Page 43 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

It felt like forever had come and gone before I opened my eyes some ten minutes later to the feel of someone gently tapping my shoulder. I had hoped and wished and prayed that this day had been nothing but a horrible nightmare, and that I would wake up from it if I only waited long enough. But those hopes were quickly dashed the moment I blinked the room back into life and found my future-self still standing there, staring at me with pity in her eyes.

“It was the only way,”

she said again, as though needing to convince me of it. To convince herself.

My gaze travelled to the incapacitated Revenant on the hardwood floor behind her and then over her shoulder to the bed where Trace was still laying.

“Is he okay?”

I asked, too afraid to get up and look at him myself. Too afraid to see what future-me had done to him.

“He’s dead.”

“WHAT?”

I scrambled up to my feet in a fit of sheer panic and tried to run over to him, but my Alt quickly shot out her hands and stopped me.

“Calm down. It’s only temporary,”

she said, trying to catch a hold of my terrified eyes. It’s part of the transformation,” she assured, her voice calm and even.

“It’s part of the…”

I trailed off as I released a lungful of air. “Right. Yes. I knew that.”

She stared back at me for a quiet beat, as though wanting to make sure I had gotten a hold of myself and wasn’t going to self-destruct at any moment, and then released my arms. “I need to get back.”

“What? Why?”

I asked, my anxiety spiking back up to dangerous levels. “You can’t just leave me here like this!”

“It’s not my Timeline. I have to go back.”

“And what the hell am I supposed to do here?”

“Stay alive,”

she said simply as she circled back to the incapacitated Revenant and then pulled out a satchel from her back pocket. I already knew it was Cinderdust.

“Thanks, Captain Freaking Obvious. I meant, what am I supposed to do with Trace?”

“Wait for him to wake up.”

“And then what?”

She bent down beside the Rev and flicked a glance up at me. “Feed him.”

“Feed him.”

I nodded into the words as though trying to burn them into my memory like sacred instructions. As though I’d never met a vampire before and had no idea what to do with them. As though I hadn’t been feeding Dominic, and now even Gabriel, for as far back as I could remember.

She turned the satchel upside down and doused the body in Cinderdust, watching quietly as the magical light show did its thing and sent the Revenant off to a world it would never be able to come back from.

“And what about Dominic? What’s going to happen to him?”

She met my eyes and then straightened, a knowing smile on her lips. “I think you already know the answer to that.”

My cheeks turned a shade of crimson. “Because we hooked up last night?”

I verified, feeling as though she out of everyone would know the answer to what it had meant. If anything.

“Amongst other things.”

“So, what happened was real then?”

I asked, desperate to know that what had transpired between Dominic and me had been more than just a lust-fueled physical reaction. “Is he starting to feel again?”

“He has been for a while now—even despite himself,”

she said with a playful roll of her eyes. “Just keep doing whatever you’re doing and trust your heart,” she said as she slipped the satchel back into her pocket and then pulled out her cell phone before quickly checking the screen. “Love will always be the last thing he allows himself to feel,” she went on and then looked up at me with sadness. “Mostly because he never believed he deserved to have it in the first place.”

My heart clenched at her words because I already knew that about him. My mind immediately rolled back to the first time he had confessed that he was in love with me. And how he almost instantly erased the moment from my memory. He hadn’t believed that he deserved me then. That I would ever return the feelings he had for me.

But I did.

And I could only imagine what he thought he deserved now, after everything that he had done.

“Time’s up,”

she said, snapping me out of my reverie. “I have to go.”

“Wait! What about Nikki and the baby?”

I asked hastily, desperate for more information. For more clues about what lay ahead for me in my future. “What am I supposed to do about them?”

Her eyes lost some of their light as she shook her head somberly. “I haven’t gotten to that part yet either.”

Crap. But also, duh. Because if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to travel back in time to see me, what with being the Fourth Horseman and all. I shivered at the thought of it.

“Wow. So, I guess that’s it then.”

Crossing my arms to stave off the chill, I tilted my head to the side and met her light gray eyes again. “Any parting words of wisdom for me?”

“What, like I haven’t given you enough already?”

she shot back and smiled.

I returned a smirk. “Well, that remains to be seen on this Timeline.”

“Touché,”

she said, waggling her eyebrows teasingly before turning serious again. She stared back at me for a quiet moment as though trying to place something—to recall something from this very point in time. “Don’t be afraid of what you are, Jemma. Of your dark side. It’s only as bad as you make it to be.”

“What does that even mean?”

Her smile widened. “You’ll see,”

she said as she took a step back and wiggled her fingers.

