Chapter 23
Jordan didn’t know how long he waited. After he ascertained Marjorie was alive, he was too weak to get her back to the castle. And he refused to leave her in case Lyra tried to take her over again. He dozed off for a while and when he awoke, he felt a bit better. But when he tried to stand and pick up Marjorie, he was overcome with dizziness and had to sit back down. Shortly after that, or it might have been hours to his abused brain, she gasped and sat straight up.
The moment she told him she remembered, she put her face in her hands and cried. He crawled to sit beside her. “Does your head still hurt?” he asked, drained almost to the point he no longer had any curiosity about her memories. Almost.
She shook her head, her voice muffled behind her hands. “It’s for what I’ve done. You were right, it was me. All my fault. Oh, God, I still remember more.” She stopped crying abruptly and looked at him, a fat tear rolling down her cheek. He wanted to wipe it but feared the slightest movement would have her shying away from him. Self-loathing and regret showed in her eyes. “Fay,” she said. “Sophie. You. And … and there were others. How many others? What happened to them?”
He wished he had the scroll to show her, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t know the damned curse by heart. “True love and faithfulness are but a lie,” he started dully. “Prove me wrong, you must now try. Fail, return the gown in which I was betrayed and in your grave you will for certain lay.” He cleared his throat. “That’s the actual curse.”
“It’s horrid,” she said. “It’s not even a good poem.”
He couldn’t help it, he laughed. It was quickly cut short by her devastated look. “Sorry,” he told her. “Just so tired.”
“Let me help you. We must get back. I’m certain you need stitches. Then I’ll …”
“Don’t get all self-sacrificing,” he said. Neither of them made a move.
“What else can I be after what I did?” she demanded.
“Tell me what you remembered.”
This started a new torrent of tears. “Anne’s going to die, isn’t she? I lost her already, but it’s going to happen again, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “You never had my fancy medicine before,” he said reassuringly. “If she’s got something that can be treated by it, it’ll fix her right up.”
She moved closer to him and, to his great relief, took his hand. Perhaps she wasn’t lost to him, after all. “It started when Anne died.” She went back to her restored memories, pausing to sniffle occasionally and wipe her tears. “She’d fallen in love with this brash knight at a tournament. Well, it was Sir Harold. Of course, you know him. He came to Grancourt a year later, having increased his riches enough to feel he could ask Fath—” she stopped abruptly, beginning to shake. “You will never believe this, Jordan, but I’m Sir Walter’s daughter. I rashly—I was so angry—I wished I wasn’t a part of the family.” She had to pause to catch her breath. “Everything was wrong, I know that now. I still wouldn’t have wanted to marry him but now I know he wasn’t false. I might not have felt so betrayed, if only I had known.”
“Known what?” he asked as patiently as he could. The story was disjointed and full of tearful pauses but, so far, he thought he could piece it together well enough.
“The conversation I overheard between Sir Harold and Anne. Then I fell ill and woke up after attacking you. But she fears she’s dying. The poor dear must be even sicker than she’s letting on. She made Sir Harold promise to marry Sophie if she dies. She can’t stand the thought of her being alone now that Fay’s going to be moving away.”
“Sophie?” he asked. “I don’t get it. Why Sophie?”
“I didn’t understand at first either. I’m sorry, let me explain more. She worried about Sophie because she doesn’t think Sir Wal—Father will allow a union between her and Sir Leo. And as far as Anne knows, Sophie is her only unmarried sister left. She wanted to make sure she was cared for in the case of her death.”
“Sorry, still in the dark.”
She looked around at the actual darkness that surrounded them and he wanted to hug her. “The thing that made me so unhappy, feel so betrayed, was that only two days after Anne died, Sir Harold proposed to me. I was positive he would be turned away and sent from the castle in disgrace, but Father agreed. And he refused to wait. He must have been so grief-stricken by Anne’s death that when Sir Harold told him of Anne’s last request, which I now feel quite certain she made about me at the time, that he agreed.” She took a gasping breath, the words tumbled out so fast now. She shook her head, shoulders slumping. “I remember now that Mother died of much the same illness as Anne. Poor Father. It must have all come crashing back to him. He loved our mother so. Which was another reason I felt so forsaken. He valued unions of love and I thought he’d never force a marriage on either of us.” She squeezed his hand hard. “What have I done, Jordan?”
