The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,121

my mom.”

“I know,” Harper said. And hesitated.

She wanted him and he wanted her. That much was clear; that much had been clear for a long time. But Harper was also very tired of Four Paths. She’d been thinking for the last few weeks about how good it would be to leave all of this behind, now that it was actually possible. It was over now, and she was ready to go. To find out who she was in a world without founders and beasts and blood.

She could not do that if she was dating Justin Hawthorne. He would always be as much a part of this town as the tree he’d been named after, and she would never ask him to be anything else. But she would not make herself someone different for him, either.

And although she knew they had an expiration date, that kissing him now would only force them to have this conversation in the not-so-distant future, part of her wanted to do it anyway.

She steadied herself and thought again of how much they’d both survived. It was better if they did this now, before it could hurt even more than it already would.

“We don’t work as a couple,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Not like this.”

She studied Justin’s face, waiting desperately for a reaction, but it didn’t change.

“I love you.” The words rang out in the cold winter air, through the tall, dark skeletons of the trees. “And I think we both know that you deserve to get out of here, without anyone holding you back.”

Harper stared at him, tears freezing on the edges of her eyelashes. “I’m sorry. I wish?—”

“No, you don’t.”

His smile made her break inside, gave her a massive twinge of phantom pain. And she understood that he’d been expecting this on some level. That he was willing to bear it. She hugged him, sniffling against his chest, and he held her as she cried, until at last, she was finally ready to let him go.

One day this would fade. They would grow up and move on and he would be a distant memory, or maybe even a friend.

But that did not stop the unbearable sadness she felt now. So she did not walk home after Justin left?—instead, she took the familiar path through the woods and up the Saunderses’ snow-covered front steps. When Violet opened the door and saw the tears on her face, she hugged her without speaking.

“Boys,” Harper managed to choke out, and Violet yanked her up to the spare room where she had lived for a few weeks, a room that Violet had told her in no uncertain terms she would always be welcome in.

“You can cry as much as you want,” Violet told her as they sat cross-legged on the floor, Orpheus prowling at the edges of the woolen rug, his stripy gray fur gleaming in the light of the candles Violet had lit. They were a reminder of those desperate few hours they’d all spent together at Isaac’s apartment, a night where Harper thought the world might really end. “This is a no-judgment zone.”

“I just hate this,” Harper said. “That I know it’s right, and it hurts anyway.”

“Of course it hurts right now,” Violet said as the candles flickered and the world around them flickered, too. “But it’s not going to hurt you forever.”

“You really think so?”

Violet smiled at her. “I know so. You were strong enough to turn him down. That means you’re strong enough to get over him, too.”

Harper leaned her head against Violet’s shoulder, fighting back tears. But they were not the tears she’d come here to cry.

Violet was right, she realized. She was Harper Carlisle. The girl who’d raised a stone army. The girl who had helped save them all. The girl who could finally go home, the girl who was soft and strong and a little bit older than she’d been a few months ago.

And there was a future spiraling wide in front of her, filled to the brim with endless possibilities.

The mausoleum was quiet. Isaac stood in the shadow of his family’s ashes, staring at the plaques that reached up to the ceiling, and felt the full weight of the last few years bear down upon his shoulders.

“I think it should be you,” Gabriel said from beside him.

Isaac turned. They’d both dressed up for this, ties and sport coats that didn’t fit either of them right, and it was hard not to feel like they were both wearing a costume. Kids playing