Page 222 of Ex Somnis

God, Lucien, you are pathetic.

“Because she wouldn’t stop loving you,” I agree, handing him the tarot card. “Either of you.”

It takes him a moment to read what’s written on it, but then he makes a sound, and I pull him into my side.

“Wait.” Ridge’s voice is still rough from sleep. “But Seraphine was stuck in Jasper’s dreams. If she wanted to be with This Man so badly, how’d she end up trapped in her kid’s subconscious instead?”

Mabel nods like she’s been waiting for the question. “Because she promised him.”

“Nobody is ever going to promise anything to anyone again under my roof,” Paul mutters, and if Nevan weren’t still shaking against my side, I would have laughed at that.

“When she finally made her choice, the last clear choice she ever made, she chose the boys. She told the love of her life she wasn’t going to stay with him. And he didn’t take it well.” Mabel’s jaw works. “She told me he asked her to promise that if she wouldn’t be with him, then she’d go somewhere he could never find her, never reach her, never see her again, so he wouldn’t have to keep hurting, looking at a door she’d never walk through again.”

Yeah, that sounds like Lucien.

“And she promised him that?” Ridge asks.

Mabel nods. “But somehow, that promise put her exactly where she asked to be. Somewhere he could never find her, because he didn’t know of Jasper. His subconscious was the safest, most hidden place she had left. Where her boy needed her, and where the man who loved her would never, ever think to look.”

Shit.

Holy-fucking-shit.

“That’s why she needed all the promises gone.” Paul looks at me. “Not just Tessa’s or Nevan’s. Hers. The promise she made him was holding her inside Jasper’s dreamscape, and as long as it held, she could never reach elsewhere. The only way to free her was for Lucien to release every promise he’d ever taken, including the one that locked her away from him in the first place.”

“Seraphine, you little minx,” Ridge says slowly, and there’s something like awe in it. “Telling us about your plan to break Tessa free through Jasper. And not one of us clocked that the whole point was getting you free.”

“It was both,” Mabel disagrees. “Helping your friend out was real. She just had her own door to walk through while she did it.”

I think about the dark. The door opening a second time after Nevan got thrown out, the figure stepping through that I thought was him coming back.

Freed at last, walking into the place that had been hers from the start.

“He recognized her. Even with the wrong face on. He looked at her and knew exactly who she was.” I turn to Ridge. “So did you.”

“I saw her in Jasper’s dream before.” He shrugs. “I just knew.”

“A soul recognizes a soul it knows from dreams elsewhere,” Mabel explains.

“Wait.” I turn toward her again. “So he would have always known that it was me and not Tessa? He would have known each of us?”

She nods, and now I have to hold myself back from strangling the sleeping woman in front of me.

“What was even the point of this?” If I hadn’t promised Nevan I’d stay with him, I would have been the one never to open my eyes again.

Was it to buy her time?

To make Lucien feel like he already won, because we were being stupid about it?

Okay, Seraphine, I hate you a little.

“I think the point was to give him a reason to release the promises, and make sure nobody would try to stop her,” Mabel murmurs, stroking a strand of hair off Seraphine’s temple, but her eyes flick to Nevan, who is pale around the nose and eyes.

He looks like he’s coming to terms with the fact that his mother isn’t coming back.

She picked the life she wanted to live.

“Damn, Seraphine,” Ridge says quietly, looking at the still figure on the couch. “I did not give you enough credit.”