Gilded Cage

Epilogue

A month later

"Do you think the ritual actually worked?"

My mother was looking at me with the most relaxed expression I had ever seen on her. It was truly miraculous how she could remain so calm, after all the incredibly atrocious information I had been dropping at her in the last few days. Well, now she was calm. She hadn't been this composed when she first found out what had happened to me a month ago. As soon as I had told her I was in the hospital, she had jumped on the first train to Edinburgh and never left my side once. She had cried and yelled, and cried some more. I didn't know if she had been rightfully pissed or just worried. Maybe a mix of both. Then, she had begged me to go live with her, at least until I got better, but I had refused. I needed my home. She had agreed to let me go only if I promised I would come visit her as soon as I was strong enough to travel.

That was why I now stood in her living room, explaining everything that had happened at St. Joshua's College since the moment I put foot in that cursed place for the first time. It was taking me days to spill my guts to her, both because ten years were a lot of time to narrate and because she had a lot of questions; like, a lot.

"That's the thing. We'll never know for certain," I said, massaging my shoulder.

Paola's shot had been clean but almost deadly. The bullet went through, coming out on the other side, and missed my lung by mere millimetres. I had lost a lot of blood, but luckily the rescuers had managed to get to me just in time. They had been patrolling the forest, looking for survivors after the chaos the fire had caused, and found me close to the pond.

Now, the wound and the light burns scattered all over my body had almost completely healed but, every time I thought about that day, I still experienced some phantom pain. I felt the flames scorching my skin and the blood coating my clothes; I smelled the smoke and tasted the tears. I remembered the cold ground under me as I passed out. After that, I had lost a few days; it had been a combination of painkillers, regaining and losing consciousness, and waking up screaming from the nightmares. The hospital food had also been pretty dreadful.

Thomas had come to visit, before going back to Los Angeles, and asked me if I wished for him to stay. I would have loved to have him near, but I couldn't be that selfish. He had his life in America and I had to relearn how to live mine here. After the hospital had dismissed me, I went back to my house in London to recover and James had been looking after me this whole time. I hadn't asked him to, but he said he was happy to help.

"But you were desperate enough to try it," my mother insisted.

It wasn't an accusation. She was just stating facts. I had been desperate enough to try the ritual and it brought me only misery. It was supposed to make my every dream come true, but instead, it made my life a living hell. As I saw it, there were only two options: either God didn't exist, or he did and was enough of a prick to toy with us that way. I still definitely leaned towards the first one.

"We kind of had it coming, though. Qui totum vult, totum perdit." I smiled at my mother's perplexed face. "He who wants everything, loses everything."

I did lose everything. I lost the one person who was everything to me. I saw Alexi's eyes in my dreams, full of regrets and unexpressed love. I reached for him, but I could never touch him. I always woke up with a longing in my heart that would never go away.

"Maybe it was like in Macbeth, where the prediction made by the witches put everything in motion. Maybe it was just a self-fulfilling prophecy."

I almost laughed. Even my very religious mother was trying to find some logic in Jamie's craziness.