My heels click against the slimy floor as I cross to her. Riggs shoots me a warning look, but I don’t heed it. My attention is on the slip of a girl in Carter’s grasp.
Her arms hang floppily at her sides. Her collarbones could cut glass. Black tears leak steadily out beneath her closed eyelashes. Seeing them makes me want to cry too, but I keep my emotions tightly in check. Falling apart won’t help matters.
I come to a stop less than a foot away. Close enough that, if she wanted to, she could claw my face off with her chipped, electric yellow manicure.
I really hope she doesn’t.
My throat is thick; it’s hard to speak around the lump of emotions lodged inside it. “You don’t look very happy to me, Chloe.”
Her eyes open at the sound of my voice. Her pupils are so wide, they’ve nearly swallowed the light blue of her irises. It takes a minute for her to focus on my face; for her drugged brain cells to process the person standing six inches from her. When she finally recognizes me, her tears turn from a slow trickle to a torrential flood.
“E?”
I blink back tears of my own, hearing the broken way she murmurs my nickname. “Yeah. It’s me. It’s E.”
“What are you doing here?” She blinks slowly, scanning me up and down with a glazed stare. “Why are you dressed like a 1920s sexpot?”
Laughing a little, I reach up and wipe the tears off her face with my fingertips, doing my best to rub away the worst of the mascara streaks. “I’m here to bring you home, silly.”
“Home?”
I nod.
“I don’t want to go home. I hate Hightower.” She sounds like a lost little girl.
“I don’t mean Hightower.”
She stares at me, not understanding.
“I want you to come home with me. To the castle,” I explain softly. “That’s where you belong.”
She shakes her head vigorously, sending tendrils of hair whipping into her eyes. “You don’t want me there. You sent me away.”
“I made a mistake. I was hurt and angry and I lashed out at you. It’s not right, and it’s not an excuse… but sometimes we hurt the people we love most, just because we can. Just because we need an outlet for our own pain.” I hold her face in my hands, leaning in until our foreheads are pressed together. “See, you were wrong before when you said no one loves you. I love you. Do you hear me, Chloe Thorne? You’re my sister. You’re my family. And I love you.”
She doesn’t reply. Not verbally. But her body sways forward into mine and her arms — so dangerously frail, they make me want to weep — wind themselves around my body. She’s significantly taller than me even in my three inch heels, but she stoops until her head is resting on my shoulder and hiccups a sob into the crook of my neck.
“Will you come home with me?” I ask, brushing a hank of dirty hair out of her face. “Please, Chloe?”
There’s a long beat of silence. I think she might not answer at all. But then, in her lost-little-girl voice, she simply murmurs, “Home sounds good.”
“Great,” I choke out, blinking rapidly. “Then we’ll all go home. Together.”
I lose the battle against my own tears when my eyes meet Carter’s over the top of Chloe’s head. He and Riggs are standing a few feet away, ready to step in if she gets violent again. But, somehow, I know she won’t. Even higher than a kite, even emotionally shattered, even at her worst… Chloe isn’t capable of causing real damage to anyone except herself.
Thank you, Carter mouths to me, fault lines of relief written plainly on his face as he watches me petting Chloe’s dirty hair in rhythmic strokes.
Still feeling precariously balanced on the edge of a sobbing fit, I try out a tight smile. A moment later, his mouth tugs up at one side to return it.
By the time I’ve gotten Chloe showered, changed into pajamas, and tucked into bed, it’s nearly dawn. I close the door to her suite with a soft click and lean back against the wood paneling, weary down to my bones.
“Is she asleep?”
My eyes snap open. I’m shocked to see Carter leaning on the opposite wall, watching me. He looks about as exhausted as I feel. I figured he passed out hours ago.
“Out like a light.”
He nods. “She’ll probably be dead to the world for at least eighteen hours. Whenever she goes on a bender, she needs a full day to recover. Sometimes two.”
“As long as she wakes up sober, I don’t care how long she sleeps.”
