Lux (The Nocte Trilogy 3)

“It’s one for one for one, Calla,” Sabine adds. “That’s the way it’s always been. Make the right choice, and this will all end.”

Maybe her tea has valium in it, because I find myself agreeing. I find myself deciding that she is right.

But as I walk into my room, I decide I must’ve imagined the whole thing. Salome? Cain and Abel? Judas? Ancient biblical curses and Dare’s grave?

These things are impossible. Rom beliefs aren’t real.

I’m confused, like normal. I haven’t been sleeping well.

Obviously.

That’s the explanation.

I raise my hand to tuck my hair behind my ear, and that’s when I freeze.

My fingers smell like carnations and stargazers, the flowers that were on Dare’s grave.

It was real.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“We’re related,” I tell Dare, and my voice is urgent and my hand is on his chest. “We can’t…we can’t…we can’t be together.”

Dare’s face is pained and he knew.

“You knew,” I whisper, and the pain in my heart pangs loud loud louder, and he looks at me, and his gaze is so sorrowful and real.

“Things change,” he tells me, and I snort with disgust because we were together and it was incest and I still love him more than anything but Finn. I still love him I still love him I still love him.

“God, I want to die,” I groan, and I push him away and he shakes me hard hard harder.

“Don’t you ever say that again,” he snaps. “Don’t you ever. We’ve been through worse and we will weather this storm, Calla. We’re not truly related. It’s just complicated.”

I look at him and my eyes feel like they will explode with pain and with sadness.

“I don’t want to live if I can’t be with you,” and my words are painfully raw with honesty. “I truly don’t.”

“It won’t be this way,” Dare insists, and he is hiding something from me.

Something

Something

Something.

“What is it?” I ask, and I’m hopeful for just a moment.

“I want to tell you everything, but it’s something you have to figure out for yourself,” he tells me. “You have to see it, or you won’t believe it. It’s complex, it’s complicated, it’s real.”

His fingers lace with mine and the touch doesn’t feel wrong, it feels right.

He pulls me to him, and he kisses me, and his lips are warm and his breath is hot and his body is hard against mine.

“This isn’t wrong,” he tells me, and his lips move against my cheek. “Does it feel wrong to you, Calla-Lily?”

No

God