by C. M. Owens
Ignoring her, I flip to another page that actually has words on it, and even though she gives me an annoyed sigh, she starts reading too.
The darkness will grow, and you’ll harness it, cultivate it, and be empowered by it. It’s the only way. It’ll make her stronger but also weaker, and you’ll use both to your advantage.
Instead of simply borrowing her army, as you’ve done in failed past attempts, you’ll build your own without her assistance. Instead of letting her dominate you, you’ll dominate her.
My fingers skim across the bolder gold writing of that last line. He’s made it a point to ensure me he’s more dominant. Why?
You will make her hate you. You will make her tougher. You will ensure she’ll survive without you above all else.
“He’s still planning to die,” I say on a rasp whisper. “He reads this, and he remembers he wants to die.”
“He reads this to remember why he needs to die, Ella. I told you we should stop reading this.”
I keep reading, because no way in hell am I letting him die, especially when none of this makes any damn sense.
You will make her truly learn the darkness inside you so that she can master it for herself.
You’ll be cold.
You’ll be cruel.
No one can know she’s your gravest weakness.
As far as anyone is aware, this is a quest for revenge. No longer will others know your true objective, in hopes of swaying the results of the overall end result.
You only get one real opportunity to redirect fate’s path. Fate is just science, like magic, though a more illogical formula of variables that topple to the same places in different ways when small things change.
So you went big instead of small, because small never worked.
“What does any of that mean?” I ask Kimber, and even though she looks hesitant, she stands.
“Where are you going?”
“Follow me,” she calls back.
Standing up and keeping the book open, I follow her quickly down the stairs. Fortunately, we’re the only ones here. She’s right about one thing; we’re overdue for a family meeting.
Everyone’s been avoiding me besides Chaz. Everyone hates Slade, but they aren’t broaching the subject with me, because they probably hope he still plans to die, then they can avoid the topic without ever directly affecting my relationship with them.
No doubt Dad told them about Slade’s suicide plan, since Dad seems to know more than he’s been saying, especially lately.
Kimber stops in front of the table that has all of Dice’s dominoes stacked up in a complicated pattern.
“He’s been doing this to distract himself from worrying about Karma,” she says on a sigh.
“I think I helped with that,” I tell her absently, “but what do the dominoes have to do with my question?”
She removes a few dominoes, then goes to the back and tips them. They all fall, though the ones missing cause them to stop falling as prettily, and a few get skipped before the wave finally stops, and a few rows are left standing.
“It means, even with certain things changed, when other things are set into motion, the dominoes still fall almost the exact same way. A small pause can stop, interrupting the fall, but all it takes is one push, and they all continue to fall again, until the last one.”
She taps a domino, reigniting the falling sequence. The dominoes topple until the last one drops off the table as if to punctuate her point.
“He saw a future where you died over and over, no matter what he did differently with the new knowledge he’d acquired. The path of the future remained the same, with new, unexpected things restarting the interrupted paths, and every single time it ended with the last domino falling.” Her eyes meet mine. “You.”
“What does any of that have to do with the Gemini Twin lie?”
“The Gemini Twin lie kept them relevant. It made them special. They’d likely have been dead long ago, had that not been the case. Seriously, Ella, he’s put something into play that we shouldn’t mess with. Changing the future is a lot harder than one might think, and it looks like he has taken serious measures to do so.”
Ignoring her yet again, I sit down and start reading. She might be objecting to this, but she still comes to read over my shoulder
A lot of calculations were made to decide the most important things to know outside of these pages and these memories.
You will read this when you falter, because you will falter. You love her too much not to falter.
A single tear rolls down my cheek and splatters onto the centuries’ old page, seeming to make the gold writing shimmer as it drinks the tear.
“He actually infused the memories into these pages,” Kimber states, running her finger over another equation in the margin. “He did that with chains on and bars surrounding him that weakened his power, because he was that determined, Ella.”
Another tear falls from my cheek when I read the next line.
You’ll eventually claim her; there’s no point in pretending any new variable can happen there. You can’t help it, because you love her too much. But the longer you delay it, the better for her.
Your main prerogative in the rings is to get stronger. You’ve laid out the formulas for a variety of different ways to do that, but one way in particular assures it happens.
More formulas swarm page after page after page, along with some brief notations that don’t really help me figure out what they’re for. Kimber takes the book from my hand, her interest renewed as her eyes light up with intrigue, then turn somber as though she understands something I don’t.
“What?” I ask, almost scared of the answer.
“Holy shit, Ella,” she says so quietly as more and more tears fill her eyes. She blinks them back, shaking her head.
“He’s the reason he’s scarred.”
“What?” I ask, feeling something warm and wet trickle down my own cheek.
