Page 221 of Ex Somnis

She wants me to love her son the way he deserves.

And I think about her in the garden with her basket on her hip, tapping this exact stone against my chest.

“Sometimes we have to sacrifice ourselves for the people we love.”

I thought she meant me. I thought she was warning me about what I’d have to do.

“She sacrificed herself,” I whisper when I turn toward Mabel again. “She… that was her. In there. At the end. She’s the one who…”

Mabel makes a sound that’s half a sob and half something sharper, almost a laugh. “That,” she says, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Was not a sacrifice, even if she’d probably want it to look as if it was.”

I stare at her.

“She got exactly what she wanted, who she wanted. She’s been wanting it for decades.” Mabel looks at her oldest friend lying on the couch, while her chin trembles slightly. “Saving your friend was a happy accident… a side effect. Don’t you dare put a halo on that woman’s head. I love her, but she doesn’t deserve it.”

“What?”

Behind me, the others are surfacing.

Paul first, sitting up fast, his dark eyes going straight to me, checking in, so I give him a small smile. Then Ridge wakes up with a sharp inhale and immediately finds my face. Nevan sits up slowly, blinking, his gaze landing on the couch, on his mother, and the crystals. He rises, then helps Ridge into his chair as if it’s nothing, before they all come to me.

They cross the room and crowd in close around where I’m standing with the card in my hand.

“What’s going on?” Nevan asks, his eyes flicking from Mabel to Seraphine.

“She’s a selfish thing, isn’t she? Even now, she leaves it to me to explain herself.”

Mabel sighs, and Nevan frowns at her. “Mabel, what are you…”

“A long time ago,” she starts. “Seraphine fell in love with a man in her dreams.”

No, it can’t be.

Can it?

“She used to tell me about him. This beautiful man, in this beautiful place… she called it elsewhere, where the two of them could be together and stay together, and nothing could touch them but the fact that she had to wake up every day. She said it was more real than anything out here. More real than me.” Mabel’s mouth twists. “More real than her boys.”

Ouch.

I turn to look, but Nevan doesn’t move, so I reach over and find his hand. It’s freezing. That’s how I notice I’m cold too. The window behind Seraphine is cracked open, enough for a thin draft to slip through, lifting the ends of her silver hair off her shoulders and setting them drifting like she’s underwater.

“She couldn’t go to him, though. Couldn’t stay there, couldn’t cross over, because every time she tried, something pulled her back.” Mabel looks at Nevan, and her face breaks open with a tenderness so old it hurts to look at. “You. She couldn’t let go of you, even for him. She came back every single time, and she hated it. She came back anyway, because you were her tether.”

“Then why,” Nevan asks, and the hurt in his voice almost takes my knees out. “Why didn’t she untether from me? Why didn’t she let go and stay with him?”

“Even a bad mother can love her child,” Paul murmurs.

A shuddering breath comes out of Nevan, and I squeeze his hand tighter.

“Apparently, the man in her dreams didn’t like that at all. Didn’t like that your mother chose you over elsewhere with him.”

Is that the reason Lucien tortured him in his sleep for years?

Because he was jealous that his mother chose him?

Nevan’s face does something I will see for the rest of my life. “He tortured me,” he says slowly. “Because my mom loved me.”

Is that why he made him promise to stay away from her? Because he thought if Nevan let go of her, she’d have nothing holding her back? That she would finally come to him, then?