Lux (The Nocte Trilogy 3)

No.

It feels as right as anything.

His hands splay against my back and he whispers. “Don’t ever say that you want to die, Calla. It’s not your fate to sacrifice yourself. It’s not.”

“How do you know what fate has planned?” I ask him, and I pull away so that I can see into his face and he is so serious so serious so serious.

“Because I just do.”

“That isn’t an answer,” I tell him.

“But it is,” he says, and then his hands fall away and he walks into the house.

I’m alone, and the answers chirp from the trees, across the moors and I have to get them. I have to get the answers, because my sanity is slip slip slipping and if I don’t figure it out soon, I’ll be lost.

I know that.

I know that.

So I find my brother, and I insist that we seek out the truth. Finn loves me so he comes and he’s doubtful, but he’s here.

I stand at the mouth of the woods, and the trees bend and hiss and sway, and words form on my lips.

“One for one for one.”

“What does that mean?” Finn asks me, because he’s standing at my elbow.

He won’t leave me, not now that he thinks I’m as crazy as he is.

“We have to keep each other sane,” that’s what he said yesterday after I told him what happened in the mausoleum and in Sabine’s room.

I look at him now.

“I don’t know what it means,” I tell him honestly. “I just hear it in my head, over and over.”

Finn looks at me, and he’s scared and his pale hand grasps mine.

“That’s bad, Cal,” he tells me, and he doesn’t have to say the words because I already know. Of course I know.

I step into the mossy forest, and I’m surrounded by the cool ferns and shadows, and I don’t know why, but I know I’m supposed to be here.

“Don’t,” Finn urges me to come back, and he won’t follow. “I don’t like the way it feels in there.”

“I don’t either,” I tell him, but I keep going, one foot after the other, because I’m being pulled by an invisible tether or a cord.

Finn stays and his face is worried, but he’s unable to follow, and I don’t judge him for that. The feeling in the woods is oppressive, and dark, and terrifying.

There’s something here.

Something here for me.

Ahead of me, a shadow moves, it lurches, it glides.

I follow it, unable to remain still. It flits in and out of trees, and so do I.

And then finally, finally,

It’s gone, and I’m alone.