“We—”
“We?” I hissed. “There is no we. There never has been any—”
My voice broke. My heart pounded and blood rushed furiously to my face. I began to sweat.
And then I lost all control.
“I have feelings for nobody!” I screamed, my throat stinging. “Irina fell for Adrian. That’s all that ever happened!”
I was horrified by the words as soon as they had escaped my lips. As soon as I realized how they sounded out loud. I fell to my knees, covering my face with my hands, every part of my body shaking.
His body brushed against mine as he lowered himself down onto the floor next to me, leaning against the bench alongside me. I raised my eyes to his and as I did, more passion coursed through me than I knew how to handle. Attempting to stifle my emotions would have been like trying to extinguish a forest fire with dry wood.
I had lost all sense of what was right and wrong. All I had left was my rapidly beating heart exploding in my chest. Beating to break free from its cage.
As I reached both hands to his face, brushing my fingers against his skin, there was no way I could pretend that I was Irina.
I was Mona.
I knelt higher so that my face was level with his. He held my waist and stood up, pulling me back to my feet with him.
“That’s all that ever happened,” he repeated, his voice husky.
He brushed the tears away from my eyes with his thumbs, still staring at me.
My shoulders sagged.
There was no point denying it any longer.
He’d seen the truth in me.
The intensity of his gaze was now too much to bear. I closed my eyes and as soon as I did, my lips found his. His kiss was cautious, slow, at first. Exploring the contours of my lips, before requiring more. I grasped his hair, and pulled myself closer, closing the gap between us. Taking hold of my waist, he lifted me up against him so that he could reach all of me. His hands slid down beneath my thighs, his grip around them growing tighter with each second that passed.
It was only once I forced my lips away from his that the inevitable pain I knew would come began tearing through my chest.
I ran out of the shelter—something I cursed myself for not doing to begin with—and jumped into the water. I sprinted across the beach as fast as my weak legs could carry me toward the gate. Kiev caught up with me as soon as I’d stepped through the gate. He held a parasol in one hand, gripping my arm with the other.
I whirled around and glared up at him.
“Let go of me,” I breathed, even while my heart burst. “I don’t want to ever see your face again.”
He stepped back, the expression on his face tearing me apart. As I disappeared into the shade of the forest, he didn’t follow me. Thorns cut my feet as I ran. Biting my lip, I relished the pain. I wanted more of it. I dug my nails into my right arm and scratched until I’d etched a deep cut. Blood flowed. And I wished that it flowed more. Because it distracted me from recalling his expression. It distracted me from his memory. From the bonfire in my heart.
I thought I could hide behind my childish games. I thought I could trick fate, trick destiny, with some stupid act. What a damn fool I’ve been.
I barged through my front door, ran to the desk and, scrambling in the drawers, took out the story. The story that I had once so dearly cherished. The story that I now hated with every fiber of my being. In a wild rage, page by page, I ripped the parchment to pieces, and with it, my heart ripped too.
But I didn’t care.
I needed my heart to be ripped.
I needed it to stop feeling. To stop beating.
I needed it to be numb.
“Numbness.”
Once my floor was covered in shreds, I gathered them together and hurled them in the lake. As they shrivelled up, tears flowed more heavily from my eyes. Angrily, I brushed them aside.
If it hadn’t been for that story, Kai would never have died. I wouldn’t have had to let Evie go.
And Kiev never would have kissed Mona.
It wasn’t fair that I’d allowed him to do it. He didn’t know the price that came with that kiss. If he had known, he never would have claimed it.
He didn’t know why I’d had to watch my family—parents, sisters, brothers, and cousins—die when I was a young girl.
He didn’t know why I’d been banished from my own realm.
He didn’t know why I’d never known romance.
I had fooled myself that perhaps the curse had passed over me. That perhaps I was unnecessarily restricting myself from living. I had dared to hope. Dared to dream. And in entertaining such foolish notions, I’d become complacent. In trying to finish that stupid story, I’d let myself climb out of my cage. When I should have kept the lock fastened and thrown away the key.
But then my baby Kai had died.
And I’d known then that the chain had been set off again.
Now I feared that it was only a matter of time.
I have to leave this place.
As the last bloodstained shreds of Adrian and Irina’s story drowned beneath the water lilies, I just prayed that the damage hadn’t already been done.