but I reach inside the black chest. I wrap my hand around the dagger and lift it.
And I see with celestial eyes. But just the fear. It curls down my arm in chilling lines of black dread.
“I can explain,” Jake says.
“Where’s the ring?” I ask, biting my lip to keep it from trembling.
“Elle . . .”
“Where’s the ring?”
There’s so much fear in the room. It drips from Jake and crawls toward me, and I know the answer before he’s said it.
“It’s gone.”
I drop the dagger. It falls into the chest, but I don’t hear it hit the bottom. I hear nothing but the rushing of blood in my ears, the thundering of my own heart.
It’s gone.
Like the halo. Like Marco.
Like Ali.
Like my mom.
Like her body.
So this is what he’s been hiding. This is what has fear nesting in his heart.
“When?” I ask.
“December.”
Just after the warehouse, then. I shove away from the chest and draw my knees up under my chin.
“You’ve been lying to me for seven months?”
“I haven’t lied . . .”
“Don’t even . . . ,” I say, staring at him with every bit of vehemence I can muster.
“Elle,” he says, bravely stepping toward me.
“‘I haven’t lied,’” I mock, doing an awful impression of Jake. “And my dad didn’t actually say that my mother was in the casket he buried either. But I assumed. We’ve talked about it, Jake! About the ring. About . . . us. I believed you.”
“I should have told you.”
Understatement. Of. The. Year.
“And the dagger?”
“I noticed it the same day the ring disappeared.”
I curl into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest. Before I can stop them, tears roll down my cheeks.
“I didn’t know things could disappear from the chest.”
Jake kneels in front of me and takes my face in his hands. “Neither did I. Neither did Canaan.”
I let myself sob. I shouldn’t. I should be strong. But I’m so tired of being strong.
“What does it mean?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and I pinch my eyes shut, willing him to speak. These quiet, thoughtful moments of his drive me crazy sometimes. But when I open my eyes, I see the fear. With celestial eyes I see it. Crawling like a train of conjoined ants from my chin, up his arm, and across his chest.
I’ve unleashed fear on him.
And I hate myself for it. But he lied to me.
Jake lied to me.
“I don’t know,” Jake says. “I don’t know what it means. Nothing, I hope.”
“It has to mean something,” I say.
“I just hoped they’d put it back. The Thrones. That whatever we’d done or didn’t do would somehow get undone, and when I opened the chest one day the ring would be right there where it belongs.”
“Is that possible?” I ask, my mind reeling at the thought. “Did we do something to . . . change the Throne Room’s mind?”
“I don’t know,” he says, his voice raw. “And I hate not knowing.”
I see the truth of it in his eyes. How much he hates that he can’t fix this.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” he says. “I didn’t want you to be afraid.”
I take a breath. Deep and rattling.
“But I am. I am afraid. Every day. And now I know you can lie to me. You. The one person I thought would never mess with my emotions.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“But you did. The truth is supposed to set you free, right? Isn’t that what you told me?”
He’s crying now, his face red, his eyes pleading. But he’s broken me, and I don’t know how to undo that. How do I trust him when I know he can lie so easily? So expertly.
I stand, needing to move, needing to shake the fear from my body.
“All you had to do was tell the truth, Jake. That the Thrones made a mistake. That God changed His mind. That we don’t get a happily-ever-after.”
“It may not mean that.”
“I think it does. And so do you. Because if you didn’t, you would have told me.”
I want him to have an answer. I need him to. But the only thing pouring from Jake is fear, and I have enough of my own to deal with.
I leave him there on the floor and walk out the door with the tattered remains of my heart. I may never piece it all back together, but I don’t have to give it to a liar either.
It’s mine. And I’ll take it with me.
28
Brielle
The remnants of a nightmare tumble around in my brain