Page 192
“I’m hurt, and I want you beside me, and I hate that the only answer I have asks you to walk somewhere I can’t follow.”
“Then don’t ask.”
“I have to.” Tears blur my vision. “Because I love you more than I love keeping you close.”
His eyes close. I press my forehead to his.
“You need the chance to choose who you are without pain, fear, or that old bond choosing for you.”
“What if the road takes me?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
“What if I can’t find my way back?”
My chest caves in around the truth. “I don’t know.”
He opens his eyes.
I keep holding him. “But if you stay like this, I know what happens. The curse keeps taking pieces until there isn’t enough of you left to walk anywhere.”
Theo bows his head beyond the marker.
Ezra gasps and grips the stone. I feel the answer move through him before he says it. “I’m terrified.”
“Me too.”
“I love you.” He kisses me. It’s passionate and full of so much unfinished business that I almost beg him to stay.
Instead, I pull back. “I love you.”
His gaze shifts to Theo. Theo lifts his head.
“I love you,” Ezra tells him.
Theo’s face breaks. “I will always love you.”
Ezra looks at both of us one last time, then he steps away from me. The loss of his support sends pain through my ankle. I catch myself against a cypress trunk. He stops.
“Keep going,” I say.
He takes another step.
The fog closes around his calves. The route appears one marker at a time. First a cypress knee. Then a gap followed by glowing white lilies tied low near the water.
Ezra walks.
I limp toward the witness marker, using the trees to keep myself upright. It’s only twenty feet, but it feels like a mile.
A flat witness marker waits beside the channel. An open circle is carved into its surface. I lower myself beside it before my ankle gives out.
Theo remains beyond the first marker. He can see us but can’t reach either of us.
The fog speaks. My name. Theo’s voice comes from behind Ezra.
Pepper, help me.
Ezra’s voice rises from the water, but he’s farther ahead on the route. The sound comes from the channel beside me, not from him. The land is trying to make me call. I bite my cheek. The pain gives me something real.
