Page 156 of Illusory

As heartbroken as I was to see him go, a quiet gratitude settled in my chest at the realization that I had gotten to see him at all. At what I had just experienced. It was a rare and precious gift—one that most people in the world would never have the chance to experience. My life may have been cursed in more ways than I could count, but in that moment, I was the luckiest girl alive

51. CLOUD NINE AND COUNTING

“I will never forget this birthday for as long as I live,” I declared, after Trace ported us back to my bedroom in the Blackburn Estate later that night.

I’d already hugged him six times since we’d gotten back home, and I had no plans of stopping anytime soon.

“I don’t know how you managed to pull that off,” I said, pulling back to look into his eyes. “But I swear I’ll never forget this day. Like, for the rest of my life.”

His dimples dug in as he smiled down at me, his ocean-blue eyes sweeping over my face as though he wanted to commit the moment to memory.

I pushed up on my toes to press a small kiss against his cheek, but he quickly turned his face to meet my lips. His arms tightened around my waist, and he deepened the kiss into something much more than athank you. My body warmed in his arms like melting butter as I parted my lips for him, leaning in closer.

He broke off the kiss and drew back slightly. “As much as I wish I could take all the credit for it, I didn’t do it alone,” he said begrudgingly, eyeing the stunning pink dress that was laid out on my bed for me, courtesy of Domnic.

My brows knit together, though I wasn’t sure if I was frowning at his statement or because he’d stopped kissing me.

He chuckled lowly. “Goldilocks got me the Veilbreaker Stone.”

I jerked to attention. “Dominicgot the stone?”

He nodded, his eyes scanning my face. “When I told him what I wanted to do for your birthday, I mentioned that I’d been going through my family’s grimoires, looking for away for you to communicate with your dad from the Spirit Realm so you wouldn’t have to hide in the past to see him,” he explained, his expression somber. “That’s when Gabriel brought up this artifact that he’d heard rumors about that could supposedly open a tunnel between the Spirit Realm and the Veil. But being so close to your birthday and my bloodlust not letting me do much outside the house, I had no idea how to track it down, so we kind of just left it at that.”

I nodded, remembering how difficult those initial days had been for him and how far he’d come since.

“I told myself I’d eventually start searching for it when things calmed down a little, and then out of nowhere, Dominic shows up with the stone and just hands it over to me. He told me not to tell you that he was the one who got the stone,” he went on more quietly, “but I thought you should know.”

I blinked at him, completely taken aback. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised that Dominic had done something like thatandrefused to take credit for it—because that was who Dominic was. But I hadn’t expected to hear Trace acknowledge his role in making this happen for me. Or be willing to share the credit for it. Especially given their tumultuous history.

Then again, they hadn’t really been at each other’s throats for a while now, though I wasn’t sure how much of that was because they were trying to convince me that going back to ‘the way things were before’ was better for all of us. Still, I couldn’t help but feel like there was a little more to it. Like maybe they didn’t really hate each other as much as they liked to pretend they did.

He arched his brow at me. “You look surprised.”

“I am,” I admitted, not even bothering to lie about it. “I guess I’m still not used to seeing the two of you getting along together.”

“But it makes you happy, right?” he asked, his worry showing through the cracks.

“Well…yeah,” I answered carefully, a heavy weight settling in my stomach. “But not if it’s making you unhappy,” I pointed out. “I don’t want you to get along with him just because you think it’s what I want.”

“What other reason would there be to get along with him?” he asked, smirking.

I cringed at myself becauseobviouslyhe was doing this for me. “You know what I mean. I just don’t want you putting up with this—whateverthisis—at the expense of your own happiness, only to resent me for it later.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, but I wasn’t sure if I could believe him.

Frankly, I still wasn’t convinced that he was fully grasping the situation, or whether his bloodlust and new vampire senses were simply muddling everything in his head.

“I already know I can’t do this life without you,” he admitted, his voice low and earnest, like he was trying to convey everything he felt without saying too much. “And even though you won’t admit it because you’re scared it’ll lead me on, I know you can’t do it without me either. Or without him,” he added quietly, holding my gaze as the weight of his words hung in the air.

“Trace, I don’t—”

“As much as I hate to admit it, I was wrong about him,” he continued softly before I could stop him.

My breath caught in my throat as I blinked back at him, trying to decipher whether my ears were playing tricks on me. Something dense and weighty unfurled in my chest as I tried to reconcile the words coming out of his mouth.

“I didn’twantto see it before. It was easier to convince myself that he was bad for you. That he was just some conartist trying to take you away from me,” he said, his eyes still locked on mine. “But I see how much he loves you now. How far he’s willing to go to make you happy. And as much as I may not like it sometimes, I have to respect that. Fuck, I can’t even fault him for it. Not when I know that I would have done the same thing and fallen just as hard for you, if you were his soulmate instead of mine.”

Tears brimmed in my eyes as I tried to grab hold of the emotions rocketing through me. I swallowed hard past the lump forming in my throat. “I…I don't know what to say,” I said, rendered speechless.

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