Page 84 of Cherish

Hudson must figure out the same thing, because a genuine grin splits his face. “Hi, Anill. I’ve brought some friends to see the town.”

“Any friends of Hudson’s are friends of ours!” Anill moves out of sight.

Within moments, a loud clanking sound splits the air, and the huge gate begins to swing open.

“Just like that?” Flint asks, looking between Hudson and the gate like he can’t quite believe it was that easy.

“Just like that,” Hudson answers.

By the time the gate finishes swinging open, Anill is at the bottom of the watchtower waiting for us. He’s grown a bit taller since the last time I saw him, and his thick purple hair is cut short now, but it suits the lavender guard uniform he’s wearing. “How are you?” he asks, holding out his hand so Hudson can shake it.

“We’re good,” Hudson answers, trying to include me in the conversation, but I subtly shake my head at him.

Anill has no idea who I am. We may have talked almost daily when I lived here and even shared several meals together, but that doesn’t matter now. At least not to him.

Hudson’s smile dims as he remembers, and he reaches for me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders in a very un-Hudson-like way. “This is my mate, Grace,” he tells Anill, whose eyes widen again.

“You found your mate? That’s amazing! Congratulations, man!” He turns to me. “And congratulations to you, too. It must feel unreal to be mated to such an incredible guy.”

Jaxon makes a slight choking sound at that, but I ignore him.

Instead, I smile at Anill and resist the urge to ask how his mate—the very sweet Stalina—is doing. “You’re right. It really does feel unreal sometimes.”

Flint snorts at my response, and even Macy giggles a little. But Hudson just lifts a brow at me before turning his attention back to Anill. “Thanks for opening the gate, man. The security looks like it’s gotten tighter around here since I’ve been gone.”

“The new mayor insists on it. We keep trying to tell her that the chances the Shadow Queen will attack us again are really low, but she still wants us to be prepared.” He sighs heavily. “Overprepared, really. But better safe than sorry, I guess.”

“I’m sure dealing with the aftermath of that last battle was hard,” I tell him. “It was so brutal.”

Anill gives me a strange look, and I remember that, in his mind, I wasn’t in that battle. I had nothing to do with fighting off the Shadow Queen or breaking Souil’s grip on Adarie. “Hudson told me about it,” I rush to cover. “He said everyone who fought that day was really brave.”

“He was the brave one. Everyone in the whole area knows what he did for Adarie.”

“I’m so glad. He deserves it.” And I mean it. The thought that people truly do know and remember Hudson as the hero he is fills me with joy.

Hudson obviously doesn’t feel the same way, though. The smile is gone from his face as he looks back and forth between Anill and me. And I can see the frustration in his eyes, can see the desire to tell Anill that I was here, too.

But I don’t need him to do that.

Does it suck that Anill doesn’t remember me? Yes. Does it suck even more that when we go into town, none of the people I cared about will know who I am? Absolutely. But blowing their minds with alternate histories isn’t going to make them remember me—and it isn’t going to give me back the friendships I lost when I was yanked out of the timeline.

And if it doesn’t do that, why does it matter if they know I was here fighting or not? I don’t do the things I do because I want credit for them. I do them because they need to be done and because I care about the people who would be hurt if I didn’t. As long as Adarie is safe, as long as all the people I cared about when I lived here are happy and healthy, nothing else matters.

“I’m okay,” I whisper to him. “I promise, Hudson.”

He looks like he wants to argue, his blue eyes narrowed in concentration as his giant brain tries to figure a way around several immutable laws of time. But they are laws for a reason, and there’s no getting around them—a fact that he will eventually have to concede.

In the meantime, I smile brightly at Anill and say, “Thank you so much for letting us in. We really appreciate it.”

He takes the gratitude for what it was—a hint that we need to get going—and steps aside. “Make sure you stop by the inn and get rooms for tonight. My dad will be devastated if you stay anywhere else.”

“Devastated” seems like a fairly over-the-top description, especially since the Nyaz I remember didn’t have that deep of an emotional well. But Hudson assures him that we will before we head through the gate en masse.

And then stop dead as we run smack-dab into a giant sign that says,Welcome to Vegaville.

47

Fandamonium

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