Chapter 125
In the night, within my mind, I travel back in time to a night when I joined my sister Leah at a club on the edge of our park’s lands. It was the night of my disgrace, my birthday. Samuel and had making plans to solidify our mating bond, but Leah. furious, was not speaking to me, except in front of our parents.
When she had asked me to join her at the club, I had been ecstatic, believing she meant to extend an olive branch. Despite the many disagreements of our youth, I still wanted my sister to be at my side for my big day.
So I went to the club, even though it wasn’t the time of place that I would normally visit. I’d already found my mate. For what reason did I need to go to a club and attempt to seek out another one?
My intention that night had only been to make amends with Leah, but when I met her at the club, the music had been so loud, it had been nearly impossible to hear her. We both had to shout.
“Can we go somewhere quieter?” I asked.
“What?” she replied.
“Can we go somewhere quieter?!” I asked louder.
She laughed. “My goody two–shoes sister never wants to have any fun. Why don’t you have a drink and relax? know you drink.”
On occasion, I would steal a few sips of wine, but I was never a huge drinker. Leah knew I had a low tolerance.
She didn’t care to hear my response, instead she turned to the bartender and ordered two more of whatever she was drinking. It looked like some kind of martini, in a glass with a long stem.
Before the drink was delivered, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
“Don’t be too long! Or I’ll end up forgetting about you,” Leah shouted with a laugh.
The words hurt me, but I laughed too. I’d gone off to the bathroom more to calm down than to actually use the facilities, but I found little comfort within them. The music, though muffled, still pounded through the walls enough to throb in my head. Also a drunk woman was throwing up in one of the toilet.
Looking in the mirror, I waged war with myself. Everything inside me begged me to just go home. To call Samuel and laugh about all this. He’d be supportive, saying something sweet like how I don’t need my sister in my life, if she is too big–headed to want to meet me in the middle.
But Leah was my family. She was part of my pack. She was not someone I was willing to just throw away, not if there was a chance I could mend this.
This night was that chance.
I left the bathroom with renewed purpose. I would do whatever it took to be friends with my sister again, to mend these bridges that we had burned lately.
As I approached the bar where my sister was, I saw that our drinks had been delivered and were sitting on the bar top.
I stopped as I approached, noticing my sister move her hand over my drink.
At the time, I hadn’t thought anything of it. But the safety of the dream world let me stop and evaluate. Am I remembering
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Chapter 125
this correctly?
It looks a hell of a lot like Leah put something in my drink.
Gasping awake, I sit upright in my bed. I suck in large gasping breaths, my heart beating out of control.
Was that a memory? Or was it something else? Was my mind just playing tricks on me?
I’d always suspected my sister drugged me that night, but the memories had been so hazy, it was difficult for me to piece together exactly how it happened.
Was it truc, like I saw, that my sister put something in my drink? Or was this just the assumption my brain was making. trying to fill in the black holes of a traumatic evening?
I don’t know. But I feel cold and uncertain.
For the rest of the night, sleep eludes me. When Bethany comes to me in the morning, I ask her, first thing, “Do you think dreams could be memories that we’ve forgotten?”
“I don’t know,” Bethany says, looking at me strangely. “I suppose it’s possible. Did this happen to you, Harper? You look like you’ve seena ghost?”
“I think I did,” I tell her.
I want to explain more but at just that moment, there’s a knock on the door. A King’s messenger enters without waiting for a response.
“The King is taking a morning stroll through the gardens with Annabelle,” the messenger says to me. “You have been summoned to join them.”
It seems the King is keeping good on his threat to have me attend every day he goes on from now on.
“Very well,” I tell the messenger, because I don’t really have any other choice. “If you could please wait in the hallway so I can get dressed.”
The messenger looks annoyed but still does as I ask, moving out of the room. He gently closes the door behind him.
Bethany gives me a sympathetic look, but we don’t speak about it. What’s more for there to say?
This hurts, but it is my life. Until I can actually think of a viable escape plan, I have no choice but to obey the King’s requests.
Dressed, I follow the messenger to where the King and Annabelle are waiting near the edge of the gardens. Caleb looks beyond annoyed with me.
“What the hell took you so long?” he asks.
“I had to change,” I told him.
Annabelle tugs on his arm, reclaiming his attention. “She’s here now. May we start our walk?”
Looking at her, Caleb calms slightly, even as I start to silently seethe.
“Of course,” he tells her.
They start to walk, while I stay a foot or two behind, close enough to intervene if Caleb needs me but far enough away that I
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Sun, Jan 20
Chapter 125
83%)
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can at least pretend I’m there for a different reasons. Maybe I’m on my own little walk, and it just happens to be at the same time and along the same path as Caleb and Annabelle.
Halfway through their walk, they stop to look at one of the more elaborate displays, a mixture of roses and crawling vines.
Glancing at me, Annabelle asks Caleb, “Can’t we go somewhere quieter?”
I don’t hear Caleb’s response….
I don’t hear anything but white noise.
I’m immediately back in time once more, a’vision or a waking nightmare, I don’t know which.
Leah handed me my drink, but I’d been hesitant to drink it. I tried to put it down on the counter, but she gave me a disgusted look.
“I thought you wanted to repair things between us, but you are acting like the drink I gave you isn’t good enough.”
I don’t remember what I said. I think I might have said the drink looked funny.
Leah didn’t listen to me. She held up her own glass for a toast. “Cheers with me, Harper. Or I swear I will never be on your side for anything ever again.”
I knew there was something in this drink, but I trusted Leah. I thought, maybe, she only put some kind of sweetener in it or something. She knew I like sweet things.
So I drank.
And then I fell.
