Page 104 of To Ashes and Dust
“Why didn’t you tell me?” All heat left me the moment the words left my lips, guilt sinking into the pit of my stomach. God, I was such a fucking hypocrite. What right did I have to be upset with him for keeping this from me? He’d done it for my safety.
I’d kept something far worse from him, and for what?
Damien tried to reason with me, tried to explain further, but I couldn’t meet his eyes, all fight leaving me as I stepped back, hugging myself. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t do that to you. You’ve had enough to deal with these last few months. I didn’t want to put that concern on your shoulders, didn’t want you fearing whether you could trust your own friend. I hated keeping this from you. I was going to tell you once I knew without a doubt that she wasn’t, I just haven’t had the chance.”
He was right, and I couldn’t deny it. If I’d have known there was any chance Kat might be a darkling, it would’ve torn me apart. I clamped my mouth shut, nausea building in my stomach. I had no right to be upset with him for this.
“I truly am sorry.”
I couldn’t speak, my mind a whirlwind of guilt and confliction, of everything I wanted to tell him but was too afraid to.
“I’m sorry I got mad,” I muttered, and Damien’s brows furrowed.
He lifted my chin to meet his gaze. “You have every right to be, Cas. I deserve it.”
“No, you’re right. You told me yourself; you can never know who’s a darkling and who’s not.”
His gaze fell, and he drew a deep breath, lifting the folder and collecting the few photographs that lay across his desk. “I spoke with Cody and James last night after we got back from the Archivallia. They’re no longer keeping tabs on her. Cody told me he plans to tell her what he is in a few months.”
My gaze shot to him. “What?”
“It’s... not guaranteed everything will work out. If their relationship continues, though, he’ll reveal what he is, reveal many of the things I’ve shared with you, about the immortals, about our world,” he said as he approached the fireplace.
The guilt and hurt were replaced with something else—hope. Kat might be welcomed into our world. I wouldn’t have to erase her memories of me. She would know what Cody was, what they all were. God, I could talk to her about, well, anything, everything. There’d been so much I’d wanted to talk to her about, to tell her.
“There will be protocols he’ll have to follow,” Damien warned, and I glanced back at him as he came to a stop before the fireplace.
“Like what?” I asked, unease settling over my skin.
“Well, it could go one of two ways. If he tells her and she’s accepting of the information, she’ll be allowed to take a vow of silence every mortal takes when joining our society. If she doesn’t take the information well...”
My stomach dipped as his words trailed off, and he tossed the folder into the flames, the paper and pictures curling into themselves as the embers crawled across them. “What happens then?”
“Her memories will have to be erased.”
37
CASSIE
The cold chill of the doctor’s office seeped through my thin gown as I lay in the MRI machine. Why did doctors keep their offices so damn cold? The machine hummed as it scanned my heart, the tunnel hovering less than a foot above me, the sounds of the machine nearly loud enough to drown out my own thoughts. My eyes flitted around, my heart racing, breath shaky. The white walls felt closer than they had a few seconds ago, as if they were closing in.
Sit still. Breathe.I inhaled deeply.Five. Four. Three. Two. One. I exhaled. I don’t know why I bothered with the breathing exercise. It did little to calm my panic. I closed my eyes, imagining I was elsewhere, anywhere.
“We’re halfway there, Cassie. Twenty more minutes. Just relax. Try to keep still,” the MRI tech said through the speaker.
I swallowed and inhaled, counting again.Just twenty more minutes. Twenty more minutes. My thoughts drifted to the time when Damien and I sat on the bank of the creek at Stackhouse park, when I’d sketched him, before I knew of their world, of the horrors lingering in the shadows. I focused on the way his eyes had glowed in the rays of the sun, how the amber exploded amidst the ashen silver of his eyes, the feel of the charcoal in my hands as I sketched out the details of his sharp jawline. Details, focus on details, anything else but this damned tunnel.
The remaining twenty minutes felt like hours, and when the bed creaked, rolling out of the machine, I couldn’t sit up fast enough. The nurse opened the door, gesturing for me to follow. I did, eager to get out of this room. My eyes burned into the nurse’s back, avoiding the knowing gaze of the staff. It didn’t help that half of them had been here the entirety of my treatment and knew what I was facing. It was refreshing when I’d see new faces who didn’t know my situation over the years, but it never took long for them to learn and the pity to sink into their not-so-subtle glances.
“He’ll be with you shortly,” she said as she led me into the room, setting my thick medical chart on the counter. I wanted to burn it where it sat. I could. It wouldn’t take but a second, a thought, and I knew the chart would go up in flames.
I sighed, settling onto the bed, my feet dangling over the edge. The nerves set in then. I dreaded this waiting game, dreaded the news, dreaded what I knew was going to happen when I visited my parents afterward.
Anywhere but here.My thoughts drifted again. Damien thought I was with my parents right now. The lie left gravelly guilt in my gut, which had only been amplified when I’d exploded on him yesterday for doing what I’d done from the start. I needed to tell him, but today was going to be hard enough without breaking that news to him.
I wanted to. I wanted so desperately to tell him everything, but I couldn’t now, not when I knew that within the next few hours my—
My parents wouldn’t know I existed.
