Page 119 of Born for Lace

I knew. Iguessed.Still, hearing it sends despair racing to every cell in my body. “What?”

“He is giving us time.” He nods and then shakes his head. “He had to. They knew there was a Shadow close. The beacons went off. They would have kept coming. Now… Now they’ll think it was him. Now… now they’ll leave us alone.”

“But… I don’t…”

“You’re safe.”

I’m safe?

One little death.

But Lagos doesn’t feel like one little death, one little bit of me. He is too massive, too consuming, too much a part of the Dahlia I chose to be. The one I became at The Bite, the one who became a mother, who experienced life’s greatest things, all with him at my side.

He feels likeallmy deaths. None of the other bits exist without him.

ChapterThirty-Six

Dahlia

The Redwind isn’t incredible, windmills are not remarkable, glowworms are just bugs, and Spero is not hope.

He is just a baby.

I stare at Tomar’s hands gripping the steering wheel; the stretched skin over his knuckles is white, and his fingers have his blood smeared across them.

The rearview mirror holds the fading image of Lagos, although he is long gone, and we are miles away now. I am terrified that if I look into the mirror long enough, I will see him standing there.

What if he ran after the truck?

What if he killed them all, broke their bones like he promised he’d do, knowing I would sigh with relief because they were not mine or Spero’s… And now he’s trying to get back to me. To say goodbye… That is all we were going to do anyway.

Say goodbye.

But he did say goodbye.

“You were my great experience, little flower.”His depthless timbre echoes between my ears.

“He will live, right?”

Tomar stares ahead. “I don’t know.”

“He will escape, and you will find him.” I don’t ask this time—I state. I demand. Demand The Cradle, The Crust, our very existence to abide by my words.

“This was the only way. Trust me.”

Trust is such a fragile thing, because when it’s paired with something unacceptable, like grief and loss, then it becomes flimsy. And I hope Tomar is wrong. I don’t want to trust him because I want him to be wrong.

I stare out the windscreen again, but everything seems… Bad. Sad. Wrong. The whirlwind outside is just a horrible vortex that swallowed up my heart when it consumed Lagos right before my eyes.

Every moment that passes drags me further from him, like a chasm opening up between us. The Redwind blurs as more tears rush down my cheeks, then sobs break from my lips, and I shake violently, no longer holding it inside—I love him. I love him so much that I pretended it wasn’t happening. I wasn’t prepared for a goodbye, least of all one like this.

All this time, I silently clung to the idea something would happen, a new development, a magical safehouse for us to grow old in— My world tilts. I quietly hoped that Lagos would choose me over Tomar and the people he helps… When all along, The Cradle had a sadder fate for us.

“You love him… Oh,Dahlia…”Tomar chokes my name out. He tries to speak, but each word barely breeches his lips. “I will look for him. I will look for him, and I will bring him to visit you. I promise.”

It feels like The Cradle is crumbling around me, and I am willing to be buried.

“Take me back to the farmhouse!” I cry. As I say it, I know it’s just a broken plea. It’s too late. I just want to curl up on our pile of blankets and inhale his scent, disappear into the memory of us and forget reality. I could waste away in that memory.

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