Chapter 69

Ruby

Atwood doesn’t wake for the rest of the night. Doctor Yang says that he’ll still need some time to recover, but I don’t mind. At least now I know that I don’t need to worry about him.

The events over the last 48 hours have completely exhausted me. As soon as Doctor Yang gives me the green light to sleep once he’s finished monitoring my concussion, I practically pass out immediately and fall into a deep sleep.

While I’m sleeping, I start to have incredibly vivid dreams. I’ve never been someone who has particularly vivid dreams, but I feel as though something has changed within me now that I’ve marked Atwood.

The dream starts off in the infirmary. I sit up from my hospital bed and look around to see that the infirmary is bright with sunlight. All of the other beds are gone. I’m completely alone.

All of the aches and pains in my body are nonexistent now. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I stand slowly and walk toward the window as though I’m in a trance.

Outside, it’s bright and sunny. All of the snow has melted and the leaves have returned to the trees in a vibrant sea of greens and pinks; spring is here. I look down at the lawn to see my wolf sitting in the grass. She’s looking out at the trees, too, facing away from me. I decide to go to her.

The halls of the castle are empty and quiet as I exit the infirmary and make my way through the back door to the lawn. The air is warm and fresh as I walk across the lawn to stand with my wolf.

She’s small, smaller than Atwood and Edith, but her head still towers above mine as I stand next to her.

“Afternoon,” she says after a long while of looking out at the trees silently.

“Afternoon,” I respond.

“I know you have questions. Lots of them.”

I nod in response to her statement. I do have a lot of questions. It seems that we have the time for her to answer them.

“Why did it take you so long to emerge?” I ask.

“A wolf never simply appears out of thin air,” she responds. “Why did it take you so long to notice me?”

Her words hit me like a ton of bricks.

“So… You were there the whole time?”

“The whole time,” she says, standing from her seated position and starting to walk toward the trees. I follow.

“All of the anger I’ve felt… The outbursts, the violence. Was that you?”

“Perhaps,” she says. “But I’m only here to help you express your true emotions. I am a reflection of you. It’s up to you to control them.”

We cross the line of trees into the forest. I know this path; I’ve walked it several times before. We’re headed toward the clearing where I was supposed to meet Cayden.

“You can’t run from your fate,” my wolf says, as though she’s reading my mind. “You can try, but… fate often has a disastrous way of setting you back on track.”

“What do you mean by ‘disastrous’?” I ask.

We reach the clearing. My wolf stops at the edge and gestures with her head for me to enter ahead of her. When I do, the clearing suddenly falls dark, as though the bright afternoon sun has simply vanished. I turn back to see that my wolf is gone and the surrounding woods have fallen so dark that it is as though there is nothing but a black void winding its way between the trees.

A cold hand touches my shoulder. I jump and spin around to face the intruder, but there’s no one there.

“Hello?” I call out. I suddenly feel very cold. A shiver runs through my body.

“You are so much more than you realize,” a female voice undulates through the air. “The fate of the three kingdoms lies on your shoulders.”

I don’t recognize the voice.

“Who are you?” I ask.

There is no answer.

When I wake, the infirmary is still dark. How long have I been asleep? Was I even dreaming, or was that some sort of powerful vision?

My visions so far have only ever been snippets of what is to come, brief flashes of the future. This was something else. I feel as though I stepped into another realm in my sleep. Whether or not I was truly welcome in that realm, whether the things I was told were true, is a mystery to me. Who was the woman speaking and what did she mean when she said that the fate of the three kingdoms lies on my shoulders?

I’m only a hybrid. A hybrid from a tiny, unknown, backwater village. There’s no possible way that the fate of anything could lie on my shoulders.

I look over to Atwood. My eyes take several moments to adjust in the dark, but when they do, I immediately jump out of my bed and run to his side. His eyes are open.

“Ruby,” he whispers weakly, reaching out to me as I approach. He cups my cheek in his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?” I ask, sitting on the edge of his bed.

Atwood swallows and licks his lips. “I ruined your birthday.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” I respond. My hand shakes a bit as I reach out to stroke his hair.

“I knew that the Bears would attack,” he says. “And I still threw your birthday party.”

I can feel tears well up in my eyes at his words. Maybe Beck was right; if I hadn’t had my birthday party, all of these innocent people wouldn’t have been hurt or killed.

Without thinking about it, I lift Atwood’s blanket and crawl underneath, laying on his chest. He hesitates for a moment before tightly wrapping his arms around me and kissing the top of my head.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about my condition,” he whispers. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

I don’t answer. Of course I’ll forgive him, but… it still hurts that he chose not to tell me to begin with.

Atwood brushes some hair out of my face and looks down at me. “I should have never pulled you out of school,” he says. “My condition was making my brain foggy, but I can see clearly now. I should have never listened to Edith over you.”

The memory of my vision of Edith with Atwood flashes across my mind again and I feel myself become tense.

“Did… Did you have sex with her?” I ask softly. A tear escapes and rolls down my cheek.

Atwood vehemently shakes his head. “She gave me an aphrodisiac. It must have been some scheme with my mother… I’ll have to deal with them later. But please believe me when I say that it didn’t get that far.”

It still pains me to know that Atwood was intimate with Edith, but my wolf urges me to believe him about the aphrodisiac. It would make sense, given what Edith said when she locked me in my room. There is something more important on my mind, however.

The curse still lies at the back of my mind. When will I start showing symptoms? How long do I have before the curse takes me?

I can only hope that I’ll be able to get to the bottom of this before it’s too late.