With her black hair and red dress cutting through the white haze of snow, Lynet was as vivid as a bolt of lightning against a dull gray sky. She stood outlined by the stone arch, and behind her were at least a dozen men, their faces blurred, carrying sharp and solid swords. Her beautiful face burned with rage, and she was vengeance itself, her own hand carrying a dagger as well.
Mina stumbled toward her as the pain continued to tear through her chest, and then she fell to her knees again at Lynet’s feet. Her fingers found the hem of Lynet’s dress, and it was so solid, so real—how could a ghost feel so real? “You’re alive,” she murmured, hardly believing the words even as they fell from her mouth. “This is real. You’re alive.” Death meant nothing to her anymore—Mina could endure a thousand deaths knowing that Lynet was alive and safe. A painful laugh tore out of her as she lifted her head.
“I’m ready now,” she managed to say through the blood. “I’m ready to die.”
35
LYNET
Lynet had woken with a scream trapped in her throat. Her heart—Gregory was going to cut out her heart while she was still alive—
But then she’d felt a painful thud in her chest as her blood began to thaw inside her veins, and she might have laughed from relief, except she couldn’t move at all. The relief didn’t last—she was still alive, but her eyes wouldn’t open, no matter how she tried, and so she didn’t know where she was, if she’d soon feel the pain of a knife splitting her open.
That interminable space between waking and being able to move again was even worse than the moment she knew Mina had poisoned her. The scream was building up inside her whole body, growing louder, and she almost thought that it might tear her open in order to get out.
A scream of helplessness, yes, like the itch she always felt under her skin when she came out of the crypt every year, but a scream of rage, too, because the reason she was lying here, half dead, was because she had put her trust in Mina. Perhaps Gregory had been right, in his own way—there was no cure for Mina, no way to heal the rift between them. Now Lynet understood what Mina must have known all along: one of them had to die.
And as she finally began to feel a tingling in her fingertips, Lynet was determined to live.
Her heartbeat grew louder, stronger, and soon she was able to open her eyes. There was no knife hovering over her, no sound to indicate that Gregory was near. She was in the crypt, lying in one of the bare alcoves, and she had never thought she’d be so glad to find herself here.
“Lynet?”
The whisper was so soft, so uncertain, that Lynet thought she’d imagined it at first, but then she heard it again:
“Lynet? Are you waking?”
Lynet had told Nadia to leave, had convinced herself that she wanted Nadia to leave for her own safety. But Nadia’s voice had never sounded sweeter, nor had she ever looked so beautiful to Lynet’s eyes as she did now, peering down at Lynet from beside her, a candle in her hand.
“I’m awake,” Lynet breathed, her voice weak, her tongue heavy. “I’m alive.”
At once, Nadia set the candle down and leaned over her, feeling for her pulse at her throat. Lynet’s memory stirred. The crypt—Nadia’s hair brushing against her skin as she lay on a bier. We’ve done this before, Lynet thought. But no, that had just been a dream. This was real.
“You promised you would leave,” Lynet said.
Nadia smiled down at her, but her shimmering eyes betrayed how worried she had been, how relieved she was that Lynet had woken. “I’m tired of following orders,” she said. Lynet couldn’t help a faint laugh at the response, an echo of her own words when Nadia had found her wandering outside the university.
Nadia helped Lynet down from the alcove, an arm around Lynet’s waist to hold her up, and Lynet shuddered to imagine how much worse it would have been to wake up in the crypt alone, knowing that no one alive loved her anymore. She was grateful to have someone to trust, someone to hold her. She curled her fingers against Nadia’s shoulder, clutching at the fabric of her shirt. “I’m glad you didn’t listen,” she murmured, her lips almost brushing Nadia’s neck. “Thank you for keeping me safe.”
Nadia’s hand fell from Lynet’s waist, and she gently tipped Lynet’s face up to look at her. Her face was serious, her eyes intense. “I wanted you to know,” she said, her voice low and heavy, “that I chose to be here with you—that I chose you.”
Again Lynet saw the unspoken question on her lips. But this time—this time, she could feel the answer burning under her skin, finally rising to the surface. What do you want? Nadia had asked her once. You never told me what you wanted, she had said to Lynet in a dream.
With a heady mixture of joy and relief, Lynet answered.
She closed the space between them, touching her lips hesitantly to Nadia’s, waiting to see if this was right, if this was the meaning buried beneath words and glances and stray touches, the desire she had felt but not fully recognized till now.
Yes, Nadia answered, pulling Lynet closer, and Lynet melted into the softness of her, her hands winding around Nadia’s neck. When her nails grazed the skin there, Lynet felt Nadia shudder, felt their two hearts fluttering between them in a frantic but still perfect rhythm. Even though they were in the crypt, even though Lynet was pushing back the despair of Mina’s betrayal, she still knew that this moment had been waiting for them ever since Lynet had fallen out of the juniper tree—or maybe even from the morning she had seen Nadia for the first time, mesmerized by the promise of a life different from her own.
They broke away but still held each other close, their foreheads touching. This was what it meant to feel truly alive, Lynet knew. It wasn’t the magic in Gregory’s blood, and it wasn’t the slow thaw of waking from the poison—it was the way she felt at peace in her own skin, the person she was and the person she wanted to be in alignment at last. And it was her own skin, because when Nadia looked at her, when Nadia touched her, Lynet was herself and no one else, her future hers to shape as she chose.
But soon the stale air of the crypt forced Lynet to remember why she was here. She reluctantly pulled away from Nadia, her arms going around her own waist defensively.
Nadia sensed her change of mood, and she said, “I’m sorry about your stepmother.”
“Did Mina tell you she killed me?”
Nadia’s jaw tensed. “No, but she wanted me to make sure you were dead.”
Of course, Lynet thought. She didn’t want to make the same mistake as last time. That’s why she had to watch me die herself.
The memory of Mina’s impassive face watching her as she fell into unconsciousness made the scream start to build up inside her again. But she wasn’t frozen now, and so this time the scream did rip out of her body, echoing against the vaulted ceiling of the crypt as she pounded her fist against the nearest wall.