the crook of my elbow and sat up, circling on my knees a few times in the barky bed I was laying.

“Wait!” I frowned and looked down at my hands, my arms and my stained dress. “Déjà vu.”

My heart faltered. Everything stopped.

I sunk down into my elbow and rolled onto the ground, flat on my back. “Déjà vu.”

Chapter Ten

With my hands clasped over my belly, the ability to cry deflated from my tired soul, I decided to let myself stay put and expire.

As midday drank the cool in the air and infected it with a gooey heat, I laid, watching memories like films in my head, while the bare branches above me joined hands again across the grey-white sky, applauding the movies as they ended. Everything seemed to move slightly around me, as if it couldn't sit still.

Worse had come to worst. All the hope I thought I found was never really hope at all; it was positive thinking—just the thoughts of a stupid young girl who really believed that everything would be all right in the end. But it isn’t. It couldn’t be. Why would it be?

It was all Emily’s fault. Listen to my heart. What kind of stupid advice is that? All it’s done is get me into more trouble. I should have listened to myself and just given up a few sunrises ago. Then I wouldn’t be even more tired, even more beat up and bruised.

“Okay, fine. You got me!” I yelled at the forest. “I'm not afraid of you anymore. You want me, I'm right here.”

I flopped back down.

Forget them. All of them. None of it matters now. The monarchy will die. The people will go about their lives. And if Drake doesn't kill everyone, Mike will probably go home, marry Emily. David will probably marry her too—some foul three-way. Morg will be with Blade, Sam will grow up and never think of me. And Jason—his face stole my thoughts, making me smile—Jason will be lost in his illusory dreams until I lose consciousness one day and meet him there. We’ll hold hands and lay in the grass all day, every day, for forever.

I rubbed that thought away from my hot brow with an icy hand. How could you think like that? I asked myself. How could you place your happy ending in some imaginary world with your husband’s brother?

“I love David. David.” I hit my temples. “David! David! David! David!”

“Sssure you do,” a slow, whispering hiss said.

“I do!”

“Then why did following your heart bring you back here?” It said very slowly.

“My heart didn't bring me here. I fell.”

“You fell through the web of your own lies.”

I scoffed, staying flat on my back, my lip lifting. “The other path was blocked.”

“Blocked?” It said. “Or maybe you needed to fight harder to make it through.”

“What would you know?”

“I know all.”

“Yeah, well, I don't see what business it is of yours, evil-voice-that-doesn't-exist.”

“It’s my job to see you find your way.”

“Well, you’re fired.”

“You can't fire me.”

“I just did.”

“Then, I won't tell you what I came to say.”

“Fine,” I said to the nothing. “Then you’re unfired. Now, what did you want to say?”

“You need to follow your heart.”

I scratched my nose. “Did that. So, unless you can give me some good advice, buzz off and let me die.”

“Perhaps not advice. Perhaps I can tell you something you don't know.”

“Like what?”

“Like what’s in your heart—what's really in there.”

“I already know that. It’s David.”

“But you feel him, too!” It hummed.

“Who?”

“The brother.”

My chest lifted with a super huge sigh. “No. I keep thinking that, but it’s not true. It can't be. And, so what if it was true?”

“The truth,” It hissed, “will be the one hope you can offer yourself—only then can you give it to others.”

“What would you know about it, you're just a figment of my—” I pushed up on my elbows, “—Gah!”

A shiny black snake hissed back at me, its wide mouth gaping, showing pointy fangs. I jumped up, stumbling backward over a rock and fell on my hands.

“Afraid?” It crept forward, almost smiling with its soulless eyes.

“Get away.“ I screamed, brushing my legs with my hands. “You ugly, horrible little thing. Get away from me.”

“But I’ve come with a message,” it hissed without moving its lips. “One that will mark you on your way to being a great ruler.”

“What…?” I stopped wriggling, shrinking into myself with the snake’s advance. “What message?”

It stopped by my foot. “Get up!”

“Huh?”

“Hope is the light you follow; faith is believing there is actually a light—they are the refusal to give up when you have no reason to go on. Get up!” it hissed again. “Walk, Run, but do not lay there to die!”

“I did. I walked!” I yelled at the slithering guru. “I walked, and I never got anywhere.”

“Then you keep walking until you do!”

I looked away, allowing defeat to swallow the fight in my voice. “No. I can't take the pain of believing in myself and failing, over and over again. Losing hope is worse than the actual failure.”

“Then walk, because there is no reason to believe you will ever get out, no reason to live, no reason to go on except that you must. You are stronger than you know. Now, get up!” It slithered closer; I tucked my ankle under my thigh. “Get up, and go on, or die.”