“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.
The door bursts open and Dare is here, thank God, and he grabs me.
“We’ve got to go, Calla.”
I look at him, and his eyes are wide and full of pain and guilt, and I pull away.
“It’s true?” I ask softly.
“You came to get us? You were going to kill us for Sabine? You were going to kill Finn?”
His dark eyelashes are inky against his cheeks as he closes his eyes and he sighs, so loud. “I was so small when I agreed. She was my mother, and I just wanted her back. Sabine told me that if I participated, my mother would come back. I didn’t know all of this would happen. I didn’t know.”
“But you knew that Finn or I would die,” I press, and his fingers are cold against my own.
He opens his eyes and stares into mine, and I want to dive into his, to swim in them, to float.
“When you’re a child, you don’t understand mortality,” he offers simply. “Not really. And once we started, I couldn’t stop. It was a bullet out of a gun, and I couldn’t put it back. I’d already agreed, and a Roma’s word is a bond.”
He’s part Roma, and I know that now.
“When I realized, as I got older, what it all really meant, I’d already fallen for you. I can’t let it be you. I’ll do anything to stop it.”
“But we’re cursed,” I say quietly, and it feels like the only answer. “You’re Finn’s brother, and I’m Finn’s sister, and I’m a child of incest. Everything has been orchestrated because of some grand belief in Roma magic.”
“It’s not just a belief,” Dare sighs. “I wish it were, but it’s not. Cal… you change things. You’ve changed them over and over your whole life, without even knowing it. You loved your brother so much that you’ve literally changed time to bring him back. It’s because you’re descended from Abel. God made him the Judge of Souls and so are you. You know what is right. You know.”
Sabine watches us and she’s serious and silent.
“I don’t believe you,” I say and it sounds like a whimper.
“You don’t understand anything yet, do you?” Sabine is snide. “Time is fluid and malleable, and you yourself wield the power to change it. It’s a tapestry and we’re the pieces.”
I’m confused and I’m stunned, and Dare is silent and strong and he stares at me.
“This is real,” he tells me. “All along, you’ve known it, but you were afraid you were crazy.”
“The déjà vu, the memories…” I whisper.
“Real,” he nods, and he’s sad and his eyes are stormy. “The déjà vu was real. Everyone gets it because everyone has the extent to change things with their dreams, but not like you. You’re stronger than most because of your blood.”
“This is impossible,” I say, but I know I’m wrong. It’s possible. I feel it in my bones in my bones in my bones.
I hesitate, but something Sabine said comes back to me. “It has to be me or Finn in order to bring things to a close.”
Dare’s silence is his agreement.
“And you chose Finn,” my words are slow. “You chose Finn, you let him die. Over and over and over.”
“Finn chose to die over and over and over,” Dare insists. “He chose things to be the sacrifice, but you kept changing things back. You’re like Castor and Pollux. You love each other to a fault, and the universe will make everyone pay for it. You have to let the cycle end.”
Dare’s face is tortured, pained, and it looks like my heart, it’s shattered, it’s broken.
“But my brother….” I whisper. “You were willing to let Finn die. You love Finn.”
“I do,” he agrees. “But it couldn’t be you,” he says simply and he reaches for me, but I shirk away.
“And somehow, I changed it, I kept bringing him back because I love him, I love him more than life, and every time, you somehow managed to undo it and kill him again.”
“I didn’t,” Dare protests. “Finn did. Because he knows that Fate is real. Kismet is real. That is his fate.”
Sabine’s eyes are knowing and dark.
“You must let it happen, girl,” she says. “When you change it, you just prolong the torment.”
“I don’t care,” I say coldly. “I don’t care if you are tormented forever and the entire universe burns. Nothing matters but Finn.”
Dare is stunned, but he understands, finally finally finally.
Finn is my other half. I can’t live without him.
“Everyone must pay a price in this family,” Sabine says, driving her point home. “The universe demands it, to set things right. One for one for one. Olivia already paid her price. Now you must pay yours.”
I’m numb
I’m alone
I’m afraid
I’m determined.
It won’t be Finn.
I love Dare and I love life, but my brother is life. He’s everything. He’s always been everything.
Dare falls back and watches as I touch Sabine’s fingers. His dark dark eyes are the last thing I see as the room spins and spins and it makes me so dizzy that I close my eyes.
When I open them, I’m alone.
I’m walking across Whitley, across foggy moors, breathing in the wet morning air, and something is pulling me pulling me pulling me to the mausoleums.
I open the door and the musty smell and the dark, and Dare’s name.
On the wall.
Adair Phillip DuBray.
There are flowers there and I’m not alone.
A hooded woman stands, weeping, her head against the stone.
She turns to me, and her eyes are black and she’s sobbing.
“You did this,” she tells me. “You killed him. It should’ve been me. It should’ve been me.”
Sabine comes in and takes Olivia’s shoulders and guides her to the door. She looks over her shoulder at me, though and Sabine smiles and it stretches from ear to ear. And I sob.
I sob at Dare’s grave because even though he knew, even though he was willing to risk Finn, he was a pawn, just like me and I love him I love him.
The mausoleum grows dark and I cry until I can’t cry anymore, until there are no tears left, until I’m limp.
Then I sleep and the oblivion takes me into its arms and I’m spinning spinning and when I open my eyes, my memories have been taken again by oblivion, and something has changed and everything has changed.
I’m staring at Sabine.
In her mystical room, and I’ve been here before, I’ve been here before.
She sits me down and takes my hands and stares into my eyes.
“Finn is alive,” I’m saying slowly, and the words the words the words.
I’ve said them before,
I’ve been here before.
I cling to that knowledge as the old woman nods.
“But he was dead.”
She nods again, and my next words spill out without my consent, like I’m playing a part in a play.
“The hooded boy I kept seeing… all my life… it’s been Dare’s brother all along.”
The words
The words.
I’ve been here.
I remember. I remember.