Page 75 of Chasing Never
“It will work,” he says.
“How can you be so sure?” I ask. It’s a moment before I realize I screamed it. That I’m digging my fingernails into his shoulders, though my anger is nowhere near directed at him.
“You can’t be sure,” I say, this time with a sickening quietness.
“Darling,” he says, cupping my cheeks in his hand. “I will not let her take our son.”
There’s something about his determination that makes my heart ache even more. He truly thinks there’s something he can do.
The gold of his healed Mating Mark peeks out over his collar, stirring a thought within me.
“You’re healed now,” I say.
There’s a dread creeping up within my heart, as if my feelings discover the truth before my mind does.
“Yes,” he says, watching my eyes intently as he sees through them, watching my brain work.
“You’re going to offer yourself in his place,” I say. “That’s why you’re so calm.” I swallow, my mind both wanting to make it impossible and aching for it to be possible at the same time.
Nolan grimaces. “She’ll want me more than she wants him. The only reason she bartered me away to begin with was because she thought my life had been shortened.”
“But you’ll still die eventually,” I say. “She can’t make you immortal. Not when she’s cursed not to be able to interfere with your tapestry. You’ll die, and you’ll have spent the remainder of your life…”
There’s a war within me. Inside, a voice cries out,No. You can’t. You have to stay with me. You can’t give yourself up to her. I can’t lose you.
But then I think of our child. Our little boy.
And it’s not just him I’m thinking of, but a little Wendy, whose parents never quite figured out how to save her.
“It’s not fair,” I whisper.
“Wendy Darling,” says Nolan, “what else could a man hope for in his life than to give his up for his family?”
I fight to swallow the lump in my throat but find my effort unsuccessful. “It will be torture.”
“I know,” he says.
I want to fight him on it. Beg him not to leave me. But both of us know that the torture he used to endure at the Sister’s hand would be nothing compared to the torture in our minds, knowing that our son was cursed to live out such a horrific fate.
“We were never meant to have each other, were we?” I whisper.
Nolan stares at me, a sadness in his green eyes that extends into my husband’s soul. Guilt pangs me as I remember the guilt Nolan must feel for the moment he asked the Seer to transfer his Mating Mark. The moment that took away our one chance of living happily.
My husband strokes the hair from my wet cheek. “Let me fix this. Darling, please.”
CHAPTER 33
By the time we make it back to the ship. Charlie and Maddox are waiting for us on deck. They take one look at us, at the way we’re shivering despite a lack of rain, at the way Nolan is having to hold me up to keep me from stumbling, and it’s clear from the way their faces pale that we don’t have to communicate what we’ve found out from the Seer.
Charlie rushes to me and takes me by the shoulders, leading me with her arm around me down into the belly of the ship. Footsteps creak against the wooden floorboards as Nolan and Maddox follow behind.
I expect her to lead me to my and Nolan’s rooms, but instead she takes a turn and winds us down the hallways to the map room. Once we’re all inside, Nolan shuts the door behind us. There are already maps spread across the table, and I get the sense that Charlie and Maddox have been hard at work down here while Nolan and I went to see the Seer.
“We’re going to fix this,” says Charlie, echoing Nolan’s initial reaction as she squeezes my shoulders again.
If I had the energy to open my mouth, I would ask everyone why they’re so confident my mistakes can be fixed. But as I stareat the one of the maps spread across the table, the rendering of the vast world we live in, something else stirs within me.
It’s not quite hope. More like desperation, obsession, maybe. But I don’t try to tamp it down, not when it fills my otherwise numb limbs with a manic energy. I follow Charlie’s suit, scanning the maps, scouring through books, searching for something, anything, to help us. Some way that I can keep both of them.
