Chapter 4: Forty-Seven Deaths
1279 Words
LENA
I slapped him.
Aras didn’t try to stop me.
The sound echoed through the concrete room. His head turned with the force of it, and a red mark appeared across his cheek.
He looked back at me without anger.
“You killed me?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“You asked me to.”
“That’s Julian’s story.”
“It’s also mine.”
My legs weakened. I backed away until the wall of obituaries pressed against my shoulders.
“Tell me what happened.”
“You were dying.”
“From what?”
“The breach.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It was inside you. Every reset left more of the previous timelines behind. Memories, pain, physical injuries. By the end, you couldn’t tell which life you were living.”
“And I asked you to kill me?”
“You begged me to close the cycle before it used you to begin again.”
“Did killing me close it?”
Aras looked around the room containing forty-seven records of my death.
“No.”
I laughed, and the sound came out broken.
The blood from his shoulder had soaked through his shirt.
“Sit down.”
“You don’t have to help me.”
“I’m not letting you die before I get the truth.”
He sat on a metal chair while I opened the medical kit.
The bullet had passed through cleanly. I disinfected the wound, trying to ignore the heat of his skin beneath my fingers.
His body bore other scars.
A narrow white line ran below his ribs. A circular scar marked his left side. Across his back were two longer wounds that looked too precise to have come from an accident.
“Did I cause any of these?”
“One.”
“Which one?”
His gaze met mine.
“The one you were touching when you told me you loved me for the first time.”
My fingers stopped over the scar beneath his ribs.
A memory stirred but didn’t fully form.
“What happened?”
“You stabbed me.”
“And then declared my love?”
“You were having a difficult evening.”
Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.
Aras smiled.
It changed his whole face.
For a moment, the dangerous stranger disappeared. I saw the man I might once have teased in bed. The man who knew exactly how impossible I could be and loved me with the knowledge.
Then his smile faded.
“I missed that sound.”
The intimacy of the words tightened my throat.
I taped fresh gauze over his shoulder and stepped back.
“Show me the obituaries.”
Aras arranged them by date.
“The first recorded death occurred twenty-three years ago,” he said. “You were six.”
I found the oldest clipping.
It didn’t carry my adult name. It described the fire that killed my parents.
Two bodies had been recovered. A child had survived.
Me.
“That was the first breach?”
“The first one we know about.”
“You said I died forty-seven times.”
“Not all cycles last a full year. Some collapse within days. Others overlap.”
“Who made this?”
“Your parents were part of a research group at Halcyon House. My father funded it. Julian’s father controlled it.”
“Julian and you knew each other?”
Aras’s expression hardened.
“We grew up in the same house.”
“Are you related?”
He looked away.
Before I could press him, a phone vibrated on the table.
Aras checked the screen.
“We need to leave.”
“Where?”
“Halcyon.”
“The letter told me not to go there.”
“The warning was written after you were already trapped inside.”
“That doesn’t make it less valid.”
“Every answer we need is in that house.”
“Then why haven’t you destroyed it?”
“I tried.”
His eyes moved toward the scars on his body.
“It destroyed me first.”
He stood, but the loss of blood made him sway.
I caught him.
His hand settled at my waist.
The contact opened another memory.
I stood in a dark bedroom wearing only Aras’s white shirt. He sat on the edge of the bed, watching me approach.
Say it again, he demanded.
I hate you.
That isn’t what you said when my mouth was—
I threw a pillow at him. He caught my wrist, pulled me between his knees, and pressed his lips to the inside of my thigh.
The sensation struck my present body as if it were happening now.
I gasped.
Aras released me instantly.
Color rose along his throat.
“We need rules,” he said.
“Rules?”
“No unnecessary touching.”
My body still burned where the memory of his mouth had been.
“That rule seems to benefit you.”
“It keeps me under control.”
“Are you usually out of control?”
“With you?”
He looked at me slowly.
“Yes.”
The single word settled between us, heavy with promise.
I turned away before he could see how deeply it affected me.
While Aras gathered weapons and supplies, I examined the final row of clippings.
One envelope had been sealed with red wax.
“What is this?”
“Leave it.”
Naturally, I opened it.
The obituary inside was dated only three months from now.
LENA CROSS, 29, MURDERED BY FORMER LOVER.
The article named Aras as the prime suspect. It included a photograph of him being taken into custody, his shirt and hands covered in blood.
Beneath it lay a handwritten police statement.
I recognized my own handwriting.
Aras has been watching me for years. He believes we are married in another life. I am afraid he will kill Julian to have me.
I looked up.
“Did I write this?”
“Yes.”
“Was it true?”
“You believed it was.”
The black ring on my finger felt suddenly heavy.
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
His honesty caught me off guard.
“Then why am I here?”
“Because some part of you remembers what happened after you gave that statement.”
“And what happened?”
Aras stepped close enough that the heat of him reached me.
“I was arrested. Julian took you to Halcyon. Three days later, you broke me out of prison.”
“Why?”
“You remembered me.”
His fingers hovered above my ring.
“And then?”
“You married me that night.”
The memory came without touch.
A candlelit hall. Rain striking tall windows. Aras sliding the black band onto my finger.
No guests. No music.
Only his blood on my white dress and the sound of my own voice.
In every life.
I staggered.
Aras caught my elbows without touching my bare skin.
“What did you see?”
“Our wedding.”
Hope flared in his eyes before he crushed it.
“What else?”
“A room. Candles. Blood.”
“That was Halcyon.”
A deep mechanical sound rolled beneath the building.
The lights flickered.
Every obituary on the wall lifted as if caught in a sudden wind.
One blank page slid from an empty envelope and landed at my feet.
Black letters began appearing across it.
Aras and I watched the headline write itself.
ARAS VALE, 35, FOUND DEAD AT HALCYON HOUSE.
Below it was tomorrow’s date.
- Writer
