Page 139 of Fated

When I dream tonight, I need to dream December 24, two years ago.

If Aaron is real, if all the people are real, if the island is real, then if I dream them, I can save them.

The only question is, am I dreaming reality, or am I dreaming a memory of reality? Is it a shadow, or is it the real thing?

I don’t know.

I only know that tonight, when midnight passes and Christmas Eve arrives, I have the chance to go back two years, to hours before the disaster.

If only the watch will take me there.

Let me dream again.

I can save them.

At least I can try.

50

The day passesin a whirlwind of preparations and snowfall. While a hard, drumming insistence pumps through my veins—dream, dream, dream of him—the snow falls in great soft flakes, coating the world in swathes of sparkling, dreamy white.

Mila races from one end of the chateau to the other, running through the ballroom while Daniel supervises the setup. This year, he asked Mila what she wanted to see at the gala. She told him glitter. And so the driveway is lined with hand-carved ice sculptures—snowflakes, reindeer, elves, and a sleigh—all set to glitter in candlelight and the headlights of chauffeured cars arriving in the dark. The ballroom is looped and frosted and painted in golds and silvers and sparkling lights. Stepping into the room is like spinning into the shining heart of an ice cave, with the midnight sun sparkling in diamond rays across the glittering ice.

It’s beautiful, and it makes my heart ache.

The chateau is filled with the Christmassy scent of freshly cut evergreens, warm gingerbread, and mulled cider spiced with cinnamon and cloves. The stone hallways echo with the bustle and busy of dozens of people hurrying about, creating a winter wonderland. Every year it’s the same, the ordinary transformed into the extraordinary within hours. It always holds a hint of magic, but this year I’m pulled too far away to notice. My heart isn’t in Geneva, it’s on a tiny island thousands of miles away.

Every few hours I slip away, wind the watch, close my eyes, and try to dream. But I’m wound too tight, my muscles and tendons so alert that I feel as if I’m stretched low at the racetrack waiting for the gunshot.

Daniel asks over a lunch of savory thyme-and-rosemary barley soup and fresh-baked bread, “All right, Fi?”

Mila glances at me, a slice of bread suspended halfway to her mouth as she waits for my answer. She doesn’t know what’s wrong, but she can sense the ache and the storm whirling inside me.

Earlier, on one of her racing sprints through the ballroom, a glitter ribbon trailing behind her, she’d stopped, flung her arms around me, and said, “Don’t worry, Mummy. This Christmas Eve, Uncle Daniel hired security. He told me so. The lady can’t get you.”

I hugged her tight and told her, “I’m not worried. You don’t need to be worried either.”

Daniel’s eyes cloud after he asks if I’m all right, maybe concerned I’m regretting this Christmas Eve Gala and remembering the gunshot.

That isn’t what I’m worried about. The thought hasn’t crossed my mind. Instead I’m praying for the hours to pass so I can fall into bed, exhausted and ready to dream.

So I grip my hand under the table, nails digging into my palm, and promise him, “I will be. Tomorrow.”

And now it’s late. The chateau is sleepy and quiet. The cacophony of footsteps and laughter and all the noise of the Christmas setup has faded. The bustle is long gone, hidden like green grass under a heavy blanket of snow.

There’s a muted hush, a quiet lull, settling over the night. The sky is velvety black and the moon watches the night with a soft, gentle glow. My bedroom is illuminated by the faintest silver light—it falls in soft threads across the gold satin of my duvet.

I lean back onto the soft folds of my mattress and the cool satin sheets whisper beneath me. My heart has taken on a throbbing, pulsing ache that ticks with the same rhythm of the pocket watch. There’s a strange, muffled quality to my bedroom, so that the only noises I can hear are the ticking of the watch and the beating of my heart.

I hold the watch up to the light of the moon. The gold is cool in my hand, the round edges slowly warming in my palm. The enamel blue waves, painted on the face, glisten in the moonlight and then start to flow with a strange, rippling motion.

The gold second hand sweeps over the blue and the iridescent enamel swirls and spins. The cold prickle of the room tugs at my cheeks and an icy draft scrapes against my skin. I sink further under the weight of my duvet and breathe in the cold, lavender-tinged night air. Then, as I breathe out, my eyelids grow heavy. The watch grows warm in my palm, heavy too. I drop my hand to my bed and my eyelids flutter shut.

I fall then.

It isn’t a tumbling spin.

It’s not a jarring descent.

---