Verum (The Nocte Trilogy, #2)(51)

She hands me a necklace. It gleams gold in the night, a locket with a flower engraved on the front. A calla lily.

I try to open it, but it’s locked.

“It’s your secret,” Sabine tells me, her dark eyes so knowing.

“Why do I have a secret?”

“Because we don’t get to choose,” she answers cryptically. “Because we pay for the sins of those who came before us.”

With a sigh, I leave her room on shaky legs and retreat back to my own. Against my better judgment, I wear the locket to bed, and it nestles against my breast as I drift to sleep.

And that is the first night I dream of her.

Of Olivia.

Of Dare’s mother.

She wears a white nightgown, filmy and light, and she stands at the window.

Her hair falls down her back dripping wet, and her figure is small and slight.

She turns, her eyes just like Dare’s, and so very sad.

“I don’t know where I am,” she whispers, and her eyes beg me for help. “I don’t know.”

She turns away, looking out the window at the sea.

Behind us, the waves crash.

Pictures of Dare hang on the wall, from infant to adulthood.

She looks at them longingly.

“Can you bring him to me?”

I want to answer her, but I can’t.

My lips are frozen.

My words are ice.

I can’t melt them.

I can’t bring him.

Save me, save you.

I wake in a pool of sweat, alone.

“Finn?” I call out, desperate to feel calm, but he doesn’t answer.

There will come a day when I don’t, he’d once said. Is today that day?

The moonlight shines on my nightstand, and Sabine’s box of tea sits in the light. I grab it up and make a cup.

I have to be calm,

I have to be calm.

This must be the way.

The tea creates oblivion and I sleep for hours and hours. When I’m finally up and around the next afternoon, Sabine finds me in the library.

“Did you wear the locket to bed?” she asks.

I stare at her, annoyed.

“I dreamed about Olivia Savage. Is that what you want to hear?”

Something passes through Sabine’s eyes and I can’t read it.

“What did you dream?”

“Not much,” I have to admit. “I just saw her face. She had pictures of Dare on the wall. I could see the sea through the window. It’s like she doesn’t know where Dare is. She keeps asking for me to bring him to her.”

She nods now, satisfied. “That’s enough for now.”

Enough for what?”

But I’m afraid to ask.

“A letter came for you today,” she tells me and hands me a battered envelope.

I rip it open to find my father’s handwriting.

It’s time to come home, he says simply.

I think he might be right.

Soon.

It’s time to go home soon.

I leave Sabine in her room, and I search for Dare.

I find him in the secret garden alone.

My heart jumps when I see him, at the way he leans against an angel statue so irreverently, at the familiarity in his eyes when he sees me. I fight the urge to leap into his arms, but of course I don’t, because the warmth in his eyes has cooled.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks, so reserved.

I’m flustered.

“Hunting for you.”

“I’m not good for you,” he offers. “Maybe you should stop hunting for me.”

My heart twinges.

“Never.”

His expression falters.

“You need to let me figure out what’s good for me,” I add.

He looks at me sadly. “I can’t. You don’t know all of the facts.”

“So tell me.”

“I can’t do that, either.”

We’re at an impasse, a fork in the road.

There are two roads, and I always take the wrong one.

“You’ll destroy me,” I remember Sabine’s foreboding words. Dare closes his eyes, and nods.

“What does that mean?” My voice is raw.

There is pain in Dare’s eyes, real pain.

The kind of pain that can’t be hidden, can’t be contained.

“I want you to know,” he tells me, each word an honest rasp.

“But you can’t tell me,” I guess. He nods.

“Not yet. You’ll come to in it in order.”

In order.

In order.

In order.

Things must happen in order, Calla? Can’t you see? Can’t you see?

I remember Finn’s cries from before, but before what?

Time is blurring now, blending, and I can’t make sense of anything.

I’m standing on the cliffs, I’m staring at the ocean, but I’m not.

It’s Finn.

But it was me.

Cars.

Blood.

Sirens.

Darkness.

Good night, sweet Finn. Good night, good night.

Protect me, St. Michael.

Protect me,

Protect me.

My mind can’t take the stress,

It can’t take the flex.

My mind is an elastic band,