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How would Dex feel about it? He would be a father without the rest of it. He was at a disadvantage. I didn’t remember our relationship. So, although I’d lost everything, I hadn’t lost anything. Dex remembered it all, but it had been taken away from him. He knew what he missed.
“I don’t want him to get hurt,” I said.
“Getting hurt was inevitable from the start,” Ellie replied.
Right, the vision she’d told me I’d had. It was strange thinking I’d had visions all the time when now, I didn’t even dream.
“The prophecy said you wouldn’t end up together,” Ellie said carefully. “You were worried about getting hurt, worried about what it would mean to follow your heart, only to have it broken. You didn’t want to get too involved when you knew how it would end.”
She looked sympathetic, and I hated it. I hated her pity. I hated being stuck without a single memory to fall back on, without knowing how I would have dealt with this. What would the old Nylah have done?
“It’s scary, I know,” Ellie added gently. “You don’t have to tell Dex until you’ve had time to think about what you want to do. But it might be better this way.”
“Maybe.”
I understood what Ellie meant, but she didn’t understand. The situation between Dex and me wasn’t as simple as she made it out to be. Ellie wouldn’t understand what Dex and I shared. I didn’t even understand what Dex and I shared. All I knew was what I’d learned the past month about who I was in everyone else’s eyes, and who I was in Dex’s eyes.
A pang shot through my chest. I had all these expectations to live up to, a life that everyone believed was mine that I had to somehow conjure out of nothing.
And now, on top of it all, I was pregnant. I was going to have a baby with a man I cared for but wasn’t ready to get too close to.
How could any of this be foreordained? How could any of this be how it was meant to be?
It didn’t make sense, and the only thing I felt when I thought about the life that lay ahead of me without memories, about raising a baby when I didn’t even know who I was and where I belonged…was dread.
12
DEX
Nylah wouldn’t see me. I’d tried to see her for days in a row now, but she wanted nothing to do with me.
I didn’t understand it—I’d thought we had something. I thought what we’d shared before was growing again, but now she didn’t want me there. What had happened?
I walked to Ellie where she sat in the palace library, reading a book. Deron played at her feet, blowing spit bubbles and babbling to himself. Ellie reached for his dark hair now and then, her baby always on her mind even when she was busy with something else.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
Ellie lowered her book. “Okay.” She closed the book and set it down on the side table. “This is about Nylah.”
I nodded. “You know she wants nothing to do with me.”
“I know.”
“Was this your idea?”
“What are you talking about?” Ellie asked.
“You didn’t want me to be around her. You’ve been trying to keep us apart. Did you say something to her?”
Ellie shook her head. “I didn’t say anything to her, Dex. It’s her choice, not mine. By now, I can’t stop her from living her life.”
I narrowed my eyes sat her. “You called the shots before.”
“Yeah, until I knew she was ready to make her own decisions. This is a tough process; you know how hard it’s been on her. I didn’t want her to get hurt.”
“You didn’t want her to see me because you think we don’t belong together.”
I was angry. I was frustrated. I was hurt that Nylah didn’t want to see me without as much as an explanation, a note telling me what was going on.
