Page 139 of Reign of Light
How can I choose my mother over Weston? How can I let go of the only family I have left, and snuff the hopes and dreams she had for a life with me, her only daughter? After all this time, all the trials, all the sacrifice, the death, I can’t just give up on her.
But how can I lose the love of my life? How can I leave him completely alone, with no father, no friends, no one to spend the life he also sacrificed? How can I trade one love for another?
My knees tremble at the thought of leaving him alone and losing him. But just as terrifying is the thought of choosing to end the life mymother kept clutched in her perpetual sleep, and turning away from the second chance the island is giving me.
The strong and determined Lennox that walked into this mountain the first time is nowhere in sight. I was prepared to forget it all before, prepared to do anything to have a loving parent, to know what true and unconditional love feels like, because somewhere deep inside, I think I knew that the love I thought I had from Dane wasn’t true.
But Weston? Weston’s love is. It is true, and deep, and unrelenting. It is selfless and undeniable, and pure.
As is mine for him.
The sob is louder this time, almost equaling the sound of my pounding heart. I reach up to press my palm over it, trying to force the stabbing pain away as my breaths become short and stilted, and tears continue to stream down my face.
Then it clicks.
My gaze flies to my hand, pressed into my chest, over my heart.
He knew.
Whirling back toward the center of the room, my eyes find his, my jaw slack with disbelief as I take in the look of complete and utter devastation on his face.
“You remembered.” My voice is watery and barely audible. “That’s why you…you said…all those things. You remembered that if I went through with this, I would forget you.”
His throat bobs, and his jaw tightens, but he doesn’t say a word. He nods his head only once, and it feels like the ground shakes beneath me. I thought I would be angry, thought the moment he told me he knew, I would rage at him, like I’d done so many times before, but the anger doesn’t come. Instead, it is replaced with soul-crushing anguish, the heartbreak instead taking over me with full force.
“How could you, Weston?” I scream. My voice cracks as I fall apart in front of him, but his gaze holds firm, and he doesn’t shy away. “How could you let me come back here if you knew I would forget it all? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you stop me?”
I don’t know when I moved. My mind didn’t register my feet moving at all, taking me down the steps and across the chamber, but now, I stand before him, his clothes fisted in my hands as I shake him with all my strength and wail every question.
He doesn’t fight me, doesn’t yell back like he’s done before time and time again as our stubbornness butted heads against each other. I want him to yell, to scream, to fight with me. I want him to stoke the anger that is so easy to hide behind, because it hurts less than the misery I’m feeling knowing he let me come here to sacrifice him. The sorry in his eyes only deepens as he dips his chin, his gaze still locked on mine.
“How could I stop you?”
His voice is a soft caress, the direct opposite of my frantic screaming, and it shatters me into pieces.
“You just stop me! You say, ‘Lennox, are you sure you want to forget everything?’ Do I have to make you repeat after me?”
His hand cups my face, and his thumb rubs soft strokes over my cheekbone. “How could I be selfish and tell you to give up the chance to save your mother, the same person I came here to save? How could I take her away?”
“Because it would take away you!” My shriek echoes off the walls of the chamber and is followed by my sobbing through gritted teeth and a clenched jaw.
His other hand settles on my face, and he leans in close, clutching me to him. His brows crinkle in the middle as he begs me silently to listen.
“Then let me do this for you.”
Mouth falling open, I gape at him, sheer horror etched onto my face.
Let Weston forget? After all he’s done, all he’s sacrificed, the life he left behind, how could I decide to let him forget? It wouldn’t only be me he lost. He spent twenty years with a family he could find back in our world, start a new life with. He would lose every single one of them if he took my place, my responsibility.
My duty.
Why is he offering to give up even more of his life for me?
Because he swore he would.
The last thread of control I have snaps, and I feel it reverberate through me like the explosion in the mountain. I claw at his wrists, trying to hang on to him, to ground myself, as my knees give out beneath me.
I can’t breathe.