“He siphoned the power from our bodies’ natural healing capabilities, and he stored it to put all of this into effect. In order to make himself stronger, he stole his body’s natural defense, in turn, forcing his mind to work more like a predator’s instead of a visionary’s. Our appearance plays into a lot of our personalities—we’re the deadly beauties for a reason. Beauty is our greatest offense, because even we let our guard down around someone who looks like you, or me, or Gage. But Slade? He’s had to fight everyone because you look at him, see the scars and the predator in his eyes, and he’s a huge threat. And his scars intrigued them so much, he was able to siphon a lot of power, only allowing his body to mend as much as necessary, while he stored that power to another part of him.”
“That had to be excruciating, because that means he forced himself to stay conscious during all of that,” I tell her, shaking my head as more and more tears start trickling down my cheeks.
She slowly nods in agreement, and I look away, feeling my stomach roil.
“He deliberately made himself a target after Alton betrayed his own mate, and he heard what they did to her,” Kimber goes on, reading a side notation in the margin.
He heard Alton’s mate dying, and heard his brother breaking. “He was tortured mentally and physically, yet continued to focus on one thing. Saving you, Ella. Hell, it’s all that’s kept him sane,” she adds quietly. “Please stop reading this.”
“He’s planning to die in my place,” I say harshly, my voice almost feral, and she startles. Forcing myself to calm down, I stare into her eyes. “What would you do if this was Gage?”
“Ella, that’s different. I’m in love with Gage, but Slade has taken painstaking precautions to make sure you didn’t have the ability to love him. Hell, he almost slaughtered Leah, and—”
I wave her off, returning my attention to the pages. It hurts to keep reading, but I do it anyway, because I need to understand.
You’ve crafted a new existence, one where you’re no longer the same man who had to watch her die over and over
, always thrown aside so she can save you. You never saved her, not even once, as that man.
I can almost feel how angry he was when he was writing this, taste his self-disgust and helplessness in my soul. It’s exactly what I’m feeling right now.
You’ve rewritten facts, twisting them in your brother’s head so he’ll believe the same things, mostly about the bond.
You believe the bond to be broken after claiming the mate—because you believe this and have let it bleed into the remaining link, Alton’s shattered mind believes this. With his mate dead and his guilt eating him alive, his mind won’t be strong enough to know any better.
The lie is the only truth she can know, or she’ll try to save you.
You’ll leave calculated clues with the princess upon escape, after spreading just enough whispers of information.
You’ll let her learn the Gemini Twin bond as you’ve created the tale to be.
She doesn’t need the truth.
Ever.
“That’s why he created the legend the way he did,” Kimber states gently, as though it makes it easier to hear. “He wanted you to focus on a possible happy ending, while he focused all his energy into executing the rest of his plan. Ella, come on. Stop this. It’s just making it worse on you.”
“There’s still the prophecy,” I mutter with very little conviction.
How can there be a Gemini Twin prophecy if he made the whole Gemini Twin legend up?
More damn scientific formulas take over, and once again Kimber is forced to begrudgingly translate when I stare at her expectantly, not even bothering to point out that I’m not going to stop reading.
“These are too complicated for me to understand,” she states quietly. Her finger points to another set, and she sighs as she says, “But these look like a possible formula for channeling something through a grounding conduit, perhaps Alton, to provide one huge boost of power.”
I flip the pages, looking for words again, since her answers seem to be waning, her reluctance to understand why I need to save him starting to grate on my nerves as a steady growl rumbles in my chest.
You and Alton have to die, or she’ll die in your place in order to finish what you started. But first you have to be strong enough to die in her place, just this once.
A thousand and one times you’ve failed her, but this once, you can do it right, and it’s the only time that will matter.
You’ll stop seeing her deaths, and this will be a blessing.
If you’re still in prison and reading this with slowly returning memories, you have to know, she saves you. Keep holding on, because she does come for you, even though she doesn’t know you. But you can’t keep that memory.
Kimber dabs away some more tears, distracting me briefly, but I force myself to read on, staving off the emotions I can’t afford to feel right now. I’m damn close to losing every ounce of control I’ve worked so hard to get.
Seeing her free you can’t be a variable, since it’s too close to the original experiment that has proven highly ineffective.
Seeing her for the first time as a free man with no idea you’d see her that night is a new, uncontrollable variable you’ve released into the equation that will hopefully create many other new variables that will lead down a different path to the future.
You’ll continue to see the night she crashes, yet somehow know she’s not dead.
You can never see what happens next until it’s happening.
You will not ruin her this time.
Loving her so freely always ruins her. The harder you love her, the harder she loves you. She’ll die for you if she loves you.
When you’re weak, you’ll come here, and you’ll remember. You’ll remember for just long enough to know why you’re doing this.
You’re doing this for her.
You’ve planned this for centuries. For her.
