Page 209 of Ex Somnis

I hold my face together with everything I have, because if I crack now, and Lucien feels one wrong thing off me, this whole thing comes down.

I make myself step forward.

“If you can tell which one of me is the real Tessa,” I say in her voice, and I don’t know how it comes out so even. “If you can pick me out of all of these and know it’s me, the actual me, not a copy, then I’ll believe you really want me there. And I’ll do it.” I lift my chin. Chin up, breathe through the nose. “But you have to give me something too. To show me you mean it. To show me you can sacrifice something big like I’m about to for you.”

“And what would that be, love?” Lucien asks.

“Release every promise you’ve ever taken.”

The dark seems to lean in when Lucien does.

I keep going because if I stop, I’ll shake. “Not only mine. All of them. Every single one you’re still holding onto, from anyone, ever. I want a clean slate. You and me, in elsewhere, forever, and everything else gone. Nothing left holding anyone but us.”

Lucien looks at me for a long time. He tilts his head the other way, studying, and the moonstone that is hidden under Tessa’s clothes now on my borrowed chest goes from warm to hot, and I think, please, please, please, to no one, to the stone, to Seraphine, to whoever is listening on the other side of the dark.

“If you’re willing to sacrifice this much for me,” I continue. “And if you can recognize the true me, the soul you actually want to bind yourself to, then you’re worthy to have me. Worthy of me choosing you.”

He smiles. “That’s far too easy.”

“Is it?” the real Tessa asks.

His eyes don’t leave me. “It is.”

And then, the way another man might mention the weather, he announces, “I release every promise I have ever been given and every promise ever made to me.”

The real Tessa takes a startled little breath, and I watch it move through her, the loosening, the lightness, the release. On my left, the Tessa I already know is Nevan, because she’s been white-knuckling the whole time, sways slightly.

Fuck.

Is he able to tell?

“Now,” Lucien says, and his green eyes come up bright. “I get to choose, and you’ll agree to the contract. Right?”

“When you choose right.” Ridge-Tessa agrees. “Choose the right me, and we’ll seal it right here, if you’re so sure of yourself.”

Lucien’s gaze moves across us. One Tessa. Two. Three. Four.

Five.

It stops on me again.

He smirks, lifts one hand, and lazily points directly at my chest. “I choose you.”

My heart soars. He picked wrong, he picked me, get her out, somebody get her out, and I clamp down on every muscle in my borrowed face to keep it off me, because I will not look at Ridge, I will not look at Paul, I will not look at Nevan and give them away. I need to keep him looking at me long enough for them to move. I cross the little circle of light, and I come to stand in front of him, close enough to smell the roses.

Lucien looks down at me and smiles, and it’s almost gentle. “Do you really think,” he says quietly for me to hear. “That I don’t know exactly who you are, Lennon Maes?”

The dark drops out from under my stomach.

Shit.

He lifts one hand and tenderly brushes his knuckles over my cheek, and I feel Tessa peel off me like a wet sheet and my bones slide back, my face emerging from the cold, and then I’m standing there as me.

Just me.

Lennon-shaped and caught, with nowhere left to hide.

Several gasps and curses come from behind me, but I hold my palm out, gesturing for them to stay put.