“I think you made some wishes that got granted,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t know if you have fairy tales yet, but one thing is for certain, they never get granted properly. The wisher always, always gets screwed. Fairy tale basics right there.”
He thought of the story of King Midas, who’d wanted everything he touched to turn to gold and had almost starved to death, then killed his only daughter when he tried to comfort her. That story had plagued him when he was little and he’d never made a wish again, not even on his birthday. He was certain if he wished for something as simple as a remote control airplane, it would fall out of the sky and blind him. Once he’d heard Sophie wishing for world peace at a fountain and he’d grabbed her coin away. Who knew how badly screwed up such an overachieving wish as world peace could get. He was so lost in his childhood fears that he didn’t notice Marjorie staring at him.
“I think the witch was from another time,” she said, studying him like he was a rare specimen that had washed up on the riverbank. A mix of curiosity and disgust. “And perhaps Fay. And Sophie.”
“I think you’re probably right about the witch,” he agreed, ignoring the silent question she’d left hanging in the air. If she looked that horrified about Fay and Sophie, he didn’t want to risk losing her. But her whole curse had been based on wanting truth. He held his breath, which did nothing for his head injury and blew it out. Ready or not. “I met Lyra—our witch—in my own time. The same time as Fay and Sophie came from, actually. Get ready to not believe something yourself, but Sophie’s my sister. I found out about the curse and came here to try and save her. But the witch lied to me, same as she messed with your curse. She said I could get back.” He moved so he could face her and took her other hand in his. “But here’s the thing. I don’t want to go back now. I love you, Marjorie.”
“How? After what I did?”
“You didn’t want to marry some guy who you thought betrayed your sister. You wanted her to be happy and you wanted yourself to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with that. Lyra took advantage of you because she’s evil. She twisted your wish, that’s all.”
“It’s not.” She pulled her hands away and refused to meet his eyes. “I tried to kill you. This is obviously not the first time I did something like that, is it?”
“Woman, will you get it through your head that you didn’t try to kill me? Or anybody else? You were possessed and had no control, but you ended up fighting her and winning.”
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I think I heard you call me.”
“That’s right. You broke free. None of it is your fault.”
“You’re wrong. I knew she was a witch. She told me and, though I barely believed her, I should never have accepted her help.” She laughed bitterly. “Help. How many lives have been ruined? Will I be constantly tormented by them all?”
He couldn’t answer that right away. He knew what it was like to be responsible for another’s death and whatever the reason or whatever the cause, he didn’t like it. It would definitely weigh on him forever.
“I forgive you,” he said slowly. “I think Sophie and Fay will forgive you. And the others … I don’t know.” He hoped she would never fully remember or she’d never be able to live with herself. And he knew he didn’t want to live without her.
“I didn’t mean for it to be this way,” she said, tears flowing anew. “I only wanted Anne back. I was so angry and so sad. And now I’m so sorry.”
He sat beside her in silence for a while, until she gasped and jumped up. “Your wounds! My selfishness knows no bounds. Let me help you back to the castle.”
He laughed ruefully at her. He hoped he could help her heal, hoped she would let him. “Not yet,” he said, ignoring her tugging at his arm. He looked up at her. “I feel like I’ve told you I love you eight or nine times now. Won’t you please answer me back?”
The look in her eyes answered him before her words, yet he didn’t look away. He still had some tiny shred of hope. “I don’t …” she started, turning to stare through the trees. His heart sank. A bit of orange light filled the distance. They’d been out there all night. “I don’t deserve your love,” she finished. “Please, don’t speak of it again.”
He let her help him to his feet and half-drag him back to the castle. He’d speak of it again. And again. Just not now. But he wasn’t giving up. He’d have preferred she throw herself into his arms and kiss him, but he could wait. He had a feeling they’d have plenty of time now.