Page 72 of Illusory

But it had never been a secret that Trace was my soulmate—he’d known that from day one—and that never stopped Dominic from pursuing me before, nor did it stop me from letting him. So, why had that suddenly changed?

Why did it matter to him now?

“I don’t understand,” I said my shoulders dropping as I searched his face for answers. “This isn’t a new development. Why does that suddenly matter to you now?”

“Because he Turned,” he stated simply, as though that cleared everything up. As though it were so obvious that even a fool could see it. “He isn’t dead or newly returned from the grave, or incapacitated with a fractured mind or in a permanent sleep state that rendered him useless to you. He is here, angel, in one piece, and he’s going to need you now more than ever. And you’re going to go to him because he’s your soulmate. Because you love him,” he said knowingly as though it had always been in the cards.

“But I love you too. You know that I do.”

“And what of it, love?” he asked sadly. “What will that matter when you feel the call of your soulmate pulling you? You will go, because that is the way destiny works, and because that’s the kind of woman you are. You love and you give freely, and you go when you are needed. You may stumble along the way and misstep every now and then, but you always do the right thing for the ones you love.” There was a twinkle of pride in his eyes then like he admired those things about me. “He can fulfill you now and he will. We both know it, and denying it is only going to prolong the inevitable pain I’m going to feel when you choose him.”

Everything inside me clenched painfully. “You don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, tears stinging the corners of my eyes. “You can’t know that becauseIdon’t even know.”

“You would know if I stopped getting in the way.”

“What?No,” I hissed, my tears spilling over from botheyes. It hurt too much to breathe let alone to drum up the effort required to pretend this wasn’t breaking me. “You’re not in the way. You’ve never been in the way.”

How could he not see that? How could he not see that he had saved my life? That he stopped my lungs from imploding when I couldn’t breathe. That he painstakingly put my heart back together when it was too crushed and disfigured to beat properly. How could he not know that he was the one that made it possible for me to keep going when I couldn’t fathom taking even a single step forward anymore?

“You’reeverythingto me, Dominic. You saved me when I couldn’t save myself. You’re the reason I’m evenaliveright now.”

He paused, letting my words linger in the air between us for a moment, as though he wanted to memorize their sound if only to pull them out again on a rainy day when he needed them most. And then the sadness returned. “That may be so, angel, but losing him will always be the reason you didn’t want to be alive,” he said, his own eyes glistening with heartbreak and sorrow that mirrored my own perfectly. “A life spent without your intended would be a life spent incomplete, and I would sooner die than watch you live half a life. You deserve the stars, angel, all of them, and I would pull them down from the sky for you if I could. But I can never compete with that.”

My heart shattered in my chest. I was sure of it. I could feel the fissures spidering through each valve and severing it, piece by fucking piece.

“I don’t want you to compete. It’s not a competition and I’m not a prize—I’m the asshole here. I’m the one to blame for all of it,” I said, not because I wanted his pity or sympathy but because it was the cold, hard truth. “I’m the one hurting you both and I hate myself for it every day, butyoustill don’t get to decide. Not you. Not Trace. Not the Fates. Not even Heavenor Hell.No oneis going to tell me who I’m going to be with. No one is deciding for me. Not even you.”

He smiled back at me, a small, hapless smile that hurt just to look at. “There will come a time one day when you are sitting comfortably in your home, possibly around a fire reading a book, and you will look back on your time spent with me and think about the things that we shared. I want you to smile when you think of me, angel. I want you to know that I did this for you. That perhaps I had some small part in pulling down the stars and ensuring that you got the fairytale life you deserve. The one that I could not provide for you. Allow me at least the dignity of that.”

I started to shake my head, a gut-wrenching sob working its way up my throat, and then startled as a loud knock at the door interrupted us.

“We need you downstairs in the living room,” said Tessa from the other side of the door, her tone pressed. “Now.”

23. SPELLING DISASTER

The last thing I wanted to do was leave my conversation with Dominic unfinished. Unfortunately, Dominic didn’t really give me an option when he insisted we find out what had Tessa in a panic at my door. Still, it took me several minutes to get myself straightened out before I could finally venture downstairs to face my sister and the others and see what the big emergency was all about.

Caleb and his twin Carly were both sitting on the couch in my living room with the rest of my housemates—minus Trace—waiting for Dominic and me to join them. Obviously, I wasn’t surprised to see Caleb there since he had already been appointed as my pseudo-professor of magic, but Iwassurprised to find Carly there with him.

Not that I minded, of course. I liked Carly well enough and had always been on friendly terms with her, probably because she was the only one who never got involved in any of the supernatural drama the rest of us were tied to. In fact, if I remembered correctly, Ben and Trace had even gone as far as to say that she mostly only ever wanted to be a normal human girl anyway.

I’d always thought that was strange, but after being a part of this world myself and seeing the vile hypocrisy firsthand, I often found myself wishing for the same exact thing.

“What’s up, Blackburn,” greeted Caleb as he unfurled his arm along the back of the sofa and smirked at me. “You game to do a little magic today?”

“That depends,” I said as I crossed my arms, suddenly wary of going any further into the room in case I needed to make a quick escape. “If this involves invoking more elementsthat I can’t control, I’m going to respectfully decline.”

“No invoking necessary. Actually, I mostly just need to use your body,” he said, waggling his eyebrows, “if you know what I mean.”

Um,no. I definitely didn’t know what he meantat all. Also, I swore I saw Dominic glaring at him from the corner of my eye as he walked past me, but I didn’t dare look up at him to confirm it.

“Ew, Caleb. Grow up,” said Carly as her brother laughed even harder beside her.

Tessa eyed him with annoyance and then shook her head. “We need to do a Locator spell to figure out where Satan’s incubator is hiding out,” informed Tessa, standing beside Jackie and looking like her usual drill sergeant self again. Frankly, I liked her a lot better when she was stuffing her face with food. “And by we, I mean the three of you.”

“The three of who?” I asked, certain she couldn’t be referring tome. If we were going to do a Locator spell, then we needed real Casters—not a desultory, haphazard Slayer with temperamental magic.

“Me, you, and Caleb,” confirmed Carly. Her caramel doe-eyes were already wide and shifty with unease, like she thought this was about as good of an idea as I thought it was.

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