Page 30 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)

I didn’t run away this time. I walked. I walked out of the kitchen and down the corridor and didn’t stop until I reached the front door and then I walked through that too. I didn’t even stop when Dominic and Trace called out my name at the door, coaxing me to get back inside the house and talk to them.

I kept walking even as tiny cold flakes of snow fell from the sky, smattering and melting against my face for the first time in my life. I’d never seen snowfall outside of a movie before that very moment, but even that didn’t make me stop walking.

I shuffled down the stairs to the driveway where my Audi was parked, and I got in my car and drove. I drove so fast and far away that I was sure not even the falling snow would be able to keep up with me. I wasn’t sure how long I had driven or even where I was going until I finally pulled over on the side of the road and climbed out of my car, no longer able to see through the blur of tears that had swollen my eyes to twice their size.

Casting a sideways glare at Old Solomon’s Bridge—the place where Nikki had put the final nail in Trace’s coffin and shattered any hope of him having a normal, happy human life—I threw on the jacket I had in my back seat and then turned in the opposite direction toward the riverbank.

My face was still slick with the hundreds of tears that had fallen since I’d left my house and while the biting air felt cold against my cheeks, the pain in my heart was too encompassing for me to pay attention to anything else.

I choose neither .

Those words had been replaying in my head over and over from the moment I backed out of my driveway, watching as Trace and Dominic’s forms slowly diminished in my rearview mirror until they weren’t there at all.

Because I finally got it. I finally understood.

And I chose neither.

After everything, after all the love and tears and passion and touches and first times and do-overs and gut-wrenching pain, and intoxicating everything , it was finally over with both of them. It had to be, and I was sure that my heart was never going to be able to beat properly again.

I could already feel it, the way it ticked in my chest listlessly like a car rolling on its last fumes of gas. I could feel the cavernous emptiness inside me, inside the places that Trace and Dominic had always filled, and I could feel it swelling and growing and multiplying like a clawed ravenous beast, pulling all the blinding light into its shadow so that it may live out the remainder of its life in the darkness.

There was a painful hollowness there now. A gnawing ache I knew would follow me wherever I went for the rest of my days. Maybe that was the reason why I had never been able to muscle the courage to do the right thing before today. Because subconsciously, I knew how visceral the pain of losing them would be, how completely and wholly it would ruin me, and maybe, I just wasn’t strong enough to bear that kind of pain then. I hadn’t been hardened enough to wear those scars yet. But I was now.

I had to be.

Being with them had been the ride of my life, but it was over now. We’d crashed and burned beyond repair with nowhere else to take shelter. It was inevitable really and I think a part of me always knew that deep down in that place I dared not venture that this was precisely where we had been heading all along. I couldn’t pick between the two of them, not even to save our lives, and now I realized they were both better off for it.

What kind of life would they have with me anyway? I was Lucifer’s daughter. A walking curse and black cloud of destruction. A literal abomination.

Without me, their lives would be so much easier. Simpler. Safer. There would be no constant threats from the outside, no pain and heartbreak and impossibly knotted triangles gouging their hearts from the inside out. Without me selfishly keeping them tied to me, they would eventually find another great love…one that was able to give them the whole of her heart the way that they both deserved.

And I wanted that for them. I really did. The honest, selfless part of me wanted them to have all the beautiful things they’d given me. To feel the kind of life-changing love that made you weightless and indestructible all at once. Like you could jump off a ten-story building and just walk the whole thing off. I wanted them to have the kind of love that was pure and unyielding and devoted, a love unencumbered by pain and sacrifice. In that moment, I wanted that for them more than I’d ever wanted anything in my entire life.

As gut-wrenching as it was for me to imagine my own life without them, to imagine a world where I didn’t have their fiery love and protection sheltering me, their gentle touches and heated kisses restoring my mind and body, their able hands to hold onto when the going got rough, I was willing to give all of that up if it meant they could be happier. That they could finally get the untainted love I’d always wished I’d been able to give them.

Tears streamed down my face as I pictured my life without them. The ache and budding sorrow was almost too much to stomach. I could all but taste the heartbreaking emptiness that would accompany my life without them.

But I knew it was better for them.

I knew that and I accepted it, hoping that in time my own heart might be able to find a way to piece itself together again. Not completely, because I knew that would never be possible, but enough of a fix that it would no longer hurt just to take a breath without them by my side.

Wiping away at my tears, I vowed to finally do right by them in the only way I knew how. By letting them go. By giving them the things they’d never reach out and take on their own.

