THE UNBREAKABLE PIECE (FIRST BOOK OF THE HIDDEN WORLD) English version

EPILOGUE: RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT ME

EAMON'S POV

I had never wished to hurt someone as much as I wanted to now. Alma had manipulated me, not just now, but during the months we had been dating as well. Like a constant torture, the day I first saw her replayed in my mind, and I couldn't help but think of how similar she was to Amity. How I wished it were her. But no, she was just a human girl, sharing some traits with the only girl I had loved and who was no longer here. The pain of losing Amity was something I had learned to live with, but it wasn't easy. I tried to take it day by day, and every morning when I woke up and remembered that she was no longer in the world of the living, my heart sank a little deeper into the emptiness in my chest.

I opened my eyes because her lips didn't feel like hers. They weren't the candy-like lips they used to be, that candy I loved so much as a child. They felt different, like the touch of rose thorns. Penetrating my soul, dull and sinister brown eyes watched me maliciously. This was wrong, it felt wrong in every sense of the word, in my body, on my tongue, and inside my head, where seconds ago I could swear I heard her voice, Amy's voice, in my mind.

I felt disgusted, floating out of my body, out of myself, the same way I might have felt if I were unexpectedly punched in the mouth. Truth be told, I would have preferred the punch. My body rejected every color and curve of the image in front of me. I rubbed my eyes once before realizing that she wasn't Amy; she was the twisted version Alma was trying to sell.

"Alma," I gritted my teeth, feeling the anger heat my face, "Go ahead, do it. Tell William and the queen that we knew each other, I don't care. I'd rather be judged as a traitor than lose Amity. I prefer to tell her the truth myself before she hears it from your disgusting mouth."

I had played along with her game in these days when Amity had been asleep, but I couldn't do it anymore. Because it was getting harder to hide that we knew each other, especially if she kept demanding things I could no longer fulfill just to keep her quiet about our relationship before the Stone Battle.

My head turned in different directions, searching with the feeble moonlight for any guard, anyone who could take her away from me before I harmed her. However, there was no one nearby; my periphery only reflected the sinister smile on Alma's face, and my stomach churned at the thought, even for a second, that this was the person to whom my heart belonged entirely.

"What happened, Eamon? Didn't you miss me, darling?"

I doubled over, focusing my eyes on the point where my boots were covered in dirt and lay upon the jasmine petals. A gust of wind began to blow, one that announced a storm. But the world kept spinning around me. I just wished to sink into gravity because if an unexpected storm was brewing, it could only mean one thing. Amy had seen us. For she controlled Alba's weather with her emotions.

"Oh, by Gael, Eamon, I'm so close to escaping..." Alma approached with all the freedom in the world, the kind she didn't possess but enjoyed abusing, and pressed her lips against one of my earlobes. "You're not going to ruin it now because you want to deny that past we shared."

A raindrop fell on my forehead just as my fists clenched, attempting to contain my anger and frustration.

"Guard! Guard! Code black! A prisoner has escaped!"

I shouted with all the force my lungs could muster, while Alma just laughed, not bothering to run. Her laughter chilled my bones. If life had taught me anything from the foolishness of my adolescence, it was not to trust Alma. Not because she was Drahceb's daughter, but because her sole purpose was to disrupt the harmony around her. Our shared past had led me to believe that Alma had planned this meticulously. She had counted on our encounter, just as she had dressed in Amy's clothes, to set a trap for me. To destabilize her. Drahceb had left a wolf among our flock of sheep.