“She’ll wake up sober.” He pauses. “It’s how long she’ll stay that way that worries me.”
“Well, we’ll just have to make sure she does.”
“We?”
“We,” I agree, staring at him. “She needs both of us right now.”
Carter doesn’t deny my words, but he doesn’t agree with them either. He just tilts his head back against the stone wall and lets out a deep, rattling sigh. “Fuck, I’m tired. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired.”
“Likewise.”
My temple is throbbing with the onset of a migraine. I reach up and pull my hair out of the messy bun I shoved it into earlier. The long waves tumble free around my shoulders, easing a bit of the ache in my head, and I sigh contentedly at the sensation.
“You look like shit.”
I glance up at Carter’s blunt assessment, brows raised. “Gee, thanks. I wasn’t aware I had to look glamorous while shampooing the dried vomit and stale beer out of Chloe’s hair.”
“I’m not talking about your outfit,” he says, scanning me up and down, from the faded tank top to the plain black leggings to the metallic silver nail polish on my toes. “I mean in general. When did you last eat a proper meal? You’re skin and fucking bones, Emilia. And I can tell from those bags under your eyes that you haven’t been sleeping.” He hesitates a beat, gaze narrowing on mine. “How bad are the nightmares?”
Bad.
So bad, I’m afraid to close my eyes at night.
So bad, I need you here to ward off the worst of the darkness swirling inside me.
I glance away. “That’s not your concern anymore.”
“Right.” His scoff is bitter. “Because I’m out of your life. I almost forgot for a second.”
“No! That’s not what I meant. I just—”
“Screw me for asking, I guess. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
I sink my teeth into my lip, wishing I weren’t so tired. Wishing my thoughts and words were easier to align and articulate. Wishing there weren’t tears threatening to fill my eyes for the zillionth time tonight.
“Carter…” My voice is hollow. “I only meant… you don’t have to worry about me anymore. Not because you don’t have the right to, but… because I don’t deserve it.” I can’t look at him when I say these words, so I stare down at my bare feet instead. “It’s my fault Chloe’s like this right now. That she’s suffering so much. If I’d properly sorted through my grief, taken a minute to process before reacting so strongly— Maybe she wouldn’t be— be—”
My words deteriorate into choked sobs. I don’t know when, exactly, I started weeping. I just know, now that I’ve started, I’m not certain I’ll ever be able to stop. The floodgates are open and they show no signs of closing again. Three months of pent up anguish and loss and guilt and regret are pouring out of my eyes.
I press useless fists against the sockets, hoping to stem the flow, trying to hide my breakdown from Carter. What a foolish hope — even when I’m not a mess of tears, he sees straight through all my defenses. It’s been that way since the very beginning.
I sniff morosely. “I’m sorry, I—”
Strong arms close around me without warning. My apologies evaporate as, abruptly, I find myself pressed against a broad chest, the familiar scent of smoke and spice dizzying my senses. I suck in a sharp breath that does nothing to steady me.
It’s been so long since I’ve been held, the sensation is almost painful. My heart slams violently into my ribcage. My tears t
rickle into the fabric of his shirt, a steady stream of sorrow.
I tell myself to pull away, that it isn’t fair to use him as a safe zone for my emotional detonation… but I can’t seem to listen to my own executive orders. My limbs physically refuse to detangle themselves from his body.
“I’m s-sorry.” I hiccup violently. “This isn’t— I didn’t mean to—”
“Shh.” Carter’s mouth is by my ear, buried in my hair. “Just… let go of it. All that shit you’ve been carrying around inside? All that pain that’s swallowing you up? Let it go, Emilia.”
For quite a long time, I do just that. I cry and cry until my puffy eyes run dry, until there are no more tears left to shed. I cry until I can no longer recall exactly what set me off in the first place. Until I feel empty of everything except the sensation of strong hands on my back, warm lips at my temple, steady heartbeats beneath my cheek, a metronome reassuring me that we are here. We are alive. We are still breathing.
