There isn’t a single protest left inside me because she’s right—I should’ve stayed away from Raph. But I didn’t listen. Not to my own warnings or those from the people who know him far better than I ever did.
I should get in the car and get the hell away from this place, although I have no idea where I can go to escape the Dynasties and their twisted world. But something keeps me rooted on the spot, as if the masochist in me wants Layla to twist the knife in deeper.
“Raph was raised to want nothing else but that throne. It’s who he is. No matter how much Raph may resent his father’s hand in his life, nothing can change the fact, that it’s that hand that’s molded him from birth for that crown.
“When your existence was revealed and when you were found and brought back here to Eden, well, you can only imagine the lengths that Raph was willing to go to in order to protect what he’s been raised to desire above all else, at all costs.
“First the plan was to make your life so miserable here on Eden, to break you so badly, that you’d go running back to that trailer park back on Earth. But then it was discovered that the laws require the Crown Trials to actually take place, and there was no way around it. So the plan changed somewhat, and Raph would need to break you in an entirely different way—in a way far more wicked, if you ask me.”
She flashes me a radiant smile which would have been beautiful, if it wasn’t so twisted.
“It may have been his father’s will, but Raph sure as hell executed it with perfection. Raph’s always been so good at getting girls to fall head over heels for him, until they’d sell their own soul just to get a taste of him. Except in your case, it wasn’t just your soul, it was your claim to the throne, too.”
I’m reminded of Jethro’s words to me at the Fall Ball, that Raph is next in line to the throne and nothing would change that. I’d thought that he must have been referring to Raph’s betrothal, but I know now that it was about far more than just that. It was about something far more twisted. I feel sick to my stomach and I’m surprised at my ability to keep myself from vomiting all over the gravel courtyard.
“I have to admit, Jazmine, I’m disappointed in you. I thought for a moment there that you would have more sense than to let Raph toy with you like that. But I was wrong—you’re just as foolish as all of those other girls, all too willing to open their legs for Raph. But who can blame you, Raph sure as hell knows how to use his hands and that wicked tongue of his to strip a girl of all of her senses.”
If there was anything left inside my chest, it’s decimated right in that very moment and distantly, I can feel my hand gripping onto the handle of the car door, just to keep from doubling over.
“Too bad you didn’t get the pleasure of getting acquainted with his dick, too—because that would have really sealed the deal.”
“Go to hell, Layla,” I manage to say finally, my words barely a ragged whisper in the night.
“I’m going to ignore that, along with everything else I hate about you and I’m going to grant you this one small mercy. From one enemy to another.”
She holds something out to me then and my entire body stills as my gaze lands on the golden key in her hand.
“Where—where did you get that?” I gasp out.
“Does it matter?” she replies.
“All you need to know is that it’s your ticket out of here.”
I stare at the key in her palm, the moonlight glinting off it like a promise of salvation from this hell that I’ve been plunged into. I used to think my life on Earth was hell, that trailer park and all of the other temporary homes and faceless foster parents before it. But I was wrong. I’d trade that loneliness and loss for this devastation clawing at my chest in a heartbeat. Layla seems to know it, too.
“Take it—get the hell out of Eden and never look back.”
I don’t ask any questions, I don’t hesitate for a moment longer. I reach out and take that key from Layla’s hand instead. The irony hits me. Magnus has lied to me. Raph has lied to me. But Layla has been open and consistent about her hatred of me from the start. She’s been the only honest person here in this web of deception.
I don’t know how to open a portal. But having watched Magnus and Raph do it, some primal part of me already knows. I let that part of me take over as the air around me shifts and splits open to reveal the universe beyond.
For a moment Magnus’s warnings about Earth not being safe, enter my mind. But I brush it away. Magnus lied to me. How could I trust anything he’s ever said to me and even if it is true, I’d much rather the shadow of that unknown danger, than the very real one in this place. It isn’t just the St. Tristan Dynasty that’s toxic, this entire world is poison.
This world is a mirror of Earth, Magnus once told me. If only I’d known then just how right he was. This place may have seemed beautiful, vibrant and vivid in a way that my life on Earth never was. But it’s just as ugly.
The beauty is nothing but a deception. It draws you in with promises of hope that creep into your soul. But it’s all lies. All of it. The danger that lurks beneath that beauty is like the thorns beneath the bloom of a rose, like poison from the sweetest forbidden fruit. Now, I know how those human myths about Eden were formed. Eden itself is the forbidden fruit and I had been foolish enough to taste it.
As I stand at the entrance of the portal and take one last look back at the St. Tristan Palace, some part of me hesitates for a moment. But the palace is as still as a tomb and Raph is nowhere in sight. I don’t know why that still has the ability to slice through my chest, not when any remaining connections with Eden have already been burned away in the devastation that I’ve just emerged from.
Raph once told me that the throne was all he was raised to ever want, at all costs. I should have listened. Because in the midst of his web of lies, that was the one truth.
I step into the portal, I do just as Layla said—I get the hell out of this poisonous world and I don’t look back.