Page 11 of Eternal Craving

“Still up?” Roelle eyed me suspiciously. “You don’t sleep here, remember.”

The woman turned and fixed her turquoise gaze on me. Her jaw-dropping beauty was dazzling, just as I remembered her. Vague memories seeped in, rising slowly from their fading edges.

Roelle glared. “Are you just going to gawp or are you going to say hello to your sister?”

He’d never met Alicia, so he’d have no idea that this woman, the one from the mausoleum, wasn’t her. More surprising still, despite my maturing, her appearance hadn’t changed at all.

“You’ll have to forgive your brother,” Roelle said. “He’s not one for words.”

Her bracelets jangled.

A long white tomb inside a deserted mausoleum.

As though reading my mind, she offered me a smile.

Roelle guided her away, down the corridor, and although I knew I should quietly amble off in the opposite direction so as not to arouse suspicion, I found myself staring at her, captivated by her womanly form swaying as she strolled beside him, her fine, black linen gown trailing behind her.

Roelle shooed me away and they turned the corner.

This woman had prevented Aaron from bludgeoning me, she’d warned me not to return home. Trying to work out the reason for her being here, and what she’d told Roelle, I pressed my ear against the door.

Miguel appeared at the end of the hallway. “There you are,” he said.

I pretended to be straightening a nearby mirror.

With squeaky shoes, he approached. “I know it takes some getting used to.”

“What?”

“Sleeping in the stables.”

“I’m just finishing off some errands.”

Miguel raised an eyebrow. “I can see that.” He gestured to Roelle’s door. “Your sister?”

I stayed quiet, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Come on. Life isn’t meant to be easy.” He thought it hurt me to see my sister with Roelle. Maybe it would have, if it were really her.

I let him take me out of the house and we walked toward the stables. When we got close, I kept going, walking the rest of the way alone.

It wasn’t only the noisy animals that made it impossible to sleep. My life teetered on the edge of change, and I was eager to see it through. I obsessed over the mysterious woman, Alicia’s imposter, the last person to see Aaron. This woman had willingly entered the Bastillion residence, fully aware that I could give her identity away. I’d looked forward to seeing Alicia, but now I felt relief that it wasn’t her who now lay in his bed.

Though the thought of Sunaria and Roelle together evoked jealousy.

During the years I had grown, her phantom memory was the one thing that made the silence bearable. My plan to leave, with its real promise of freedom, was rekindled.

I bit down on my hand when I remembered that I’d burnt the map – and buried my teeth even further into my skin when I recalled forging Roelle’s will.

It would still be in the mail tray.

Find it and destroy it.

There were small dent marks where I’d bitten into my hand. Mouth dry, I climbed off my straw-stuffed bed and dashed for the exit, still taken by stall upon stall of horses and their ability to sleep on their feet.

I stopped in my tracks.

Miguel sat by the entrance with an open book resting on his lap, the upside-down title unreadable. He looked up as though he’d been expecting me and said, “Can’t sleep either, uh?”

I stared at the house. “I just have to?—”