Lux (The Nocte Trilogy 3)

And I have to believe that I can save my brother in the end, because serva me, servabo te. Save me and I’ll save you, Finn.

Destroy the ring.

How does one go about destroying a ring?

Dare and I sneak away into the forest, and burn the journal before anyone can see, before anyone even realizes we’re gone. They can’t see his words, they can’t see our story.

If they do, we’ll never get out of here.

We’ll never be free.

And we have to.

We have to live free.

“I can’t live without Finn,” I tell Dare on the way back in.

He holds my hand and looks at me, and smiles a sad sad smile.

“I know.”

We walk and walk, and Dare turns to me.

“I love you more than life, and I’ve been doing some research. Salome married her brother, and she became a necromancer. She wanted to live forever, but Phillip didn’t. Phillip has been trying for centuries to end the curse, while Salome wants it to continue. They’ve been at odds, and that has been born into twins in your family for generations. That has to be it.”

I’m dubious, but intrigued.

“Are we related?” I ask, and it’s a question I’ve been afraid to ask, afraid to know the answer.

Dare stares at me with his black black eyes. “I don’t know. But you can undo anything. Perhaps the answer is not to destroy the ring, but to change things so that it was never created in the first place. If you can do that… you can prevent everything from happening. You won’t have to change it. Surely that will end the cycle.”

“But what if it ends us?” I ask and I’m afraid. “If I prevent events from happening, maybe we’ll never be born.”

Dare shakes his head. “I don’t believe that. I believe in Fate, and we’re fated, Calla. We’re fated. I feel it.”

“But I won’t remember,” I tell him. “When I change things and I wake up, I never remember. What if I forget you?”

“Then I’ll find you, Calla-Lily. I’ll always find you.”

Hope leaps into my heart and his eyes are so sincere, so true.

“Do you promise?” I ask, and he smiles at me, and I’m afraid to hope.

“I do,” Dare says as he puts the ring in his pocket. “We’ll get this sorted.”

“What a British thing to say,” I say.

“That’s the meanest thing you’ve said all day.”

As we laugh, I feel like we’ve been here before, in this time and place and with these same words. But I’m getting used to that feeling. Because by night we are free, and things change, because we change them, and déjà vu is real, and we’re stuck in it.

Because of that, we’ll change things again, because time is fluid and malleable and it never stays the same. We’ll save my brother. I feel it I feel it I feel in my bones, in my hollow reed bones.

“Nocte liber sum,” I whisper to Dare.

He nods. “Keep dreaming, Calla Lily. And one day, we’ll be free.”

I squeeze his hand because I know.