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Her own words, in his mouth. Skye could hardly see him for the tears that blurred her sight. She’d drawn on everything inside her once already to let him go. She’d run out of strong; was all out of selfless.
“It’s too much. This needs to end,” Hunter repeated.
“I can’t, Hunter. I don’t think I can let you go again.” She couldn’t agree to this. He couldn’t leave her. She would fight dirty. “What about me? The lives aren’t sustaining me anymore. Maybe you are? What if the part of me inside you dies if you do? What if...” her flailing words faded out at the pain in his eyes, and the sad twist of his lips. She was ashamed.
“I saw them, the lives,” she said quietly. Hunter looked startled. “Remember the dream beach I told you about, with all the people by me, and you on the other side of the wall of water? I think it was real. Thea was using you to take more lives, wasn’t she? She wanted to destroy your clan, keep you for herself, and take the lives of the village to live out another forever with them.”
“Yes. The incantation was the same one the Seers used to try to control the wills of the city, but with my power it took their souls instead. I don’t think Thea knew that would happen then. But she knew it would happen now.”
“Now I know it wasn’t a dream,” Skye said. “I think it was like an in-between place for the stolen souls. On my side were people from the village. I think while you and I were joined, when Thea summoned them, they went into me, and stayed with me, even when I passed the other stolen lives back to you.”
“And in that in-between place, you told them to go back.”
She nodded.
“How do you know it worked?”
She smiled and pointed up the distant beach to where Morgan was helping Mike to move slowly to the steps. He turned back to her, his eyes burning. “And you saw the people from my city there too?”
“It had to be them, behind you, on your side of the wall of water that separated us. I couldn’t see them properly, but they were watching us. They seemed...helpless.” She could see them again in her memory. Sorrow for them filled her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You’re right – we are all collateral damage, you, me, my mum... But them, those stolen people... They have paid the most. Endlessly. You’re right. It’s enough.”
He shook his head, and she saw him fighting to understand what was right, knew that everything in him wanted to protect her. “I just don’t know if I can live with the knowledge of all those people, some of them I knew, their souls stolen because of Thea, and me, and my family. But how can I risk your life by letting them go? How can I ask you to?”
“You can’t think about me, or base this decision on me,” she hoped he didn’t hear the wobble in her voice.
“What if you do...end?” he could barely say it. “Your father. Morgan. All the people who love you. It’s not fair on them either.”
“No, it’s not.” Her voice felt strangled. Trying to do the right thing and persuade Liam to end the curse that had been wrecking lives, tearing apart her own family and countless others had felt like her heart was breaking because it might have cost her and Hunter everything. Liam said no. They had failed. But if it was in their power to set the ancient stolen lives free at last, could they be better than him and say ‘yes’?
“But life isn’t fair,” she choked. She buried her face in Hunter’s chest, the weight of the enormous but necessary decision crushing her. “I never believed in happy every after, and I was right.” Her shoulders heaved with grief, to be once again at the precipice of life and death, and loss for them both and for anyone who cared about them.
“Skye –”
“There’s no such thing. I got a bit more time here with you than I would have if you hadn’t saved me.” She swallowed and drew back, meeting his eyes. “Not happy ever after, but close enough,” she tried sound brave, tilting her face to a hunched shoulder to wipe it.
Hunter looked agonized. “I don’t even know how to do it,” he protested. “I don’t ever sense them until they leave me. And where would they go? They have no bodies to return to, not like Mike, and the villagers you saw.”
That was true, she realised. Her mind raced. The name of Hunter’s people looped through her head. Nemaro. Nemaro. Then she jolted with a blinding revelation, a sad smile touching her face. “Do you know what?” she said.
Hunter shook his head, bewildered.
“I think we give them the choice. And I don’t think you will die, not you, and maybe not any of you. If some do...” her smile faded, “...If some do, well, it’s enough, right? It’s time?”
“It’s enough,” his husky voice was soft, “it’s time. Tell me how.”