“I think I’m okay, now,” I whisper against his collarbone. I don’t pull back — I can’t bring myself to, now that I’m in his arms. Now that I’m touching him again after so long apart. If we have to separate, it won’t be my doing.
But…
Carter doesn’t pull away either.
Dawn is breaking outside, lightening the hall around us in incremental degrees, staining us in shades of the palest pink; a rose-colored requiem for all we’ve endured. Still, we don’t move. We don’t let go. We stand there, our limbs intertwined like one being. One body, one soul. And I think, if I could pick one spot to spend the last moments of my life, it might be this one.
Right here.
Wrapped in warm arms at sunrise on a cold winter day.
“I…” Carter clears his throat, his tone hesitant. “I’ve been really fucking mad at you, these past few months.”
It’s such a strange thing to say, given that we’re still entwined in an embrace. I can’t help the short burst of air that flies from my mouth — half laugh, half sob.
“Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ve been pretty fucking mad at myself, too.”
His chin shifts to rest against the crown of my head. I want desperately to pull back so I can look into his eyes, but I refuse to create even the smallest ounce of distance between us.
“It doesn’t make me feel better,” he mutters lowly. “I don’t want you punishing yourself. Not eating, not sleeping… thinking about that drives me insane. I don’t want you blaming yourself for everything that’s happened. Especially not with Chloe. She’s a big girl. And even if you set in motion this particular downward spiral… she’s struggled with addiction for a long, long time. This is not a problem you created.”
I shake my head, rejecting the words. “But I exacerbated it. If I’d only—”
“Stop. You can contemplate all the buts and what ifs and if onlys in the world; it won’t change a damn thing. What’s done is done. You can’t torture yourself over the past forever. Not if you want to move forward.”
The question is there, balanced on the tip of my tongue.
But can we ever truly move forward?
I’m too afraid of the answer to ask. Instead, I say the only thing I can — the thing I’ve been wanting to say to him all day, since he stepped back into my life.
“Carter, I — I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. For all of it.”
He lets out a deep breath that rattles his whole chest. “I know. I’m sorry, too.”
There’s a long pause, neither of us saying anything at all. I think we both know it’s time to let go; it’s just a matter of who’ll be strong enough to take that fateful step away.
I feel the tension radiating through Carter the second before he finally releases me — arms falling to his sides, legs backpedaling to create a bit of breathing room. His eyes avoid mine, locked instead on the oak panels of Chloe’s door, just over my shoulder.
“Thank you for helping get her back. I don’t think she’d be safe and warm and sleeping soundly if you hadn’t stepped in tonight. She’d probably be passed out on the floor of that club or screaming at me on a street corner for killing her buzz.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I meant what I said earlier. She’s my family. I love her.”
He looks at me then, and the stark longing in his gaze makes my heart seize violently, like someone’s got their fist around it.
“I know you do,” he says carefully. “And she loves you too.”
“It would probably be safer for her if she didn’t,” I say just as carefully.
I tell myself we’re still discussing the sister we share… but I think we both know we’re walking a tightrope, balanced precariously between the lines of an entirely different conversation.
“Why do you say that?” Carter asks. “That it’s not safe?”
I glance at my toes again. “People who love me have a tendency to end up dead. As long as she’s by my side, she’ll always be a target. Because I’m always going to be a target.”
“You can’t protect people from everything, Emilia. Life is full of danger, whether you’re the queen of a kingdom or a fucking mail carrier.”
He pauses long enough that I look up into his eyes again. They’re so blue — my favorite sea to drown in. As I watch, anger stirs to life inside their depths.
“We all die at some point. Even if standing by your side slightly decreases a person’s life expectancy… it’s not your call to make. You don’t get to decide who loves you, Emilia. And you definitely don’t get to push away the people who do, just because you’re scared to lose them.”
