Chapter 20

Pink starlight filtered through the little window above my kitchen sink.

I scrunched my eyes closed and flipped over, snuggling deeper into my bedsheets, wishing I could slip back into my dream.

It had been a lovely dream. One of the best I'd had in months.

I'd been in Alletois. Kieron had been whole and healthy andalive.

We'd laughed and talked and kissed.

There'd been so many kisses, so many moments that made my broken heart shimmer with joy. I'd felt like myself again. I'd felt hope and happiness.

He'd opened his mouth, but before the words came, I'd stirred awake.

I tried to ground myself in the last wisps of the moment, holding on to the light in his eyes, the feeling of his hands around mine, but it was no use. Something in the room had caught my attention, and now my mind was too alert to go back and learn what Kieron was about to say. It cracked my grief open all over again, made me mourn another piece of him I'd never have.

Cosmos, awake too and ready to play, came padding over to the bed. His tail swung happily as he licked at my hand, knocking over a stack of books.

When Merrick had whisked me from the cavern of candles, he'd taken me home. Not to Alletois, where the memories—and body—of Kieron would be too painful to bear, but to my little cottage in the Between.

It was just as I'd left it so many years before, and being back in the home of my youth offered me a strange liminal space in which to grieve, in which to come to terms with Kieron's passing. It allowed me a safe place to work through everything I'd learned in the cavern and decide what I wanted from this small moment of my life.

Because no matter how big and overwhelming the present felt, no matter how my heart ached or rallied or sank again, no matter how I tried to wish myself out of the moment I was in, I knew that was all it was.

A moment.

One tiny moment in a life destined to have far too many.

I tried everything to push away thoughts of those two unlit candles, distracting myself by walking with Cosmos through the veritable forest of pink trees that had grown in my absence, resurrecting my abandoned garden, losing myself in all the new books Merrick had supplied—but I could not escape the memory of them.

They'd lain on that plinth so plain and unassuming. Just a pair of candles. But what they represented was completely mind-boggling.

Three lives.

Merrick had given me three lifetimes.

Three long lifetimes, if the length and width of the wax was anyindication.

I felt prematurely exhausted imagining all I was meant to accomplish with such time. How did people fill their years?

Developing skills and a trade. That, I'd already done.

Falling in love, building a family. Impossible for me. Companionship, platonic or otherwise, was out of the question. My heart felt wholly shredded after Kieron. I couldn't go through that again. And again. And again and again.

It was terrifying to realize that everyone around me at this very moment, no matter how young or healthy or strong they might be, would not be alive at my deathbed. How many generations of people was I destined to see die? Why hadn't Merrick made another like me, someone to wander through this extraordinarily long life with?

"Why me?" I found myself whispering on those terrible dark nights when anxiety pounded at my temples, when my heartbeats thudded with horrible heft. "Why did Merrick choose me, why did he saddle me with all this? What purpose do I serve?"

These were the questions I yearned to ask him, but Merrick's visits to the Between were rare and always too short. He dodged any serious conversation, always keeping the tone light and shallow, as if bombarding me with merriment might somehow pull me from my funk.

My misery wore at him.

He flitted in for afternoon teas or alfresco dinners, for silly celebrations meant to distract me, and always for birthdays.

Two of mine passed in the Between, and the morning after my eighteenth, as I lay in bed, trying to grab hold of my dream of Kieron, I realized something.

I was tired of my misery too.

I was tired of living in the between—not just the Between itself, but the in-between I'd nestled myself into. Not quite in the past, but not wholly in the present. Unsure of how to move ahead, unwilling to let go.

I lay in bed, listening to Cosmos's huffs of breath, and suddenlyknew.

I was ready to let go.

I didn't know what was to come, but I'd had enough of hiding here, with only my dog and my godfather for company. I wanted to be back in the world, back with people. I didn't know what my terribly long life was meant to accomplish, but puttering my days away in a hazy void wasn't it.

"Merrick?" I called, certain he was near, sure he'd lingered after last night's dinner, waiting for another slice of that gold-dusted cake.

The cottage door opened and my godfather poked his enormous frame beneath the lintel. "Is everything all right, Hazel?"

I stood up, tossing my quilt to the bed. For the first time in nearly two years, I felt alert. I felt sure-headed. I felt like myself.

"I think I'd like to go home now."

Merrick's smile was immediate and wide. "I'm glad to hear it."