Chapter 50

50

Jericho

With her body limp in my arms, I carried Farryn up the staircase to her room and laid her down on the bed. On the ride back to the cathedral, after her failed attempts to seduce me in a drug-induced stupor, she finally passed out on my lap. Given what little I knew about the drug she’d taken, I decided to stay for a moment, to observe a few breaths. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the task of watching her sleep. Eyes fluttering in dreams, she looked peaceful. Calm. I pushed a strand of hair from her face, and something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.

A marking on her arm.

Tipping my head, I noted the familiar shape. The lines and intersections that made up the Pentacrux symbol. Its edges held the irregular shape of a birthmark, and I ran my finger over the surface. When the silver symbols trailed after my touch, I frowned and glanced back at her.

A sigil cloaked within the marking on her skin.

I brushed my finger over it again, and the sigil reappeared, gleaming against the light of the room.

“Amreloc aehter’nu.” Eternal love, in Pri’scucian

“Unbidden and unbound.

“Once lost and twice found.”

As I spoke the words aloud, the sigil gave off a soft glow of light, its intricate symbols sparkling with electricity, and a flash of memory struck me out of nowhere, so vivid and powerful, I reached out a hand, certain that I could touch it.

A girl with raven hair running through the woods. The smile on her face brightening her eyes. Laughter echoing all around me as I chase after her. Soft fingertips across my face while she lies beneath me.

More memories slipped through my mind, a tidal wave of memories, crashing through me all at once.

Watching her through a window as she sleeps. Hand in hand, stealing away into the woods at night. The look of ecstasy claiming her face.

They arrived in rapid succession, and I fought to keep my attention on each one.

White tendrils of fabric dancing around her sleeping face, as she lay in the water. Collapsing beside her and cursing the heavens. Pain. Unimaginable pain tearing through my heart like barbed flail to my ribs. Fire and screams. Lightning and blood. So much blood. Whispers in her ear. Running my fingers over the sigil. A promise. A vow of undying determination.

All the memories of my past falling perfectly into place in the timeline inside my mind. I could piece the before and after without the blackness. Without the hollow feeling of something missing. The void had filled to the brim and spilled over with every agonizing moment.

A voice echoed inside my head. “She is cursed. To be reborn. Again. And again.” The words of Bishop Venable. At the thought of him, an ancient hatred stirred from a dark and otherwise impenetrable place inside of me.

My gaze fell upon the girl that lay on the bed. Farryn. Only that was not her name.?A fist of shock tightened around my lungs.

I dropped to my knees beside the bed and studied her face. Every feature that shared an inarguable likeness. A perfect replica of the girl from my past.?So beautiful and unmarred, she didn’t seem real.

Was it possible? Could the heavens be so merciful as to give back what they’d stolen from me? Surely not after what I’d done. The revenge I’d taken.?The lives mutilated in her name.

I lifted her hand to my face, smelling the sweet scent of her skin that took me back to my youth. “Lustina,” I whispered and kissed her palm.

An ache throbbed deep inside my chest. At first, I didn’t recognize the thump of my own heart stirring back to life, beating for something again.

Lustina!Her name was an answered prayer on my lips. The first breath after having been buried alive in my pain. My fists burned with the urge to lift her from the bed and steal her away to a place where no one in the world would ever find her. My Lustina. Returned to me at last.

There wasn’t a force in this world, or any other, that would take her from me again.