“What if you die?” Tears filled my eyes. “What if it’s like last time and you get grabbed by a giant? Or Mercedes is attacked by a goblin with a sword? What if I make the wrong decision, and Rhys and his army are set on fire in a forest with no chance to escape?”
“Allie—”
“Heidi and Jesse died last time. They died, Winston. Dead. Gone. Never coming back again. Dead.”
“I know.”
“What if it’s you this time? What if you’re the one who dies? What if we never get our chance at a real beginning? A beginning where we don’t have the threat of a scary wizard hanging over our heads?”
“We will.”
“What if we don’t?”
Instead of answering, he leaned forward and fitted his lips over mine, making my skin tingle as my heart started to pound and my toes curled. He jerked away from me after a second and rested his forehead against me. “I love you. Is that enough of a beginning?”
“What?” I looked up at him. “You what?”
“I love you. I, Winston Carruthers, love you, Alicia Munroe.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Are you?”
“Am I what? In love with you?” I swallowed. “Yes, but could you maybe kiss me again? ’Cause I really want to be sure that you mean it.”
“Oh, Allie.” Winston buried his head in the side of my neck. “I do mean it. I promise.”
“Say it again?” I asked.
“I love you.” He gave me a light kiss on the cheek.
“I love you, too,” I whispered. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you die.” I felt his arms tighten around me. “Or if Mercedes dies. I don’t know what I’ll do. I need you here with me.”
He ran his hand down my back and pulled me close enough that my head was pressed against his shoulder. “I know.”
“I’m scared,” I said as he let go of me and threaded his fingers through mine, leading me to a nearby bench.
“So am I. I’m completely terrified, but that doesn’t change anything.”
“Do you know what the tear does?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
“It melts the barriers between the World of Dreams and the Bleak.”
“It’s a portal?” His eyes grew wide as saucers.
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s a trap. A trick. It may melt the barrier, but once you pass through it, you’re trapped unless you can find the weak spot between the Bleak and the next world you’re trying to get to and melt that too.”
“And if you don’t find the weak spot?” Winston asked.
“Trapped inside the Bleak. Forever.”
He grimaced. “Fun.”
“I wish it were really a portal so we could use it…”
“You wouldn’t, though.”
“Not for me.” I shook my head. “But I could send Mercedes home. And you, if you wanted it.”
Winston fell silent, and I looked over to see him staring out at the dark garden, the lights of the fairy circle dimming as they finished their nightly ritual.
“Would you want to go home if you could?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d like to tell you that if the Dragon’s Tear were a portal that I wouldn’t use it. That I’d stand and fight no matter what happened. I want to tell you that I’d be brave and nothing could make me go through that portal and leave everyone else behind. But…”
“But?” I asked.
“Then I think about my mom and my dad.” Winston’s hands were now shaking. “I think about playing hoops with Dad and family game nights. I think about what it’s like to score the winning touchdown during a football game and what life was like before we came here, and then all I want to do is find a way back home.”
“I’m sorry that—”
“I want to go back to the life that we had. I want to go back to that day and come up with some reason not to go to the library. I’d do anything to find a way to travel back in time and stop you from picking up that book, but we can’t. We can’t change that moment. Even here, you don’t get a do-over on life.”
“Not unless Esmeralda had another secret she wasn’t telling me.” I shook my head. “Even if we could travel back in time, there’s a chance we could mess with the space-time continuum, and I’m not sure but all those sci-fi novels Mr. Brinnegar made us read last year seemed to make a big deal out of how bad that would be.”
Winston laughed. “My dad was so mad when he found out that we were reading sci-fi in English class. He was screaming at Principal Daughtry about how he sent me to school every day to learn useful information, not how to deal with alien cultures in the far-distant future.”
“It has come in handy a few times here. Think about it: if we hadn’t read all those novels we’d never know that it’s a bad idea to travel back in time and stop the old me from grabbing that book.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I would if I could.” Winston leaned close to me. “And I wouldn’t give a crap about the space-time continuum.”
My pulse fluttered, and I tried not to act too affected by the feel of his breath on my skin. I mean, he was my prince consort now, and my boyfriend. This shouldn’t be that big of a deal. That didn’t change the fact that every time he got close to me my brain and my skin went all tingly.
“I would, too,” I said. “And if we can somehow find a portal, somewhere, I’ll send you and Mercedes back. I promise I will. I’ll get you home to your family again.”
“No.” Winston shook his head. “I said that if I could change things I would, but I can’t. I can’t change things so that means I’m staying right here with you.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder and sniffled once before I clung to him, drawing strength from the boy sitting next to me. “What about your family? Football? All those things you miss about our old life?”
“I’d miss you more.”
“You wouldn’t miss me. You would forget that I exist.”
If he and Mercedes went back, they would forget that I’d ever been a part of their lives. I would no longer exist and Winston would end up with someone else. Probably lots of someone elses, with the way all the girls at school flirted with him.
“I’ll never forget that you exist,” Winston said. “I can’t forget you. You’re Allie. You’re my best friend. My girlfriend.”
“I wouldn’t be if you went back.”
“That’s why I’m not going back—even if you do find some super-secret, hidden portal that would get us there.”
“You could be safe—”
Winston pressed his lips against mine again, shutting me up before I could keep arguing.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and breathed in the smell of brimstone and boy that was unique to Winston, my toes curling inside my brown leather hunting boots.
He scooted away from me, and I had to fight the urge to slap myself in the forehead. Way to keep it cool, Allie. Then he tugged me into his lap and kissed me again. “Nothing is going to happen to me,” he said while he stroked his hand down my back. “No one is going to kill me.”
I shook my head. “You can’t know that for sure.”
“I’ll always do what I promise you, Allie. You know that, right? I will always be here to keep you safe. I just told you I love you after all. I can’t die after that. It would be anticlimactic. Think about how much this would suck as a movie if I copped it in the middle of the big battle?”
“This isn’t a movie.”
“I know that.”
“You can’t promise me that you’re not going to die.” I turned away so he couldn’t see the tears that were forming in my eyes. “No one can promise that… Look at my mom. She said we’d always be together—that we were a team—and look what happened to her. She kept all these secrets and now I’m here and she’s there and who knows what will happen to either one of us?”