Chapter 133 THE WRONGNESS OF A DUEL
MERRIELYNN.
The water wouldn’t stop.
My lungs were on fire and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except thrash uselessly against the ropes holding me down.
I was drowning and there was nothing I could do about it.
Then the towel was gone. Someone ripped it off my face and I gasped, choking on air and water at the same time. My chest heaved so violently I thought my ribs might crack. Water came up my throat and I coughed it out, retching and gasping and making these horrible sounds I couldn’t control.
But none of that mattered.
Because I remembered everything.
The memories slammed into me one after another, brutal and relentless and so vivid I could feel them.
Cormac.
I knew him.
I’d always known him.
And it wasn’t just that I loved him.
I was in love with him. The kind of love that had lived in my chest like a second heartbeat when I was sixteen. The kind that made everything else fade into background noise when he walked into a room.
The kind I’d thought would last forever.
More memories crashed through with a flood I couldn’t ignore or stop or even slow down.
My father had died and I’d missed it.
I missed his funeral. I missed everything. I’d been walking around forover two years not knowing, not mourning, not even remembering he existed.
All I knew him as was Otto Fortner, the former beta of the palace.
A sob tore out of my throat before I could stop it. The grief hit me like something physical, so hard I couldn’t breathe all over again.
Lorelai...
The thought of her name broke something inside me.
My best friend was dead.
She was gone.
She’d been gone for years and I hadn’t known.
I hadn’t cried for her. I hadn’t been there when they buried her.
I saw her so clearly now, hit with the realization that she was my other half for all those years I’d lived at the palace.
Now she was dead and I’d forgotten her.
The sobs came harder now, shaking my entire body. Years of memories were pouring into me all at once and I felt like I was being ripped apart trying to hold them all.
“Pathetic.”
Valtor’s voice cut through everything.
I looked up at him through the tears blurring my vision and saw the disgust written across his face.
“Look at you,” he said, his lip curling. “Crying like any of this matters. Like you would have even mourned her."
Juniper stood next to him looking lost, her eyes bouncing between me and Valtor like she was trying to piece together what was happening and failing.
I stared at Valtor and saw him completely differently now. Through the lens of all these memories flooding back. I saw the boy who’d been in love with Lorelai.
The boy who’d been Cormac’s best friend.
My friend.
And he blamed me for taking her away.
“I remember everything now,” I panted, my voice came out wrecked and broken. “Valtor, how could you—”
He moved so fast I barely registered it. Suddenly he was right in my face, his hand gripping the arm of the chair, his eyes burning with a rage so intense it made my skin crawl.
“How could I?” he snarled. “How could you do what you did? How could you kill her and then walk away? Just forget about it? Just live your life like she never existed?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“She’s dead because of you!”
“It was an accident!” I screamed back through the tears still pouring down my face. “I didn’t want this! I loved her! She was my best friend and I would never—”
“Don’t you fucking dare—”
The sound of footsteps echoed through the cave.
Fast.
Valtor’s head whipped toward the entrance and I looked past him just as someone came tearing through the opening.
Cormac.
He didn’t slow down orstop. He crossed the distance in seconds and slammed into Valtor, his hands hitting Valtor’s chest so hard that Valtor flew backward and crashed into the cave wall.
“Get the fuck away from her!” Cormac’s voice was raw, almost feral.
He moved between us immediately, putting himself as a barrier, and everything about his posture screamed violence.
His fists were clenched. His chest was heaving. His entire body was coiled tight like he was about to explode.
Valtor pushed himself off the wall, straightening up. “Of course you fucking came for her.”
“I’ll always come for her.”
Valtor’s jaw clenched. ”No matter what happened, we’d always have each other’s backs. That it would always be us against the world. You said that to me, Graves." His voice cracked. “You lied.”
“I didn’t lie—”
“You’re standing here right now choosing her over me!” Valtor’s hands shook at his sides. “I watched you pull her out of that water while Lorelai was already dead in my arms.”
“You don’t get to use that against me,” Cormac said, his voice low.
“Why not? It’s the truth.” Valtor took a step forward. “You saved her and you’ve been trying to justify it ever since. That’s why you can’t let her go. Because if you admit what she really is—what she really did, and what her being alive right now really means—then you have to live with the fact that you chose her."
“There was no choice!” Cormac’s voice rose. ”You found Lorelai before me. You wanted me to just accept that Merrielynn was gone—” He stopped, his chest heaving. “You already had Lorelai. You were already bringing her to shore. There was nothing left for me to do.”
“I had a corpse,” Valtor said flatly. “You had the girl who put her there.”
“It was an accident.”
