AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She was off-the-walls amazing and brave.” His fingers glided down my cheek. “I wish you could’ve known her. She’d have loved you.”
“I already love her. I mean, look at her work.” I waved my hand, gesturing to him. “Masterpiece.”
He laughed. “Come here, beautiful. It’s been too long since I’ve made love to you.”
“It’s been ten minutes,” I squealed, falling over with an armful of Alexander.
“Exactly.”
THE SUN CRESTED OVERthe horizon, lighting up the fingers doing my borrowed tunic.
Alex went searching for my dress, but it was gone.Gonegone. It vanished from the realm it didn’t belong in.
“What will you wear?” I asked.
He jerked a chin up. “The dryads will fashion me a covering made of leaves if I ask nicely.”
“—dare ignore me. I know you hear me, insolent girl!”
“What’s going to happen now?” I forced myself to ignore her. Right then, all that mattered was Alex. “Won’t your father be waiting for you? Ready to pounce the minute you step inside.”
He squared his shoulders. “If he is, I’ll be ready for him. It’s all clear to me now. My father didn’t respect me because I was asking for what I want, instead of taking it. No more. He will accept that I am my own man. I choose who I love and marry”—he pecked the tip of my nose—“no one else.”
“Should we talk to him together?”
“—you hear me? Do it. Do it now!”
“Not for this conversation.” Alexander helped me to my feet. He was naked as the day he was born while I stood there swimming in his clothes. “There’s a lot I need to say about more than last night. A conversation between father and son. Completely different from the one I want to have when I introduce him to the love of my life.”
“I love you.”
After trading more kisses and gushy confessions, we broke apart. I headed inside with Selene’s voice trumpeting in my ear.
“The son of Zeus will break the chains,” she shouted, repeating the phrase she’d been saying all night. “Are you too stupid to see that this is the answer? This is what the prophecy was referring to all along. That curse will destroy the barrier. You must take it from him now.”
“If I was too stupid to realize it, I’d have gotten the message the first one hundred times you bellowed it in my ear,” I snapped. “I’m not taking the charm from him. It’s his mother’s last gift to him. I could never steal it. And even if I was as heartless as you, it’s embedded in his skin. I can’t take it from him.”
“Cut it out.”
My lips curled. “Shut up. Just shut the fuck up. I know what I have to do, and I know there’s no choice. I will save my mom, but I’m not doing it your way! I’m not hurting and using people like you do without a second thought.
“You think I don’t listen or understand anything, but I do.” I began the long climb up to the palace doors. “I heard Healer Helena yesterday. She said only a witch can bring down the barrier they erected, and what a terrible tragedy it would be if there was danger and we were trapped on the wrong side.
“That must mean there’s a plan B. An evacuation plan. If we need to get out of Deucalion Academy quickly, no one wants to waste time tracking her down and getting her to undo the barriers.
“There has to be a stash of barrier-jumping potions somewhere in the castle,” I stated. “All I have to do is find it.”
“There will be no potion, girl. You will find nothing. Fate has revealed to you the answer to the prophecy, and your lover’s part in it. You can argue, fight, and waste the little precious time your mother has left, but the outcome will be the same. Fate will not be denied.
“You should know that better than anyone.”
Her words knocked around in my head all morning, although her voice didn’t. She was strangely silent, letting me stew in uncertainty.
I was only guessing that Healer Helena had a stash of that nasty potion on hand. Alex said the barriers around Deucalion were the strongest in Olympia. Maybe they didn’t have a plan B because plan A had been working for them just fine.
I could just ask Alex to curse the barrier for me. I know he would—no question.
You also know Selene won’t let you,another voice said.She hurt Mom because she paranoid deluded herself into thinking I spilled the beans to Daciana. What would Selene do if I came right out and told him everything?
