This letter is full of words I should never have left unsaid.
You once said to me, “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.” I need you to remember that now.
You were always the treasure, the gold, the glory, and the life worth fighting for.
Zuni Pueblo Reservation. Zuni, New Mexico.
Aiyana.
This is me, letting you go.
Dane
Aiyana, the shaman of the Quivira tribe. My mother said she could help me break my bond to Dane. Could it be possible? Is this what he wanted?
In that moment, as I held the letter to my chest, I would’ve given anything just to feel him again—his imprint on my skin, his kiss on my lips, his hair entangled in mine.
My mother told me that love is love no matter how you come by it. But could I ever be at peace with the way Dane came to me? Could I ever be sure he didn’t love immortality more than he loved me? Was he in there with Coronado? Could he be saved? If Aiyana knew how to break the bond, maybe she knew of a way to separate them.
Lying there, wrecked, I understood everything my mother had said to me during the ritual. Her warning had nothing to do with the physical pain I would face; it was about the pain of having to keep my heart open while it broke in two. She said I would feel like I couldn’t take another breath, that I couldn’t bear to feel my heart beat another second. My mother said that if I broke the bond I would never feel that strongly for another human being. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Katia sacrificed everything to be with Alonso, and her love for him drove her to madness. I knew that feeling, and it scared me.
I wanted to bury the ribbon along with Dane’s promise, but I held on tightly. I couldn’t bear to sever my last tie to any of them.
51
PRECIPICE
I RETURNED TO the Larkin lodge to find our front doorway littered with dishes of mystery meats and cheese balls. They’d been set out like offerings. Perfect.
Stepping over the dishes, I went down the stairs and started cramming clothes into my bag. I left my mother’s belongings exactly where they were, undisturbed, as if I could somehow preserve her presence there.
I went into the bathroom to get my toiletries, and when I saw Rhys’s toothbrush sitting on the edge of the sink next to mine, it brought a lump the size of a boulder to my throat. He forgot it. I didn’t know where he was, but I had to find him. I had to make this right.
I took the toothbrushes and reached under the bed for the case full of cash and gold to find nothing but a few lint balls.
It was gone. All of it.
I racked my brain trying to figure out who could’ve taken it.
Spencer. He’d been waiting in my room the day Henry passed away. I heard him rummaging around as I lay there bleeding out. He must’ve taken it then.
“Bastard,” I screamed as I threw the toothbrushes against the wall.
I slumped down on the bed, grabbing my hair in my fists, when I heard a car horn. For a minute I thought I might be hallucinating, but it happened again. Three short insistent bursts.
I took my bag and ran upstairs to find Beth waving maniacally at me from behind the wheel of a deformed monster truck. She had a bright yellow scarf wrapped around her hair, like something straight out of a fifties’ bad-girl movie. In the backseat sat a giant balding Saint Bernard.
“Is that Goober?” I asked as I stumbled outside.
“Is that his name? I’m pretty sure this is his automobile,” Beth said as she got out to peruse the food. “But I don’t think he minds. Do you, baby? Do you, pretty baby?” she called out to him, and he wagged his whole back end. “Ooh, this one’s from Lauren. It’s ham salad. She molds it to look like a slice of watermelon. Look, she rolls it in parsley and she even puts raisins in it to look like the seeds. It’s her signature dish,” Beth said as she put it in the backseat.
Goober immediately dug his face into it.
I grimaced. “I wouldn’t let him eat that.”
“Too spicy?”
“No.” I shook my head. “First of all, Lauren made it. Could be poisoned.”
“That’s more of a Hanratty thing—the cheese balls.” Beth smiled. “Besides, I already apologized to her.”
“What the hell for? She was terrible to you. She got Brennon . . . her happily ever after.”
“The cornhusk doll,” Beth said in a sweet singsong voice as she slung my bag in the backseat.
“That was you?”
Beth tried to suppress a grin. “She was being so grouchy to you.”
Apparently, Beth had a wicked side.
“Where did you learn how to drive?”