Lux (The Nocte Trilogy 3)
“Either way, it happened. The Universe always has its way, child. You were supposed to have a heart condition. You were born with it. But you gave it to Dare, and now it seems to be gone. But it’s not. Things never are. Fate is what it is, and it will always have its way. Dare knows that.”
“Has Dare known all along?” I ask and my words are pieces of wood just like my heart.
Her smile stretches wider.
“Of course he has,” she says and she is heartless, her heart is black, her heart is gone. “He was trying to save his mother, after all.”
The fire
The fire. Dare led me to the fire, and he let go, and he left me with Finn to die.
Only we didn’t.
“You tried to kill us,” I say aloud. “So long ago. It didn’t work.”
She looks away now, disgruntled. “It should’ve worked,” she snaps. “It should’ve been easy. But nothing in this life ever is, I suppose. You’ve fought and fought against us, but you can’t fight forever.”
“Us?” I want to melt into a puddle and stay there, because I know who she means.
“Dare and I, of course.”
That’s what I thought, and it kills me kills me kills me.
“It has to be Finn,” she explains with her heartless
tongue. “And Dare knew that. To sacrifice, to set things right, it has to be Finn. Olivia tried. She offered up one son, but that offering was rejected. It wasn’t her fault.”
All I can think of is one thing.
Dare is with Sabine.
Dare is with Sabine.
“How have you done this?” I ask her. “How are you making us crazy? How are you doing it? Is it your tea?”
She laughs and it’s like a cackle. “Of course not, child. I have my old Rom ways, and I adhere to them. Everything will come to pass as it should. Time is fluid and it can change. You can change it. You can change it to the right thing if we just wait long enough.”
“And Dare?”
Sabine shrugs. “He doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the end.”
My veins turn to ice and I don’t understand. All I know is that all along, my memories have been real, even when they haven’t seemed possible. The deva ju, the craziness.
“One for one for one,” Sabine tells me. “You are of Judas, and you must betray your brother in order to set things right. There are sacrifices to be made, girl. You must be strong enough to do it.”
My mother’s words in the book she left come back to me come back to me come back.
May you always have the courage to live free, and the strength to do what is right.
My breath hitches and hitches and hitches, because it seems that my mother was saying to sacrifice Finn, to choose to live free with Dare. But that can’t be right. She told me that I couldn’t be with Dare.
But then things changed,
Again
And again. And who knows anymore?
“You’re the crazy one,” I tell Sabine as I study the look in her eyes, the unsettling, unbalanced gleam. She doesn’t deny it.