You’ll construct a private supply of power that you’ll believe it to be a prison for Alton. You’ll know it doesn’t make sense, since his blood is your blood, and he’d eventually figure out how to siphon it just enough to escape without dying. So you question why you think it’s a prison, but you continue to talk yourself into it being it’s a fact. Don’t worry, he’ll suffer a prison of his own making. The guilt will destroy him more thoroughly than you ever could.
You’ll let him think the prophecy only kills one.
You’ll let everyone think this, including yourself.
But there is no prophecy. It’s another planted illusion inside Alton’s mind you’ve created to keep your mate away from the exhausted, ineffective paths that leave her dead and you alive.
Even Hannah will believe we’re a way to bring her portal to life, which will help shift her attention from the princess, at least temporarily.
Her portal never opens to the Lokies.
Her variables are all wrong.
The prophecy is just another lie. Another piece of this elaborate, complicated plan full of misdirection and false legends.
Sniffling and wiping away the tears from my face, I point at the last part. “We have to tell Dad. We can shift all our efforts to just killing Hannah. Fuck Morgana and Gavin. They’d be selfish in this same situation. Slade never asked for any of this,” I bite out angrily.
“I don’t think he plans to save Morgana,” she tells me, her finger running over the equation. “This equation is to eviscerate a demon, using the energy channeling formula from earlier. He told Gavin he could reset her mind, sold it by making it seem to be a punishment, but even if that were true, Morgana’s mind would be scrambled, and she’d be dead. It’s the only way to forcibly eject Hannah, since she’s been in that body for so long.”
I pause, for some reason finding that information to seem important.
“Morgana’s mind would be scrambled,” I say quietly, my mind flicking back to Alton and how broken he is, then thinking of all the others.
“She’s been a prisoner in her own head for so long. Hell, she was a weak witch when this started so long ago, and Hannah has been using her body to strengthen herself. Morgana has been unable to even scream for help. The death will be a mercy. There’s no magical reset button, and I’m not seeing anywhere on here where he plans to eject her the way he claimed. Maybe he thinks he will, when in all actuality—”
“She’s going to die, and he needed to convince Gavin he could save her, so he adjusted what he believes, using these pages,” I interrupt, moving her along. “We can worry about Morgana some other time. Right now, I need to know how the hell to save his life,” I mutter to myself.
You’ll still obsess over learning Hannah’s motives, because learning is the entire point of this experiment—learning the variables needed to finally make enough impact to change your mate’s future.
The portal opening is your best chance at killing Hannah, due to cosmic activity that heightens your abilities—the very thing that gave you the idea to name yourselves the Gemini. Alton will be able to help you access the power from the prison, because his blood is your blood, and he will be the final channel to deliver the killing blow.
My mind flashes back to something Mom said not long ago. “I know you’re different. We’re always different, constantly evolving with each generation. But I still understand, Ella. Your blood is still my blood.”
My mind races, trying to piece together my own plan, using his own ideas and twisting them so that I can pull them off myself. And do it without dying.
This will allow your mate time to get stronger, and to allow you time to prepare her and yourself for what’s to come after that. Hopefully you won’t even remember her name, because the fewer details, the better, but you can only control so much.
This war was never to stop Hannah from invading the Lokies, because despite Hannah’s best attempts, it never happens.
This was all to save your beloved from being possessed by Hannah, because once Hannah realizes she can only fail, she jumps bodies, eviscerates Ella’s soul, and you always watch
the only good thing left in your life be destroyed.
The princess needs to believe there’s hope to save you, or she’ll be on a mission to save you herself. Let her focus on you by trying to save your mind instead of looking for other means to save your life.
“Ella, for fuck’s sake, this is the journal of a desperate man who has altered every future he’s seen. You have no idea how hard it is for me, as a visionary, to not take this seriously.”
My eyes fasten on hers.
“Until you can tell me you’d let Gage just die in order to save yourself, I’d suggest to stop talking unless you’ve got valuable input.”
Her lips thin.
“If he spent centuries seeing a changeable future play out the same way over and over—”
“If it’s a changeable future, then let me help him change it!”
The room quakes with my shout, and she groans while shaking her head. “Fine. Let’s get all the information before deciding on a logical course of action. But he’s terrified of you dying to save him, Ella. So don’t make him go through that.”
We stare at each other for a really long time, and the air grows heavier with each breath I take, even as I continue to battle back the overwhelming emotions clawing to the surface.
Glancing down, I see the line that merely aides Kimber’s argument.
Otherwise she’ll die. She always dies when that’s a variable.
A thousand and one times, you’ve watched her die. It’s important to keep pointing that out, because if you’re reading this, hope has niggled its way in, or complete hopelessness. You’re trying to think of a future you can both exist in, or you’re wondering if it’s okay to let go and die now because you’re so tired of the existence you’ve lived.