I slapped away another tear and gazed out at the rushing water, my chest feeling edgeless and hollow like everything that was holding me together had been snatched from my body and tossed into the river. How was I ever going to survive a lifetime without them when I could barely make it through the hour?

What we had…it had been everything to me. It filled me up and healed me in ways I’d never expected. And despite the way we crashed and burned, it had been real, and it could never be erased or taken away from me.

Maybe that was how I was going to survive this. By holding onto that for as long as I could. Every moment, every kiss, every touch, every laugh and every tear. I’d wrap it all up and bury it like a treasure so deep inside of me that it could never be removed. And I’d return to it in my darkest hours, feeding off the memories of their lips and whispered promises and tangled limbs, and I’d let that be enough to carry me through.

Maybe I’d even be able to take solace in knowing that they were finally truly happy and being loved the way that they deserved to be loved. I’d watch them from afar and I’d stay the hell away, loving them only from a distance where they were safe. Loving them from my memories. From the safety of my dreams where I couldn’t hurt them anymore.

I’d hold onto those dreams of happily-ever-after, in some other life—on some other Timeline—where it had worked out for the three of us. Where we hadn’t been doomed from the start, and I’d gotten the chance to live out my fairytale with the both of them by my side.

The sound of a car door slamming shut in the distance drew my attention away from the river and my shattered heart and directed it to the girl with bouncing red curls heading my way. I swiped away at my soaked cheeks again as Morgan made her way down the embankment over to where I was perched on the rocks.

“If you weren’t a Seer, I’d think you were stalking me,” I said, watching as she fumbled clumsily through the overgrown brush and onto the rocky beach.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said as she reached my spot and then tossed her hair over her shoulders before peering down at me. “I saw your car parked on the side of the road.”

“And you just felt the undeniable urge to rush over and say hi?” I asked sarcastically because we both knew she couldn’t care less about me.

“No. I was already on my way to your house.”

An uncomfortable chill prickled the back of my neck. “Please don’t tell me you had another vision. That’s literally the last thing I need to hear today.”

“No, not a vision,” she said and then eyed me for a moment as if just noticing something on my face. “That’s actually the problem I came to talk to you about.”

I blinked, staring up at her.

“Something’s wrong with my ability,” she said sounding a lot less panicked than her eyes looked. “I haven’t been able to see anything for almost two days.”

“And seeing as you’re here telling me this, I’m guessing that’s not a normal thing.” I mean, what did I know? For all I knew, she only had visions once a week.

“That’s putting it mildly. I can’t even pull up my past visions anymore. It’s like there’s nothing there. I’m just drawing blank after blank,” she said as she dusted off a spot on the rocks beside me and then sat down.

“And that’s never happened before? Like, it’s not just an off day or something?” I asked, having no actual idea how her ability worked.

“No. Never.” She shook her head. “It feels like there’s some kind of block there, like something’s stopping me from accessing my visions,” she said lowly and then met my eyes, her own turning dark. “It feels like magic.”

“Magic.” I let out a deep breath. “So, you think someone’s doing this to you on purpose then.”

“What else am I supposed to think?”

“Who would want to…” I turned back toward the churning river as her words slowly started to click into place. “Nikki,” I realized and then glanced back at her.

“I think she knows that I’m helping you guys,” she admitted, sounding incredibly pained by the thought of it. She was, after all, her best friend. Or at least used to be.

“How could she know that?” Suspicion immediately crowded my mind as I studied her. So help me God, if she was playing me, I was going to kick her ass with her own fucking foot.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” she said as she watched a small branch float by through the current. “The best I can figure is that maybe the sisters saw us working together the same way I saw them working with Nikki.”

“Maybe,” I agreed and then thought about it. “But why go after you? If they can cast that kind of spell without even being near you, why not go after me directly?”

“Maybe that’s what they’re planning to do. Maybe they wanted to make sure I didn’t see them coming.”

I let that sink in as I tried not to dwell on the snake pit that had just awoken in my stomach. It would definitely be the smart thing to do…if they were planning some kind of attack against me.

And yet, something still wasn’t fitting.

“But…why bother?” I wondered mostly to myself. “It’s not like we’re actively going after them.”

At this point, we were only keeping an eye on them, making sure we knew their whereabouts and that things weren’t escalating into something much bigger and more dangerous than we could handle right now.

Other than that, we haven’t pursued them or even made a single threat of it. And if the sisters had been able to get some kind of magical line on us, wouldn’t they have seen just how unfocused on them we actually were?

