Across Eternity (Parallel, #4)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

Luna Reilly, the woman far braver and more selfless than I, is dead.

“Promise you’ll stay. It means a great deal to me, personally.”

“I promise I’ll stay. If he’s alive, that’s all I need.”

“Remember you said that.”

I jumped out of a window to get back to you, I want to say. I nearly died. I will never again feel completely safe, or worthwhile, because of what I went through. But all you had to do was wait and you couldn’t even do that.

“I like Ted Bundy for a boy,” I reply,

“Tedbundy?” she asks,

“It’s an America...

“Yes.” I’m not completely evil. I’d stop them if she actually considered it. Probably. “It’s really popular.” “What an odd name,” sh...

“I can’t imagine why Henri chose Yvette. If it’s any consolation, I feel certain he’s regretting it now.”

“If you felt enough,” I reply, my voice choked, “you’d never have married her in the first place.”

I wanted to know what it was like to love someone so deeply that it felt like I couldn’t breathe when he walked into the room, and I got it. I will never have this again, I know. But I had it once—how many people can say that?

“Don’t presume to know what is in my heart,” he snaps. “It’s a terrible situation, but if you think for a moment I could be capable of finding a silver lining in all this, you do not give me enough credit.”

“She’s the most beautiful thing,” I whisper. He turns and his eyes go from my hair to my eyes to my nose to my mouth. “She’s one of them.”

Even the best foundations have some dirt mixed in. That’s what makes them harden into something solid and unshakeable.

With Henri and Cecelia by my side, I can close the door on that side of myself. Forever, I hope.

“I dare anyone alive to tell me you are not my wife, wedding or no.”

“You’re not going to scare me away, Sarah,” he says. “I know you. Killing might make you feel powerful, but it’s not your driving force, and even if it were, God help me, but I’d love you all the same. If you are soft and sweet and need protection, I will love you. And if you are a weapon capable of destroying people in ways I haven’t even dreamed of, I will love that version of you as well. Whatever it is you are, I want you and I wouldn’t change it.”

He knows the ugliest things in my soul and he loves me in spite of them.

Being with him tonight is more than love or lust. For the first time ever, it feels holy.

Have faith, little thief. I have a feeling our story isn’t over just yet.”

“My beautiful, insane girl,” he whispers. “Of everything I’ve suffered and witnessed over the past two months, being apart from you was the hardest.”

“Are we moving in, then?” “We could use a good night’s sleep.”

“I’d like a soft mattress as much as you, though for very different reasons.”

We are in a terrible situation—walking across the country, in danger, separated from our family—and yet simpl...

“What reasons would those be?” I ask. He pulls me toward him. “Let’s go get the mattress,” he says, “and I’...

She has his thick hair, his olive skin, his green eyes, but with my bone structure and build. She’s as much a product of the two of us as any child could be.

“I can’t imagine a life without you, little thief,” he says, reading into my words and my sudden melancholy. “I refuse to believe that’s what’s in store for us.”

“I can’t believe you’re finally going to be mine.” I smile. “I was yours all along. Even back when I insisted I wasn’t.”

“I never dreamed that in the middle of a war, my life could be so perfect,” he says. I reach up and begin to unbutton his shirt. “Not perfect yet,” I reply, going on my toes to find his mouth as I pull the shirt off. “But it’s about to be.”

“This isn’t the time for weakness, little thief. You were chosen to bring her into the world for a reason. Show the universe it hasn’t made a bad choice.”

“I love you,” he says. “Wherever the other side is, I’ll be waiting for you there.”

Henri wanted so much for me to put this behind us. But suddenly I know, in a way I never did before, that I am meant to feel this way. That I am meant to be ruthless, and to stop at nothing to keep the child inside me safe.

“All is not lost, and all is not as it seems. There are things that lie ahead which even you can’t imagine, and I think your story with my father isn’t over. You will come to believe this yourself, in time.”

“But my name is Quinn.”

“I’m Nick,” the boy replies.

look at the two of them there, my daughter and this little boy, so spellbound by each other, I know what I’m seeing. Two of the first families in my daughter, and—I am guessing—the other two in him. Four pieces of the puzzle, in the same place at last.

“I’m Amelie Rose Reilly,” says the brunette carefully, in that formal way small children sometimes do. “We call her Milly,” adds the blonde. “And I’m Luna.”

These two girls are the circle of light, from the prophecy. I don’t know what it means, but I know I’m in the presence of it.

“We don’t go backward to see grandpa,” says Milly. “Well, maybe we do?” She turns to Luna, who shrugs. “We see him on the island. Time is different there.” “You’ll see him there too,” adds Milly. “He told us you would.”

“She’s a strong girl and she’ll be a strong woman, just like her mother. I think you were chosen for a reason—because you’ll do whatever is required to make the world a safer place, through the twins.”

She became a lion, in the end. She’ll do whatever is necessary to keep our daughter safe.

If she is leading me to heaven, I’m ready to follow.

“I came back to go on to the next place with you,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “But even if there isn’t one, it’s enough, the time we had. You and our family—they were worth all of it.”

“Take me with you, Sarah,” I whisper. “Wherever it is you’ve gone.”

“I’ve missed you so much. Every day and night for more years than you can imagine.”

“Did we have twins?” She laughs through her tears. “No, our daughter did, or is about to anyway. Quinn’s the product of two first families, and Nick—her husband—is the product of the other two, I’m certain. And the twins are the circle of light. From the prophecy.”