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My power hit a wall, like there was a hollow emptiness that my magic brushed up against. I knew immediately that was the grief I was looking for. I twisted my magic around it and called it to the surface.
Dark energy swirled out of Nadine’s body. She trembled in my arms. “Lucas, what’s that?”
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “It’s your grief. She wants to talk to you.”
I guided the energy out of her, and a figure took shape in front of us. Only, it wasn’t Helena.
It was Nadine.
She appeared as solid as the version of Nadine lying in my arms. Every inch of her body was the same, except this version of her wasn’t pregnant. She looked so much like my Nadine that I could’ve easily been fooled into thinking they were one and the same. And maybe that was the point—she was a part of her.
“Why’d you make me?” Nadine sneered. “I thought I was going to get to talk to Grammy.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t do it intentionally. All I did was manifest your grief into physical form. I think she took the form you needed to talk to the most.”
“What am I supposed to say to her?” Nadine asked bitterly. She eyed her grief up and down in a cold manner. “I mean, she’s me.”
“Speak from your heart,” I told her.
She took a deep breath. “All right… How do I get rid of you?”
“Nad, I don’t think that’s—” I started.
“No, I’m serious,” Nadine cut me off. “I keep thinking I’m better, yet she keeps coming back.”
Nadine turned toward her grief. “I thought I dealt with you when my parents died, but you’re still here. What do I have to do to get rid of you once and for all?”
“You don’t,” her grief answered. She sounded just like Nadine, but she spoke calmly, like she understood Nadine’s feelings. “I’m a part of you now, and I’m here to stay.”
Nadine shook her head, like she refused to accept that. “No. I got rid of my darkness. I can remove any curse. I can get rid of you, too.”
“I can change, if that’s what you want from me,” Grief Nadine said. “But I’m not going away, because I can’t.”
“Well, you need to, because I’m sick of you hanging around,” Nadine ordered. “You’ve been here for years, ever since my parents died. Then again when Amy died, and now Grammy. No matter what I do, you just keep getting stronger. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I don’t want to end up like Beau, whose grief consumed him for decades. I refuse to let you become all that’s left of me. I want to move on, which means you have to go.”
Grief Nadine remained calm. “I’ll always be with you, whether you wish me to be or not. You’ll never be able to get rid of me. If I become all you are, that is a choice that you have made. You can choose to become nothing but grief, or you can choose another path.”
“Tell me what I need to do, so I can move on,” Nadine begged.
“There is no moving on,” her grief responded. “Only moving through. Moving on means forgetting; moving through means continuing despite. You must feel this in order to reconcile yourself to it.”
“You’re lying,” Nadine spat. “If I let myself feel it, there is no way out of this pain.”
“Your heart hurts because you are resisting the process,” Grief Nadine explained. “Your loss is not a failure, but a completion of a cycle. I know how you feel, Nadine, because I am you. Our grief reflects our desire to remain connected, and you’re afraid that if you aren’t hurting, you’ll lose your connection to the people you love. But you can tap into that connection at any time and keep your loved ones in your life. You must accept that the connection is not gone, but merely changed into something else, and you must change with it.”
Nadine sat a little straighter. “Why are you being so difficult? You’re only a piece of me, which means I have power over you. I can choose to feel however I want. As time passes, I’m not going to feel this way anymore. One day, I’ll get to a place where my parents’ death and Grammy’s death don’t hurt anymore.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” her grief stated. “Hundreds of years could pass, and it could still hurt just as much. The only way to make it hurt less is to love more.”
Nadine recoiled. “Love is what broke my heart in the first place.”
Grief Nadine crossed her hands in front of herself. “The only way to get rid of me is if you don’t love at all. But if you were willing to let go of love, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nadine sneered. “I’ll never stop loving people.”
Her grief appeared sympathetic. “Then you’re going to have to continue to grieve, because that’s the price you pay for love.”
“You’re not listening to me!” Nadine shouted.