“Wait. You’re not going after Nikki?” asked Morgan as though she were surprised to hear that I wasn’t chomping at the bit to murder a pregnant woman and her unborn baby.

Granted, that woman was Nikki, and her day was definitely still coming, but not like that. Not when her life was still tied to someone who’d never even asked to be brought into this world in the first place.

“I’m not a baby killer, Morgan. Demon baby or otherwise. As long as your bestie’s still with child , I’m not touching a hair on her head. And same goes for the kid. He can walk out of her womb throwing fireballs for all I care. Until the day he actually hurts someone, he’s not my problem.” I picked up a stone and tossed it into the river, watching it get sucked away by the rushing water. “I’m kind of offended that you’d think otherwise.”

“It’s nothing personal,” she said without meeting my eyes. “People around here usually fall in line and do whatever the Order tells them to do. It’s just the way things are done here.”

“Well, I don’t usually do what people tell me to do anyway, so there’s that,” I answered truthfully because when the hell did I ever follow an order in the entirety of my life? “Why else do you think the Order’s so desperate to tie me to the Horseman? It’s basically the only way they’ll be able to get me to do what they want.”

She looked at me then, her green eyes inspecting me a little more closely. “I guess I assumed wrong.”

I picked up another rock, turning it over in my hand before tossing that one out into the water too. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Is that why you’re sitting out here in the middle of nowhere with gross, puffy eyes?”

I snorted and then shook my head at her. “No, actually. That’s a whole different kind of problem.”

She glanced at me again and then back up at a crow circling an evergreen across the bank. “Did you want to…like…talk about it?”

“Ew. No.” I looked at her like she was crazy. Morgan and I were definitely cool now, certainly more so than we used to be, but we definitely weren’t that kind of cool.

“Thank god,” she said and shuddered as though the thought of it were as horrifying to her as it had been to me. She glanced back out at the crow as it began to caw louder. “So, if you’re not planning on going after Nikki and her baby, what’s your game plan now? Are you just going to sit around and wait to see if the sisters decide to come after you?”

“I’m not so sure they’re going to be doing that either,” I said unable to shake the feeling that something was just off about the whole thing. Like I was missing something important.

“Then why would they mess with my visions like this?”

“I mean, do we know for sure it was them? I’m not exactly convinced they did that, either.”

“What are you talking about? If not them, then who?”

That was the question—who. Who had motive? Who would gain the most by doing this?

As far as I was concerned, this baby was just that—an innocent baby—and until he grew up and proved me otherwise, he really wasn’t my concern. The only reason he was even a blot on my map was because the Order and their deranged Horsemen dragged me into it. But those masks were off now, and I knew the faces of my enemies.

The only real threat to me and my family was the Order. They were the ones who had been playing with my life long before I’d even stepped foot in Hollow Hills. Not some baby who hadn’t even been born yet.

Which really begged the question: if the Roderick sisters were behind Morgan’s vision block and had been watching us all this time, wouldn’t they know all that already? Wouldn’t they leave well enough alone instead of stirring up problems where there weren’t any?

Unless they weren’t behind it at all.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of strange that they’d be able to disable your entire ability without even meeting you once?” I asked, inspecting her profile as she watched the bird dip and dive frantically, as though it had spotted a carcass somewhere near the riverbank. “I mean, putting up some kind of barrier or protection spell to stop you from seeing them would have been more than enough. Not to mention much more believable.”

Her gaze snapped to mine then. She knew where I was going.

“But to knock out your entire ability? Wow.” I whistled dramatically. “That’s some serious magic of the highest order right there.”

Her face twisted into a frown as the puzzle pieces slowly came together in her own mind. I could see her dutifully working out the ins and outs of it, mulling over the amount of power and access to a Descendant one would need to pull off a spell like that.

“No.” She met my eyes, shaking her head. “There’s no way.”

“You have to admit, it’s much more plausible seeing as they actually have the chops to do it.”

She shook her head again, refusing to even accept it as a possibility. “You’re crazy. There’s no way. Why in heaven’s name would the Order want to block my ability? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Doesn’t it?” I argued. “Maybe they wanted to block your ability for the same reason we thought the Roderick sisters did. Because they’re planning something, and they don’t want me to see what’s coming.”

I knew I was right. The moment the words left my mouth I knew it. I could feel it coiling in my gut like a headless serpent circling endlessly in its pit.

Morgan looked away, focusing back on the river, her brows knitting together furiously into a permanent knot as she ran it over in her mind.

And then she knew it too.