A boy’s voice filled her ears, singing along to this song she somehow knew from deep within her soul. Only it wasn’t Ike.
It was Cam. There were tears in his eyes as he sang, his gaze locked on Lilith.
“I give a heart to you
I give a soul to you
I give a start to you
Do you know what to do?”
Why did it feel like they had sung this song together before?
They couldn’t have. But when she closed her eyes, a vision came to her: the two of them seated before a body of water. It was not the fading trickle of Rattlesnake Creek but a swelling, crystal river somewhere far away and long ago.
She’d just written the song, for him. She wanted him to like it. She could see in his eyes that he did. She could feel it in his kiss when he bent down and graced her lips with his. There was no strain between them, no resentment, and no fear. Wherever, whenever they were, she had loved him deeply, and they had been practicing for something—a wedding.
Their wedding.
Somewhere, long ago, Cam and Lilith had been engaged.
Lilith opened her eyes.
The Four Horsemen were just finishing the song. The guitar cut out, and Ike sang the final line a cappella.
“What will you give to me?”
The crowd burst into applause. Lilith stood still.
Cam took a step toward her. “Lilith?”
Her body shook. Light exploded before Lilith’s eyes, blinding her.
When she could see again, her gown looked different: whiter, and without Arriane’s alterations. Lilith blinked, making out what looked like a dark cave at sunset, the sky fiery with streaks of red and orange. She was still facing Cam, just as she’d been facing him onstage.
She clutched her hands over her heart, not understanding why it hurt so much. She spoke words in a language that was new to her, but that she somehow understood.
“The night you left, I dreamt I taught a flock of nightingales a love song, so they could find you and sing you home to me. Now I am the nightingale who has traveled all this way. I still love you, Cam. Come back to me.”
“No.”
His answer was so clean, like the slice of the sharpest knife, that Lilith doubled over in pain. She gasped and rubbed her eyes—and when she drew her hands away…
The cave was gone, the sunset gone. Cam was gone.
Lilith was in a dismal shack, leaning against the wall. She recognized the unmade bed, the wooden bucket full of rancid water and days-old dirty dishes in the corner. Flies the size of hummingbirds swarmed streaks of lard on the plates. Everything was familiar, though she didn’t know why.
“I told you to clean the dishes,” a woman’s voice said in a slow drawl. “Ain’t gon’ tell you again.”
Somehow, Lilith knew that on the other side of this wall, a metal wire had been strung between two nails. She knew that she could play that wire, could make it sound like a fine instrument of many strings. She yearned to be outside with it, to feel the sting of copper on her calloused fingers.
“I told you, you can’t play that dumb wire until you clean the dishes,” the woman said, picking up a knife. “I’ve had it with that wire.”
“No, please!” Lilith shrieked as she raced outside after the woman.
Lilith wasn’t fast enough, and the woman carelessly cut the wire in two. Lilith fell to her knees and wept.
She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them, she was straddling a horse bounding across a frozen road in a hilly countryside. She grasped the reins, holding on for her life. Her breath fogged before her, and her skin blazed, and she knew that she was dying from a fever. She was a gypsy, sick and starving, dressed in rags, expected to sing love songs in exchange for crumbs.
She blinked again, and again, and each time Lilith remembered another hellish experience. She was always a struggling musician, miserable and doomed. There was Opera Lilith, sleeping in an alley behind the theater. Orchestra Lilith, tormented by a cruel conductor. Troubadour Lilith, starving in a medieval city. In every existence, worse than her poverty, the loneliness, and the abuse was the rage darkening her heart. In every existence, she loathed the world she inhabited. She wanted revenge.
Come back to me, she’d begged Cam.
No.
“Why!” She shouted the question she’d been too hopeless to ask every other day of her life until now. “Why?”
“Because”—a deafening hiss filled her ears—“we made a deal.”
“What deal?” she asked.
Lilith opened her eyes. She was back onstage in Crossroads. The audience was motionless, terrified. It was as if time had stopped. The Four Horsemen were gone, and in their place Luc was standing in the middle of the stage.
“Lilith!” she heard Cam scream. He rushed toward her, but Luc held him back and beckoned to Lilith to step toward him.