The world is not what you think. Love isn't what it seems to be. Life is a cycle of magic. And Scarlet is the girl who has that magic. Once they called her a halfling, an aberration that shouldn't have existed but now others say she's special.
In a...
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Never saying goodbye, never lingering long enough to glimpse her face once more, I was gone before I could do any of that.
Leave her and save her. It was all that I had left to do now when she was in his arms, enjoying the life she deserved. That bitterness remained but in the end, Oracle was right. I was lacking. I knew that I was. A true mate wouldn't have survived his other half completing such bond in front of his eyes. A true mate would have flipped, killed them both and I hadn't.
My heart broke but I was still here. That pain I could feel wasn't substantial, it was not mirrored in my body as it should have been if I was her mate. For all my wishful thinking, for all the hope, I couldn't overlook that simple fact. I couldn't pretend it was right when it wasn't.
I was going to love her forever, but love was all there was for me. We were not mates. I was nothing to her.
This time, on this journey, I didn't need the help of my senses to reach my destination. All I needed was to follow the instructions of the GPS navigation. And follow I did. I imagined I was running for my life, running from the monsters and not toward them as I gripped the steering wheel tightly with my palms.
I imagined the words he told her, the things he did to her, the smiles that graced her lips from so much happiness. I hoped he loved her the way I couldn't. I hoped he made her happy, complete.
I hoped me becoming their sacrifice was going to be worth it. I hoped she lived the happiness I couldn't have at his side, in my absence.
Every mile down the road filled me with more dread. I wasn't ready to do what I was going to do. I was never going to be ready for it but I had to take that final step, cross the point of no return.
I knew they were going to see it as a betrayal but if Oracle was to be trusted it was all going to work out in the end. She hadn't told me what I needed to do at their camp, what lies I needed to tell, what was expected of me. All she had said before sending me off on this suicidal mission was to follow the motions and that I would know when it was time I made my move.
She had sent me off because she knew my secret, a secret I hadn't even told the one person I loved, the person I lost. Now, everyone was going to find out about it, throw their stones at me when they saw me on the soulless side. I had to welcome every single one of them. I had to live through the shame and the blame and then I had to die.
No one stopped me as I drove down the dusty road that led to the house. Black shadows lurked in the surrounding trees, the winter already visiting here so only barren branches were left, making the trees look like tall skeletons of vegetation with frost covering the utter layer of the skin.
With the soil hardened from the cold, no particles of dust flew up after the car's passage, instead the tires scrunched where the ground gave under the pressure. No vehicle had come down this road for a while, only the black ghosts of the soulless having floated above ground. The wildlings were probably hiding inside the forest, making this road in the middle of nowhere feel eerier than it normally would.