“This is not some baseless, irrational fear, Carter. People around me are in real danger. Look what happened to everyone in Vasgaard Square — they died because they had the misfortune of attending a speech I was giving! Their blood is on my hands.”
“No. It. Fucking. Isn’t.” His brow furrows with fury and frustration. “Their blood is on the hands of four terrorists, who committed a terrible sin in the name of some bullshit agenda and used you as an excuse to achieve it.”
“Semantics,” I mutter. “The end result is the same. People around me aren’t safe. Period.”
“You’re oversimplifying things, as usual. Seeing shit in black and white when, in reality, it’s all shades of gray.” He’s glaring at me now, his anger bubbling red-hot just beneath the surface. “You always do this — you get so far ahead of yourself worrying about all the potential ways shit can go wrong. And then you blow them up before they can fall apart on their own. Christ, Emilia, it makes me want to shake you sometimes!”
I glance away from him, unable to meet his eyes. I never enjoy being psychoanalyzed, but it’s particularly annoying when said analysis is so painfully accurate. “I’m sorry, but this is how I’m wired, Carter. I like preparation. I like knowing how things are going to play out.”
“No, you like controlling how things are going to play out. There’s a difference.”
“As opposed to you, who just lets life happen to him?” I snap back. “Maybe I care too much about things, maybe I overanalyze until I drive myself crazy… but I’d rather be like that than like you. You’re so indifferent to everything that happens in your life, you might as well be asleep at the wheel. When was the last time you let yourself actually care about anything, Carter?”
His jaw clenches so tight, I think his teeth might crack. “You really want me to answer that question, Emilia? Because I have a feeling you already know the exact play-by-play of the last time I allowed myself to give a fuck about something. About someone.”
I suck in a gulp of air that does nothing to calm me. Images of a night not so long ago, atop a castle turret, flash through my mind. I remember the look in Carter’s eyes when he told me, in no uncertain terms, that he was willing to fight for us. The passion on his face when he said he’d do just about anything to find a future in which we could be together. Mostly, though, I remember the hurt that flashed across his expression when I turned an
d walked away from him.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do sabotage things before they have a chance to disintegrate on their own. After all, isn’t folding the cards on your terms far better than playing a losing hand?
I avoid his eyes as adeptly as I avoid his question. “Look, if it’s Chloe you’re worried about… I’m not going to hurt her. I’m going to help her get back on her feet, make sure she stays clean and sober. I promise.”
“And afterward?” Carter presses, relentless. “Once she’s clean? What happens then? What happens when you decide to cut her out of your life again, all in the name of keeping her safe?”
Frustration sparks inside me, sudden as a wildfire. “You act like me wanting to protect the people I love is some terrible crime! Don’t you understand that she might be better off without me in her life? That her existence would be far simpler if she lived it away from all the toxic bullshit that comes along with being a Lancaster?” I shake my head, exasperated at being painted as a villain when all I’m attempting to do is keep my sister safe. “Linus is dead. Octavia is officially out of power. There’s nothing tying Chloe to this life, anymore.”
“Nothing except you,” he murmurs knowingly. “Explains why you’re so damn determined to push her away.”
I don’t meet his eyes. I can’t. I’m afraid of the sadness he’ll see in them; the unbearable loneliness that overtakes me whenever I look into the future and see what awaits me.
An empty castle.
An empty bed.
An empty life.
“So… what? You’re just going to be alone forever? Live here, in this giant fucking castle, all by yourself, watching the years slip away? Watching life and love pass you by, because you’re too scared to risk the possibility that someone close to you might get hurt?” Carter scoffs scornfully. “Do you have any idea how fucking stupid that sounds?”
“Maybe it is stupid! Maybe I’m stupid. But I’m also a girl who lost both her parents. I’m a girl who watched forty people slaughtered right in front of her eyes. And I’m a girl who has a hell of a lot of human lives resting in her hands. Every decision I make from this point onward has far-reaching consequences — for me, for them, for the people closest to me. For a whole godforsaken kingdom, Carter!”
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