Valtor continued with something savage in his voice. ”She had one clear instruction that day, and she blew it like a fool—”
Cormac moved so fast I barely saw it. He was in Valtor’s face, his fist gripping Valtor’s shirt.
“Don’t,” Cormac said, his voice deadly quiet. “Don’t you dare try to make it something it wasn’t.”
“Why?” Valtor shoved him back. “Because you can’t handle the idea that maybe, just maybe, the girl you’re so desperate to save isn’t worth saving?”
Juniper had backed away toward the cave entrance. She looked terrified, her eyes darting between them.
Cormac’s hands were shaking. “You think I haven’t gone over every second of that night? You think I don’t know exactly how many minutes it took me to find her? How long I spent underwater searching? You think I haven’t wondered if I should’ve gone after Lorelai first?”
“You should have.”
The words hung in the air between them.
“I know,” Cormac said, and his voice broke. ”But you had her, and I didn’t know she was...” He couldn’t finish, “I needed to save Merrielynn. Don’t you get that while my sister was in your arms, Merrielynn was still sinking?"
“I’m not angry at you because you fought so hard to save the wrong person,” Valtor said, and he seemed to be holding back so much emotion. “It’s because you won’t admit that you did.”
Something in Valtor’s face shifted at that moment. And then he lunged at Cormac.
They collided in the middle of the cave and I screamed.
“Stop!” The word tore out of me. “Stop it! Please!”
But they didn’t hear me.
Valtor’s fist connected with Cormac’s jaw and Cormac’s head snapped back. He recovered and drove his shoulder into Valtor’s chest, sending them both crashing into the wall. They grappled with each other, trading blows, and I was pulling at my restraints so hard the rope was cutting into my wrists but I didn’t care.
“Cormac, stop!” I was crying so hard I could barely get the words out. “Valtor, please! Stop this!”
They broke apart and came back together. Valtor got Cormac in a headlock and Cormac twisted out of it, shoving him back.
This was wrong.
This was so wrong!
“Please!” I screamed. “Please don’t do this!”
Cormac looked at me for just a second and Valtor used that opening to hit him again. Cormac stumbled back, blood running from his split lip.
They charged at each other one more time.
Cormac caught Valtor and shoved him.
Hard.
Harder than any of the other hits.
Valtor went flying backward into the darker part of the cave and then he hit the ground and didn’t move.
Cormac stood there frozen, his chest heaving, staring at where Valtor had fallen.
Juniper let out this choked sound and then she ran. Just bolted out of the cave entrance without looking back.
Cormac took a step toward where Valtor had fallen, then stopped. His hands were shaking.
“Valtor,” he said, and his voice came out rough and uncertain.
Nothing.
The silence in the cave was deafening.
Cormac stood there for a few more seconds, waiting, and when Valtor still didn’t move, something in his expression shifted. He turned away sharply and came toward me instead, his hands going immediately to the ropes around my wrists.
“Cormac,” I whispered. “Is he okay—”
“Don’t.” His voice was hard. “Don’t ask me that right now.”
His fingers worked frantically at the knots and I could see them shaking. I could see the blood on his knuckles from where he’d hit Valtor.
But mostly, I couldn’t stop staring at him.
Because he was real.
He was here.
This boy I’d loved with everything in me was standing right in front of me and I’d spent over two years not knowing who he was.
Looking at him with my memories intact felt otherworldly. Because somehow...he was even more beautiful than back then.
My heart was racing for entirely different reasons now.
The ropes around my wrists came loose and he moved to the ones around my ankles, still not looking at me.
His jaw was locked so tight I could see the muscle jumping.
“Cormac,” I tried again.
He glanced up at me then and our eyes met.He froze.
Then he did a double take, like he was seeing something he hadn’t expected, and suddenly his hand was coming up to cup my cheek.
“Are you okay?” His voice came out panicked. “Are you—”
I shook my head but I wasn’t sure what I was answering. I just knew his hand was on my face and it was warm and real and he was here.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he said, going back to the ropes around my ankles. “Just hold on. I’m going to get you out and then we’ll—we’ll figure everything out and—”
He kept talking but I couldn’t focus on the words anymore.
All I could see was him.
All I could feel were the memories crashing over me in waves.
Our first kiss in the pool at his parents beach house.Our secret relationship. The way his hand felt in mine. The way I’d felt whole when I was with him.
The way he’d stood on that football field and told me it was over.
The ropes around my ankles fell away.
I didn’t think, orlet myself hesitate,talk myself out of itor remember all the reasons this was complicated.
I just reached up, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him down to me.
ThenI kissed him hard.