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“I’ve seen what happens too,” she says. “And I still went through with this. You can’t blame yourself for it.”
“But I have to hold myself accountable. Cosette can never know what this place means to me,” I explain. “I have to keep Orla safe.”
“You’ve been avoiding her,” she states.
“I avoid everybody.”
“You can’t avoid me.”
“I know. I’ve tried.” She knees me weakly, and I chuckle. “After my mother passed, I figured I would fade away eventually, and you’d be rid of me.”
“Fade away?”
“I’m only a wish, a moon-spun being conjured by a witch who’s no longer on the same plane as me.”
Her fingers dig into my shirt as if she’s afraid I’ll vanish. “You’re still here.”
“Yes, but for years, I could feel myself slipping from existence,” I whisper. “I was dissolving back into my aether, piece by piece. One day, everything went grey and quiet, then I heard you talking to yourself in the temple. You were organizing your collection, assigning meaning to seemingly mundane items, and I thought it was beautiful, the way you saw so much that others couldn’t. I latched on to your dream because you painted it so vividly. You poured yourself into my emptiness and kept me tethered to this realm.”
She coughs to clear the hoarse rattle in her throat. “Is that why you can still feel me even though our bond is broken?”
“I think so.”
“What were you going to do if I’d succeeded in reviving the Undine?” she asks. “Hang around and let me figure this all out in a hundred years?”
I did consider that as an option. I thought I might show up every few decades just to see her face.
But in the end, I knew it was better to stay away. “No, I was always going to leave. Once you’d fulfilled your dream, there’d be no more use for me.”
She presses herself up on one hand. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth. I’m not a great guardian in most situations.” I pinch my bloody shirt away from my skin. “Look at what I allowed to happen.”
I haven’t forgotten that we started fucking like crazed beasts in the middle of a dangerous situation because I couldn’t keep it together.
“You fought the bloodlust much harder than I did.” She lifts a shoulder, and I sense a spark of desire that’s immediately lost to another round of nausea. “Maybe the reason I want you around has nothing to do with what I need from you.”
“Don’t tell me that.” It’s too late to be discussing this. There’s less than a fortnight until her wedding. She might not be enamored with the Duchess, but my inconsistent presence would only distract her from living her life to the fullest. “You know I have to go.”
“No, you don’t.” Our pinkies meet on the edge of the pot, and she locks hers around mine. “You’re my wish now, and I won’t give you up that easily. You can’t give up on yourself either.”
She pecks me on the mouth. There’s nothing sensual about our cracked lips meeting, but it might be the most real thing I’ve ever experienced.
I grasp that feeling as tightly as I can as we spend the night huddled together beneath the blankets, shivering through our illness.
22
ZEPHYR
We don’t fry in the morning light, but we pull the blankets over our heads to hide from the sun.
My head is pounding, and my mouth is dry. Cordelia groans something about water and how we should never mention what happened last night.
“You didn’t shrink into my hair,” she says, pushing the blanket down to her waist as she squints against the harsh glare of the greenhouse panels.
“It was cold.” I rub my eyes. “It wouldn’t have been fair to leave you without a body to curl up with.”
“Mmm.” Her fingers get caught in her tangled hair, and she looks down at her bloody dress. “What are we going to do now? How are we going to get back? Is Darcy even…” She trails off, paling.
