Creators(69)

“I saved you. We saved each other,” I said, reaching forward a hand and placing it against his heart.

He jumped from my touch as if it burned his very skin. And considering what the council had done to him, maybe it had. I pushed myself off the door and walked closer to him. I refused to let them take him from me. Not now that he was so close. I couldn’t let it end with death—that wasn’t the story we deserved. The council had already ripped from me too many people I loved. Good people who deserved to live long and happy lives.

James and I deserved to be happy, too.

“We loved each other.”

“Loved? How could one of my kind ever love something like you?”

“You’re only saying that because they want you to feel that way. They made you feel that way using mind control and manipulation. But it’s not how you really feel. We were together. We made each other,” I argued, finding it harder and harder to keep my voice quiet. The more I talked about what the council did to us, the angrier I got. The less I cared if I woke the whole lot of them up.

I had to make James see. I just had to. And I knew I was running out of time. There was no denying it any longer—the end was coming. I didn’t know what that meant for the people I cared about, but I knew we couldn’t run from it any longer.

“I can prove it to you. If you just listen to me, I can prove everything,” I begged, reaching my hands up to his face. Once I touched his skin, his eyes widened with a split second of recognition. It was different than the way we’d touched in the small medical room. This touch wasn’t born out of hidden motives; it was born out of love. James fell to the floor, his hands clutching the sides of his head.

“It hurts. It hurts,” he groaned out.

I crumpled to my knees in front of him, reaching for him but avoiding actually touching him. My hand dangled in the air, yearning for contact. “It’s all in your mind. This is what the council did to you. They conditioned you to feel pain and anguish any time you thought of me. That’s why you’re feeling it now. Because part of you knows I’m telling the truth.”

“You’re lying,” he said. “That’s what your kind does.”

“Why did you come to me tonight? If I’m not important to you then why did you feel compelled to come for me?”

James groaned, his face turning a dark shade of red. “I came because I dreamed of you. This dream…” His voice trailed off in a series of grunts and curses as he fell back, scratching at his skin, attempting to rip it straight off his bones. His eyes rolled slightly to the back of his head.

“What about the dream? What happened? Maybe if you can tell me, we can stop this. You’re stronger than what they did to you,” I urged.

“In the dream…the dream…Terrance…attacked.” James’s fist flew up to his mouth as he bit it in an attempt to keep the pain that burst through him quiet.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help him. There was a part of me that wondered if I should have left. He would stop hurting once I was gone. I could pretend that I was just some girl and he just some boy. He could go through life without ever knowing the pain I brought him.

But what kind of life would that have been? Our love had never been easy. Never. And those difficulties made us stronger. I put myself in his shoes. If someone had forced him from me, and I knew there was a way I could get him back, I would do anything. I would walk through hell itself.

It was only then I noticed the map peeking out from the inside of his coat pocket. Despite the way he writhed and trembled on the floor, I reached in and took it. It was the map I had found in Terrance’s room; the map it pained me to part with. He had kept it. He hadn’t turned it in to Harper. “Why did you keep this?”

“Please just leave,” he begged.

“No. The fact that you kept this proves that what I’m telling you, everything I’m telling you, is true. You don’t want this life. You want the places on this map that are untouched by war, places where you could be free. That’s why they wanted you to forget me and tried to kill me. We would always choose a life together, a life filled with the unknown, rather than the life the council gave us.”

Suddenly, I flew across the room and landed painfully against the wall. James held me in place, a constricting hand around my neck. “I need you to stop,” he said.

“The first time I kissed you…” I squeaked. James’s hand tightened slightly, but he would have to kill me before I stopped fighting for him. “I asked you if you wanted to. You were so nervous. We both were. But when your lips touched mine, I thought that everything was changed. Everything I knew. Everything I would become.”