Lux (The Nocte Trilogy, #3)(69)

Dare is stunned, but he understands, finally finally finally.

Finn is my other half. I can’t live without him.

“Everyone must pay a price in this family,” Sabine says, driving her point home. “The universe demands it, to set things right. One for one for one. Olivia already paid her price. Now you must pay yours.”

I’m numb

I’m alone

I’m afraid

I’m determined.

It won’t be Finn.

I love Dare and I love life, but my brother is life. He’s everything. He’s always been everything.

Dare falls back and watches as I touch Sabine’s fingers. His dark dark eyes are the last thing I see as the room spins and spins and it makes me so dizzy that I close my eyes.

When I open them, I’m alone.

I’m walking across Whitley, across foggy moors, breathing in the wet morning air, and something is pulling me pulling me pulling me to the mausoleums.

I open the door and the musty smell and the dark, and Dare’s name.

On the wall.

Adair Phillip DuBray.

There are flowers there and I’m not alone.

A hooded woman stands, weeping, her head against the stone.

She turns to me, and her eyes are black and she’s sobbing.

“You did this,” she tells me. “You killed him. It should’ve been me. It should’ve been me.”

Sabine comes in and takes Olivia’s shoulders and guides her to the door. She looks over her shoulder at me, though and Sabine smiles and it stretches from ear to ear. And I sob.

I sob at Dare’s grave because even though he knew, even though he was willing to risk Finn, he was a pawn, just like me and I love him I love him.

The mausoleum grows dark and I cry until I can’t cry anymore, until there are no tears left, until I’m limp.

Then I sleep and the oblivion takes me into its arms and I’m spinning spinning and when I open my eyes, my memories have been taken again by oblivion, and something has changed and everything has changed.

I’m staring at Sabine.

In her mystical room, and I’ve been here before, I’ve been here before.

She sits me down and takes my hands and stares into my eyes.

“Finn is alive,” I’m saying slowly, and the words the words the words.

I’ve said them before,

I’ve been here before.

I cling to that knowledge as the old woman nods.

“But he was dead.”

She nods again, and my next words spill out without my consent, like I’m playing a part in a play.

“The hooded boy I kept seeing… all my life… it’s been Dare’s brother all along.”

The words

The words.

I’ve been here.

I remember. I remember.

I remember what happened in Sabine’s room, and her part in everything, how she’s pulled the strings and controlled Dare, and all she cares about is fulfilling some strange Roma prophecy and Finn is supposed to die because I’m supposed to betray him and let it happen.

Dare bursts through the door like I knew he would, and he’s alive.

He’s alive.

“We’ve got to go, Calla,” he says and I go with him this time. There is guilt in his eyes and in his heart, but I don’t care. I go with him anyway. Because he’s a pawn and I’m a pawn, and we’ll be pawns together.

He pulls me to the door and Sabine clings to me and her eyes her eyes they burn me.

“You can’t get away,” she tells us as she falls behind. “The die has been cast. Know this, child. Your brother was meant to die long ago. You were brought into the world on purpose, as a descendent of Judas. You were meant to offer your brother, to betray him. But you haven’t. Over and over, you’ve betrayed the universe instead and saved your brother. Death wants your brother, and you can’t stop it.”

Dare pulls me along, through the halls, and through the dark and his hand is warm and I’m so scared.

“We’re lost,” I tell him, because it seems to be true.

“No, we aren’t,” he argues. “I’d die for you, Cal. I’ll do it.”

But God, my heart pounds at the thought of that.

“I can’t be without you again,” I tell him, and it’s true. And it’s also true that I can’t be without Finn. And Sabine says one of us must die, and that Finn is supposed to be dead already.

“The die has been cast,” I add, and that sounds so bleak.

Because it is.





Chapter Twenty-Nine





“I don’t understand how this is happening,” I say as we race through Whitley, through the halls, through the rooms.

“No one does,” Dare says as we burst into Finn’s room. “Romani ways are mysterious. Your mother knew, though. Even though you kept changing things, she knew in the beginning, and she did try to change things by running to America. But it didn’t work. Fate had a plan.”

“I really change things?” I ask, and Finn wakes up and I hold his hand.

“At night, your mind is free,” Dare explains. “That’s what I’ve figured out so far. “You and Finn. Your minds wander in sleep, and for whatever reason, you can change things without even trying, or without knowing how. Something happened to you that night so long ago in Sabine’s room. She tried to sacrifice you, but something went wrong. It must have something to do with Cain and Abel’s blood.”