Page 14 of Shadow Fall: Part Two

My head reeled at that, failing to reconcile it with the family man I'd lived with for the past hundred years. We'd been together for a century since we killed Locke, and everything had started to fall into place when we found Verena—or rather when she picked Harvey's pocket and stole one of my daggers in the same second. Now we had Kaida, and everything was perfect.

But the memories didn’t fit—my old memories and the ones that rose now, summoned by the shadow visions. They clashed, collided, and began to collapse. One life was true. One was false.

My breath hitched. "Don't," I choked out. "Please."

Shadows rushed around me, but no more visions assaulted me; my mind was doing a good enough job of that itself, hurtling violent memory after violent memory at me until I was on the verge of sobs. I had everything I'd ever wanted.

But I remembered trekking across Hell to get their memories back, remembered the pain of realising Wane had been erased from our memories, and I remembered Wyn saving us from the cave before it could collapse. And Cronus's eye watching us the whole time.

Wyn didn't change sides in the Damned Realm, didn't see the error of his ways and help us kill his father. He hunted us to the ends of the realm, then Locke murdered us. Wynvail lived and tortured my mates with every chance he got. He was a villain.

Until he saved us.

I shook my head, trying to kick the swirling shadows aside. I tore myself away from them, grabbing the rough trunk of a tree as I urged my noodle legs into a sprint.

I needed to outrun these cruel memories, needed to preserve the life I’d lived for a hundred years because if—if none of it was real, then she … then our daughter—

A sob shattered my chest as I ran, but the memories wouldn't be denied. They filled my head until I shook, until my eyes overflowed with a river of tears, and I wailed a note of pain and rage and desperation.

Please. Please don’t let these memories be real.

But they kept coming. The Labyrinth. Cronus taunting us, pushing us to breaking point. Almost losing my mates so many times I’d lost count.

Then the Damned House. Finding Wane. Losing Wynvail.

I crashed to my knees between the roots of a tree, remembering and hating every second of it. My breathing fell apart, short gulps of air never watching my lungs. I let out a pitiful cry with every failed breath,

I lost him. Hated him and loved him and lost him.

And Wane—at home when I climbed into bed and settled into his arms, he'd draped the heavy weight of a wing over my side. But he didn't have his wings; Cronus made his servant hack them off his back, giving my mate wounds that had bled for a hundred years.

I bowed over my knees in the dirt, a loud keening sound building in my chest.

We hadn't been living peacefully for a century. We'd been torn apart, turned against each other, made to hate each other—and then we'd been dealt every kind of violence in known existence. Torture, mutilation, emotional damage, mental ruin, and in the end, Cronus, he—killed me.

He might as well have killed my mates along with me; when I returned, it was to men haunted by grief and so shaky that the foundations we'd built ourselves upon were rife with cracks. They threatened to fall at any moment.

"I'm not going back," I cried, thick with tears. "I'm not going back. Do you hear me? I'll never give up this life!"

A shadow brushed my cheek, wiping away a tear. I twisted away with a snarl.

"No," I growled, guttural and pained.

I shut it out, all of it, even the vision he'd dredged from my childhood memory about my parents. My mum knew about Cronus, knew we were his descendants and that he'd come for us. She didn't abandon us, didn't discard me like I was worthless. She told Dad to take me because she knew Cronus would devour me if he found me.

Had he devoured her?

I shook my head, tears flying from my cheeks.

This timeline isn't real, Erebus said gently, surrounding me in a coat of shadows that felt like … a hug. I'm sorry, but it doesn't exist. It's a place that time forgot, a reality that almost happened if Wynvail had chosen to betray Cassander Locke.

But he didn't. He followed every command he'd been given, and we'd been murdered.

I broke, forced to accept none of it was real—the house, the happiness, the peace. Kaida. A scream ripped my throat, burned my lips as it rent the air, and filled the forest with grief.

When I was done, I rasped, "It would kill them. It would kill me. I can't do it."

It's not real, Halwen, the shadows breathed, hesitant and concerned. She's not real.

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