Chapter 518 My heart belongs to him

(Music Recommendation: Time by Hans Zimmer.)

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Viola dreamt of Zoe. She saw the she-wolf laughing, her laughter ringing out clear and bright, somewhere in a strikingly beautiful place underwater.

Viola knew instantly it was only a dream, since there was no way Zoe could actually breathe beneath the water, but seeing her like this, whole and joyful instead of the way she’d looked when she died, brought a smile to Viola’s face even as tears welled in her eyes.

She watched Zoe chase after two figures ahead of her, and as Viola drew closer, she realized, with a jolt, that they were her parents.

How were they all together? She watched the three of them run through the water like carefree children, the impossibility of it, running underwater as though it were land, made the whole scene feel even more surreal, and her throat tightened all over again, desperate for even a fragment of relief from her grief.

As though sensing her presence, all three of them turned toward her at once.

“Vee…” Said Zoe.

“Serena…” Said her mother, standing beside her father, who only watched Viola with a small, quiet smile.

“Why are you crying?” Zoe asked, now standing right in front of her, confusion written across her beautiful face. “You shouldn’t cry. What’s making you so sad?”

She pulled Viola into a hug, and Viola broke down completely, clinging to her fiercely as she whispered, “D-don’t l-leave again, Zoe… everything feels so dull without you and n-nothing is the same again at home.” Her words only confused the she-wolf further, and Zoe laughed.

“Why would I leave? I’m always with you, silly. I’m only waiting for you, just like Aunt Maddy is, just like everyone.” Zoe mused, smiling, and now it was Viola’s turn to be confused. Waiting for her? What did that even mean?

Viola looked past her, to her parents, whose expressions carried something bittersweet, though they nodded along in agreement with Zoe’s words.

“We’re waiting, my dear.” Her mother said.

“Waiting for… what?” Viola asked, but Zoe had already turned away, rejoining Viola’s parents, each of them taking one of her hands, smiling as they began moving off together.

“Don’t go! Tell me what you’re waiting for!” Viola called out desperately, unable to make her feet move toward them, as they walked further into something bright and blinding. But just before they vanished into the light entirely, her mother turned back to look at her one last time.

“It’s inside you, my dear. It always has been. Only Azmira’s promise to Vaelor is holding you back. Fulfill their promises to each other, and you’ll finally be free. Until then… be strong.”

With that, they all disappeared into the light, their laughter still ringing out toward her like music, and the tight knot in her chest slowly began to loosen, dissolving like softened butter.

But rather than waking, Viola found herself pulled back into the past, into Azmira’s body. This time, she was seated on a wooden bridge over a river, staring down into the still evening water, where the orange light of the sunset reflected across its surface.

Azmira smiled as she muttered to herself, “He’s going to kill me today… It’s going to be my last day alive here.”

The surface of the water suddenly broke, and a mermaid’s head emerged from it. Viola, who was only seeing and experiencing everything without having full control over Azmira’s body, saw her own face and gasped at the same time Azmira gasped, as though she hadn’t been expecting the mermaid to emerge from the water.

“What are you doing here, Nerrisa?” Azmira asked in a whisper as she turned over her shoulder to look at the village behind her, where the voices of children could be heard in the distance. “You shouldn’t be out here. Go back home.”

Nerrisa’s face was a mask of displeasure as she looked at her twin. “I felt your presence, so I came here. What did you mean when you said he was going to kill you? What is going on, Azmira?” the mermaid demanded worriedly.

But Azmira got up from her sitting position and moved away from the water.

“I need to go back before I’m missed. You should go home too, Nerrisa,” Azmira said.

Nerrisa swam around the bridge so she could continue looking at her sister as Azmira walked away. Mermaids weren’t in danger from werewolves at the time, so Nerrisa had no reason to hide herself.

“The last time we talked, you told me he was acting strange, and you were afraid of what he might do if you didn’t marry and mate with him. You need to get away from him before he does something to harm you. You are someone everyone worships in the sea, yet you have reduced yourself to this,” Nerrisa said in annoyance when her sister continued walking away instead of listening to her.

“I can’t leave, Nerrisa. My heart belongs to him, and you know that. He’s the one I love,” Azmira said.

Nerrisa’s face became angry as she called after her sister’s retreating back.

“If he does anything to you or even touches a hair on your body, I will kill him and his entire family.”

Azmira’s footsteps came to a sudden stop, and she turned to look at the mermaid in the water with narrowed eyes.

“You will do no such thing. This has nothing to do with you, Nerrisa. It’s between him and me,” she told her sister, who had no idea what Azmira had planned and couldn’t have known what she intended to do.

Viola, who found herself caught in the middle of the scene, was just as confused.

What the hell was going on here? Why did Nerrisa have her face? And if Azmira and her were really twins, it meant that she also had the same face, just like Vaelor had Sebastian’s face.

Viola could only watch as the scene continued, desperately hoping she would wake up or at some point understand what was unfolding that would give her answers, but the scene suddenly changed, and she was no longer at the river.

She saw herself standing before Vaelor, a knife held in his hand, his eyes fixed on her with something close to murder and rage. In the next instant, he closed the distance between them, brushing her hair back from her neck with hands so tender they stood in stark, unsettling contrast to the look in his eyes. They were gentle hands.

He exposed her throat, bent slowly toward it, pressed a soft kiss there, and then sank his teeth into her flesh.

Viola understood immediately what he was doing the moment she felt the burn of his venom spreading through her, he was marking her. She felt the heat of it rush through her body, but the instant he pulled his mouth away, his dagger plunged straight into her heart.

Viola gasped awake in her own bed, hand flying to her chest, searching frantically for the pain, finding none, and let out a shaky breath of relief, looking around the dark, empty room, her pillow soaked through beneath her with tears.

Viola was so disoriented that, for a moment, she didn’t know where she was until her heartbeat settled and everything came back to her.

She thought back over the first part of the dream, seeing Zoe and her parents together, and frowned, unsure what to make of her mother’s words, unsure whether it had meant anything real at all, or if her own mind had simply conjured something comforting to soften the edge of her grief. Waiting for her, to do what, exactly? To awaken Azmira’s powers, finally, for good?

Her aunt had told her to uncover what Azmira had wanted so desperately before her death, that maybe understanding that could reveal a way to awaken that other part of herself without having to give up her wolf. And now her mother had told her, just as plainly, to fulfill Azmira’s promise to Vaelor. But how was she supposed to fulfill a promise made to a killer, a man she’d just watched murder the very woman he claimed to love after he marked her?

She’d witnessed him kill her, felt the act of it happening, almost as if it had been her own death playing out.

Viola pressed her hands into her hair, wishing desperately for some kind of clear, straightforward path forward, but everything only seemed to grow more tangled the deeper she went.

She realized, belatedly, that dreaming of a happy, whole Zoe had eased some of the choking grief inside her, had at least pushed back the image of her friend’s bloodied, dying face, if only for a little while, though it did nothing to change the plain, unbearable fact that Zoe was still gone.

Sighing, she glanced at the empty space beside her in the bed, where her husband was supposed to have been but was now out avenging his sister. Then she let her gaze drift toward the glass wall, where lights flickered across the glass.

“Be careful out there…” she murmured, lying back down, unable to sleep now, left only with the quiet hope that he’d come home unharmed so they could figure things out together.