and directly over his mark, he watched me earnestly. “This thing tells me I belong somewhere. With someone. I belong with you. I can’t lose you with it there. I can always tell if you’re fine. Or it alerts me if you’re not fine, so I at least know I need to do something to fix that. It tells me that you’re my one shot at getting the best life I could have. And I’m not letting that go. So go ahead, empress. Try to resist it all you want. But I’m not. I’m going to put in all the work I need to in order for both of us to reach our nirvana. Together. Got it?”
Heaviness filled my chest. He had so much faith and hope in his stupid mark; I was almost jealous of his convictions. But then I reminded myself that reality never had such a fairy-tale ending.
The man was clearly delusional.
Except a small part of me wanted to believe him and have the same delusion.
Before that silly part could grow any larger, though, Melaina spoke up, breaking the moment.
“You know,” she said. “If Pallo had ever talked to me like that, even once, he never would’ve had to forcibly marry me and then suppress my compassion, empathy, and kindness, until I cried tears of blood and possibly bled to death from the eyes if I ever got too close to feeling any of those things. I probably would’ve just married him willingly.”
“Jesus,” Indigo breathed, gaping at her in horror. “That’s why you bleed from the eyes?”
“Yes. Now, let’s get back to the topic of these amulets. Just how successful did you say you were at finding things?”
“I said no,” I broke in with a serious frown, pissed that he’d managed to sweet-talk his way to my aunt’s side. “He’s not coming to Earth with us, ergo he’s not going to hunt for amulets with us either.”
Neither of them paid me any attention.
“So there’s this legend…” Melaina started, hooking her arm through Indigo’s and leading him away to sit on some tree stumps near the burnt-out campfire. “It’s been passed down through the Graykey family line that stems back to the original nineteen.”
“You mean the first nineteen settlers who came to the Outer Realms?” Indigo slipped in curiously.
She nodded. “From the old world, yes.”
He nodded too. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“Corandra Graykey was the first to arrive and, if the story can be believed, she was the only one with any magical abilities.”
With a snort, Indigo shook his head. “Of course that’s how the story would go in a Graykey family legend. Leave it to them to give their ancestor the only one with powers.”
“Possibly.” Melaina shrugged. “But anyway, back in the old world, Corandra was murdered, hanged from a large oak tree, I believe.”
“Oak?” Indigo furrowed his brow. “But there’s no such thing as an oak tree.”
Melaina laughed. “Not in the Outer Realms, that’s for sure. Because seriously, why would she allow the very tool that killed her to inhabit the new world she created after that?”
“She actually died then?” he asked skeptically. “So how was she able to create a new world in the first place if she was dead? Are you saying the Outer Realms is just a product of her imagination? We’re just puppets playing in someone else’s afterlife?”
“No,” Melaina answered, but not very assuredly. Her brow furrowed in thought. “At least, I don’t think so. Wow. You know, I never considered that idea before. Huh, I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t believe so. She brought everyone else who died from that tree here as well to live out the rest of their days in the Outer Realms.”
Indigo lifted his eyebrows. “Sure sounds like an afterlife kind of deal to me.”
“Okay, yes,” Melaina snapped. “I agree. But...” She shook her finger menacingly in his direction. “The people here can change and grow and breed children. Fight in wars, travel, and invent. Hurt, heal, destroy, and build. Do you honestly think that could happen in someone’s afterlife?”
“Well, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’ve never been anywhere else but here. For all I know, my reality could be someone else’s fabricated make-believe world. Someone’s afterlife.”
“Well, I have been to another realm,” Melaina shot back with an elated smirk. “The old world. Now, how do you suppose I’m able to travel between the two of them if one is an afterlife?”
Indigo pointed at her. “Good question. I concede to your point. Now…” He rolled his bound hands.