I was just about to ask her how she was getting back to her Timeline, being that Trace was dead in the future and I hadn’t seen another Reaper show up with her, but before I could get a single word out, she had already dissipated into nothing. And just like that, she was gone and all I could do was stand there, completely and irreversibly awestruck.

***

I ventured down to the basement later that day, after I’d had a proper moment to come to terms with everything that had transpired with my future-self. My head was still spinning, and my stomach was in bunches, but somehow, that hopeless feeling that had followed me everywhere since the day I moved to this town had finally begun to disperse.

I moved with intention across the large empty space, stopping only for the time it took to unlock Dominic’s cell door and then made my way inside.

He was sitting on the ground with his legs bent before him and a strange look on his face as he watched me move to the space across from him and then lean myself back against the steely bars.

“You told me the truth.”

He blinked lazily. “Haven’t I always?”

he answered, as if knowing exactly what I was talking about.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

The chains clanked as he brought his hands together. “Do what?”

“This,”

I said and gestured to him with my hand. “Keeping you down here like this.”

“It isn’t as though I don’t deserve it. I am a monster of the worst kind, after all,”

he said, his eyes casting shadows that made me want to dive into them. To live inside their darkness and feed them. And yet, something about the way he had answered me lacked conviction. Like he was telling me what he thought I needed to hear. Playing his part.

“Are you?”

I asked and then lowered myself onto bended knees, peering back at him as though I might be able to see the truth if I just looked hard enough.

“You tell me, angel.”

I bit down on my lip and contemplated it as his gaze veered to my mouth. While his calm fa?ade had remained almost impenetrable, there was an unmistakable flash of heat that moved through his eyes. All I could think about was what my Alt had said. That I needed to trust my heart. And then my mind cycled back to what had happened between us last night—to how real it had felt. How good it had been to be in his arms again.

Straightening to my full height, I rolled the keychain around in my fingers and peered down at him, giving myself one more chance to back out of what I already knew in my heart I was going to do. And then I took a step forward, and then another one, until both my feet were on the other side of the safety line.

Dominic’s brows furrowed as he cocked his head to the side and watched me. I waited a few beats for him to do something; to pounce or attack or try to grab out at me again, but he didn’t move a single muscle.

Feeling more confident, I took another step and then crossed the rest of the way until I was standing directly above him. His head tipped back as his dark eyes roamed up the length of my body before settling in on my eyes.

“What exactly are you doing?”

he asked, his honeyed voice taking on an audible edge.

I lowered myself again, resting my arm on my bended knee and then held out the overflowing keychain to him. The one that held the keys to each and every lock and chain around his body.

“You could have killed me yesterday if you wanted to,”

I said, still dangling the chain from my fingers as he made no attempt to reach for them. “But you didn’t.”

“Should I get a medal for that?”

he asked coldly.

“No, but you can have your freedom,”

I answered and then let go of the keychain.

His hand moved to catch them, as quick as a blur.

“You can choose to be as cold and self-deprecating as you want to be. Keep pretending that you don’t care. That you’re a heartless monster of the worst kind, and that you’ll only hurt me if I make the mistake of ever letting my guard down around you again. But I see right through it.”

His jaw muscle feathered as he clenched down hard and glared at me.

“I love you, Dominic. I’m always going to love you, and I know that deep down inside your stubborn little heart, you love me too.”

“Is that right?”

he said, though there wasn’t a lick of scorn or contempt to be found in his voice. Instead, it was soft. Questioning. Almost…hopeful.

“Yeah, it is.”

My gaze moved to his chains, to his ripped shirt, and wrinkled pants, and my heart sank. “I won’t keep you down here by force anymore, and I won’t play this game with you either. You want me to keep punishing you, but I won’t do it anymore.”

His jaw twitched as though he wanted to say something but then decided against it.

“I’ve already forgiven you for what happened,”

I went on and then watched as his features twisted with pain and regret, his cold fa?ade faltering right before my eyes. “Maybe it’s time you do the same.”

He dropped his head, shaking it back and forth faintly, refusing to meet my eyes then.

“So…in the meantime, you’re free to go, Dominic.”

I reached forward and cupped his face, turning it toward me so that he had no other choice but to look at me. To face me. “But you’re also welcome to stay.”

He stared back at me, speechless.

I pushed off the ground and straightened before him, giving him one final look before I turned on my heel and left the cell. I had said all that I needed to say and done what I felt was right in my heart. I’d given him the metaphorical key to my heart, and all I could do now was sit back and hope he would use it.