Unchained Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 5)

“I made it a fair fight,” I argue. “Unlike what Leah did the three times she managed to kill Ella while Ella was distracted.”

“That never really happened,” he bites out.

“Only because Leah fell into your hands instead of the anointed. First time for everything, I guess. In all the other timelines, Leah either died or was brainwashed with their cult mentality,” I add curtly. “Even after I close the journal and the memories start to fade, that anger I feel toward her still exists. I’m sure he’d feel exactly the same way.”

Kane sighs heavily, proving he’s either exasperated or just exhausted after having read the entire journal.

“I don’t even know what to say,” he admits.

“I don’t expect you to say anything. The only reason I’m telling you is because Ella already knows, and she’s spending every second she can spare trying to find an alternative solution.”

He scrubs a hand over his face, staring blankly out the window.

“There was a time I considered us moving inside that rather colorful prison I built and just existing,” I confess. “I’d never been able to step foot in it as a slave, despite having built it, but as a free man, the thought occurred to me. Then I realized, even if it did work, I was effectively caging us both.”

“Who knows what Hannah would do in the meantime,” he says under his breath, finally realizing just how powerful this threat truly is. “You said that—”

“Don’t repeat any of that journal to me,” I say, cutting him off. “It’s why I let you read it. I know certain things from that journal, because I’ve learned them from others. I can learn those things, but I don’t need to have the information delivered to me from that journal right now, or nothing really changes.”

He clears his throat and nods.

“Ella knows I’m an intelligent man,” I say, lifting the journal off the desk, “but she still likes to believe she’s smarter. She likes to believe this, because despite the fact she somehow figured all this out, she’s still young and naïve enough to think she can somehow save me without dying in the process. It’s a new timeline. A new reasoning. But in the end, it’s still just the same. The main events rarely change—it’s only the details that do.”

He drops his eyes and folds his fingers together, staring at his hands as he processes all of this.

“I saw the Aquarius betraying my family,” I tell him as I open the journal. “I saw them betraying my mother, and I saw the horrors that awaited us. I removed that memory and put it into the pages, mostly because I wanted to forget how helpless I was to change it, because I never once considered the Trouts as a variable. And also because I didn’t want my brother remembering how strong my visionary powers truly were. I did all I could to erase that knowledge over the years so that he couldn’t share it with any of our captors.”

“You knew it would happen?” Kane asks me.

“Yes. My visions were broader then, and I saw that possible future. So I tried to prevent it. I told my mother of the Aquarius’s impending betrayal, and we fled. I suppose my father entrusted the Trouts with our location.” The memory burns, because it’s one of the most buried inside this journal. I’ve had it open and in my hands for far too long today. “This was the first lifetime I learned of their involvement. It’s a mystery that’s finally solved to me. There’s always another variable in place to make the major events stay on course,” I add. “I was always going to end up in that prison.”

“It’s just the details that change,” he says, echoing words I’ve already told him when we first sat down and I shared something I never planned to have to share with him.

“I’m finally capable of being the detail that changes. Someone has to die, and Hannah isn’t going to pick a weak immortal.”

“There’s no way to deflect her?”

“Th

ere’s no one else strong enough to kill her,” I remind him, and he exhales shakily.

“There’s more at stake than just Ella,” he says as if he needs the reminder.

“She’s currently spending the last of our time together doing all she can to ensure we have a future, and I’m letting her while remaining appropriately suspicious, because I’m better at acting than she is. I’ve known it since the night of the red moon when she sat in a pile of ash, barely not losing herself. Then she came to me as a woman in love, instead of one who was cautiously feeling me out. She stopped expecting the worst from me.”

I clear my throat, trying not to show him any emotion, but I have to pause for a minute to get my breathing under control.

His eyes come up to meet mine.

“I’m letting her attempt the impossible because she’ll need to do this to go on with herself, feeling like she did everything she could possibly do to save me. What I need you to do is continue to focus on the portal until the battle,” I add.

“Even though—”

“I can say these things aloud with the journal open and still be able to forget, but I can’t hear the words from your mouth or I’ll remember. It’s too soon for me to remember things,” I tell him, and he huffs out a breath.

He gestures for me to continue speaking.

“The portal still explodes, and that could have severe repercussions. I want her to have a better future than the present I’m leaving behind. So long as I kill Hannah quickly enough, the rest of her army will fall. The only ones remaining will be her loyal followers, and those will be few enough to handle. The dragons will prevent the war from being as it has in the past, because they’ve never before agreed to battle at our side. Make sure they’re on time.”