CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
The Bridges We Burn
Finally, the sword was pulled through my heart. I felt it move, the sharp sting of lost breath traveling in a lightning streak between my lungs. I watched as the harsh black hilt disappeared in my chest. Without seeing what he did, I knew exactly what had happened. The Other Christian had taken the bare blade in his hands and pulled it through the mirror in the real Christian’s body. For a moment, in my mind’s eye, I could see the red drip from the blade as he let his blood drop onto the floor of my heart.
“Are you okay?” Trinity asked me in alarm.
“He’s done it,” I grinned when the discomfort left me.
“He’s done what?” Trinity asked, curiously.
I put a hand to my chest and for the first time in months, King Christian was not healing me every one-hundredth of a second. I breathed easily and suddenly I wanted to leave. I needed to join Christian. I didn’t belong here, with Trinity, looking at her baby and taking a peek at a life that could never have been mine.
“I have to go,” I said, a smile unconsciously spreading across my face. “I’m happy you named your daughter after me. If I ever have a daughter I’ll name her after you.”
“Wait. I don’t understand why this is feeling so final. You’re acting like you’ll never see me again. We will surely see each other again,” she insisted.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle that we met each other now, and I’m more grateful than I can say that I was there for you when you needed me.”
A knock came at the front door.
I stood up. “It’s Christian. I have to go with him.”
Trinity put Grace in her baby swing and waddled after me to the door. I opened it and Christian stood on the step, looking like Christian Henderson with darker hair and lighter eyes, but it wasn’t very noticeable in the late afternoon light. It was a concession intended to please Trinity. So her last memory was of Beth and Christian leaving together.
Her eyes lit up when she saw him.
She hugged him and he gave her a little swing around, to which she immediately protested.
“Stop. My insides will fall out!”
He put her down and listened to her pout. “Can you come in and see my baby?”
Christian followed Trinity into the house and cooed over her baby like he’d never seen one before, told Trinity she was very lucky, and cradled baby Grace like baby girls were the best things in the world. I found the whole thing quite moving like love was everywhere. Finally, he placed Grace into her swing and made his way back to the door. In a moment, he was back on the porch, and I was aware that he had given Trinity all the time we had left.
“Beth says she’ll never come back. That can’t be true,” Trinity asked mournfully as she followed us out.
“It is,” he said, not allowing his face to become too hard. “She decided to run off with a man who can’t stay in one place, so remember to blame her and not me.”
“But surely you can come by once in a while the way you used to when Beth and I were in school.”
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He reached for me and pulled me next to him. “I don’t know what the future holds, but it would probably be better if you forgot you ever knew us. I’m sorry, but it’s time to say goodbye. There’s a helicopter waiting for us.”
We had a little three-person hug, and afterward, Trinity watched us get into the car waiting for us. She waved to us with a look on her face that was all confusion and unhappiness.
All those years ago, I hadn’t realized that Brandon’s advice to drop the people in my life included her. I thought he meant just family. I should forget about my family and hope they forget about me.
For the first time, I realized how lucky I had been to have been rooming with Felicity-Ann before I had to leave the first time. I might not have been able to leave Trinity if she had not gotten married first and left the apartment. Felicity-Ann had been easier to leave.
Now I knew that Trinity had everything she needed with Brighton and her new baby.
Actually, we both had everything we needed. I hooked my arm around Christian’s and watched Ottawa flash by me as Brandon drove the four of us to meet Pricina.
***
In the helicopter, we could finally talk about the operation. Brandon and Indra placed Christian on a table, Brandon put him to sleep with a level three ability, and cut him open. Christian’s body was so accustomed to sealing up after it was cut that they weren’t able to keep him open long enough to insert my heart, even clumsily. All the screaming and groaning I heard through the wall was Brandon trying to wrench Christian’s ribcage open. Eventually, it became clear that Brandon wasn’t going to be able to keep Christian’s chest open with only Indra to help him. Even in the prison, it had taken seven people to do an operation on Christian traumatizing enough to open his chest. In the end, Brandon took my heart out of the Tupperware container and placed it on Christian’s chest.
“It feels vulgar to say,” Brandon elaborated. “But as soon as I did so, his chest opened and practically grew hands to pull your heart in. I didn’t even close him up. He did it himself.”
“I’ve always been a fast healer,” Christian said, looking at me, and for the first time, I realized that his expression was different.
Inside, he had corrected more than he wanted to admit. He couldn’t help showing a bit of it on his face. For one thing, he had been reunited with the Other Christian, and all of his ability to manipulate matter had returned to him. With that knowledge, it looked like he saw so much more than what was in front of him. Was he counting atoms with his eyes?
He wanted to talk to me, but he didn’t want to have that conversation in front of Brandon, Pricina, and now Indra. He still liked keeping his secrets, but finally, I would be on the inside of them.
I was about to close my eyes and slip into my Red Forest. I was sure that if I went to the mirror in the second room, I would be able to talk to him through that mirror, which would have become a window.
I blinked, about to go meet him there, but seeing my intention, he grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Not yet,” he whispered, his eyes filled with a dangerous kind of longing.
There was another way for him and me to have a private conversation and I tried it immediately. “Rhuk?” I asked my earring silently. “Can you talk to Christian now that the Other Christian is inside him?”
“I’ll try,” came the steady reply.
Soon Rhuk replied. “I can. He’s very concerned about the magnetic field. Most of the time, it protects five-fourths of the earth’s surface, but he says it has divided badly and now there are seven magnetic norths and ten magnetic souths. Now the field is only covering two-thirds of the earth's surface. Most of the hole is over the Pacific Ocean, so it’s not causing as much damage as it might otherwise. Still, he says you have to get to the South Iron Room designed for controlling the poles and fix it together. Christian says you can finish forging the connection between the two of you there. Now is not the time, nor the place. He’s asking you to stay out of the Red Forest until you go into the room for the woman with the white heart.”
“How’s he feeling?” I asked Rhuk.
“He’s so excited, he’s practically feverish.”
“Brandon, put Beth to sleep,” Christian suddenly said out loud.
“Why?” I asked.
He answered Brandon, “She won’t stop talking to Rhuk, who is telling her all sorts of things that are guaranteed to overwhelm her.” He turned to me and kissed the corner of each of my knuckles. “Beth, it’s a long trip and you need rest. You have been busy. You tricked a man, kidnapped him, let your husband murder him, delivered a baby, disposed of a dead body by converting it to diamonds, rescued four prisoners from a bomb-infested building, attended a baby shower, had two and a half feet of black blade pulled through your heart, and had to say good-bye to your best friend. In a few hours, you’re going to have to save the world. Brandon, knock her out.”
“I don’t need to be…” I said, just before I passed out. In that last second, I realized Brandon could not have done that if King Christian and Doctor Christian in my heart had not allowed it so completely.