That can’t be.
“But it is,” Sabine answers, and I don’t know if she read my thoughts or if I said them aloud.
“You’re disturbed, poor girl,” she says. “And so is Adair. Growing up the way you did, it’s no wonder. Your mother was with her own brother, Dare’s step-father molested him and abused him… obviously you’re both from bad blood.”
“We’re not crazy,” I shout, but I’m not sure and I struggle and she smiles. There’s a sharp pain in my arm and she leaves and everything goes beyond black to oblivion and I’m in a sleep so so deep that I can’t dream.
Days pass and finally, finally, Dare comes to see me, when he’s strong enough.
He’s paler, but he’s the same. His dark dark eyes penetrate me and he grasps my hand.
“We’re not crazy. We’ve fixed it before, we’ll fix it again,” he tells me. There’s promise in his voice but I’m so tired. “You have Finn’s heart, so he’s not really gone.”
“Is this even real?” I ask him, groggy from the medicine they pump into my veins. “Maybe we’ve been crazy all along.”
Dare smiles and his smile is real and it’s bright and it penetrates my fog.
“You don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“Believe in me,” he instructs, and I do.
Because Dare is mine and he lives free.
“I want to live free, too,” I tell him.
“And you will,” he promises.
Days pass with nurses coming in and out, to make sure I take my pills, the colorful pills that will keep my body from rejecting Finn’s heart. I’ll have to take them forever and their waxy residue gets stuck on my tongue. But I take them, because I have to keep Finn’s heart alive. It’s the only part of him I have left, and he’s my brother and I love him I love him I love him.
Oakdale and its grounds look so much like Whitley. The halls, the rooms, and one day, one gray day, I find Finn’s journal.
It’s hidden in one of my bags and I know it’s his because it says.
The Journal of Finn Price.
The end is the beginning, one of the pages says. I don’t know about that, but I know the middle was jumbled up and changed and changed and changed.
But it can all be changed back.
I have to believe that.
Destroy the ring, it says. You have to you have to you have to.
And I have to believe that I can save my brother in the end, because serva me, servabo te. Save me and I’ll save you, Finn.
Destroy the ring.
How does one go about destroying a ring?
Dare and I sneak away into the forest, and burn the journal before anyone can see, before anyone even realizes we’re gone. They can’t see his words, they can’t see our story.
If they do, we’ll never get out of here.
We’ll never be free.
And we have to.
We have to live free.
“I can’t live without Finn,” I tell Dare on the way back in.
He holds my hand and looks at me, and smiles a sad sad smile.
“I know.”
We walk and walk, and Dare turns to me.
“I love you more than life, and I’ve been doing some research. Salome married her brother, and she became a necromancer. She wanted to live forever, but Phillip didn’t. Phillip has been trying for centuries to end the curse, while Salome wants it to continue. They’ve been at odds, and that has been born into twins in your family for generations. That has to be it.”
I’m dubious, but intrigued.
“Are we related?” I ask, and it’s a question I’ve been afraid to ask, afraid to know the answer.
Dare stares at me with his black black eyes. “I don’t know. But you can undo anything. Perhaps the answer is not to destroy the ring, but to change things so that it was never created in the first place. If you can do that… you can prevent everything from happening. You won’t have to change it. Surely that will end the cycle.”