CHAPTER 6 The Diary Without an Author

The diary was still on the floor where I'd dropped it.

I stared at it for a long time before I made myself move. My hands were shaking so bad it took two tries to pick it up again, like some part of me already knew that once I opened it, I wouldn't be able to close it again and pretend I hadn't seen what was inside.

I opened it anyway.

The handwriting looked like mine. Not similar. Mine. The same slant, the same way I loop my Y's too big.

"This isn't possible," I whispered.

The next page started with a date that meant nothing to me.

Day One.

If you're reading this, then we failed again.

Don't panic.

I know you don't remember me.

I am you.

My heart slammed once, hard, against my ribs. I laughed this short, broken, nervous sound that didn't feel like it came from me.

"No," I said, out loud, to an empty room. "No, that's not possible..."

I turned the page anyway. I couldn't stop myself.

The diary didn't explain anything. It just kept going, like whoever wrote it assumed I already knew everyone in it.

Today Draven stole apples from the royal kitchen. Kai pretended not to notice. They argued for twenty minutes. I laughed so hard I cried.

I frowned at the page. I shouldn't recognize any of that. I'd known these two lunatics for less than a day.

And yet.

For one second barely even that I heard it. Laughter. A man's voice, low and warm, saying my name like he'd said it a thousand times before. A flash of silver eyes, closer than I'd ever let Kai get.

Then pain split through my skull like something had cracked open.

I gasped and grabbed the edge of the desk. My vision blurred white at the corners. When I touched my face, my fingers came away red.

I was bleeding. From my nose. From nothing.

"What is happening to me," I breathed, and I didn't recognize my own voice.

Scene 3 — Kai Arrives

Kai was in the doorway before I even heard it open.

His eyes went straight to the diary in my hands, and something moved across his face I hadn't seen from him before. Not the cold stillness. Not the calm.

Fear. Real, unmistakable fear.

He crossed the room faster than I could track. "Maya."

I clutched the diary against my chest. "No."

"Give it to me."

"No!"

"You aren't ready for this."

"You don't get to decide that!" I backed away until my shoulders hit the wall. "You've lied to me since the second I met you."

"I never lied."

"You hid everything! That's the same thing!"

"It isn't." His voice stayed level, but something underneath it wasn't. "Not to me."

I laughed, and it came out uglier than I meant it to. "Well, it is to me."

Kai's voice dropped, softer than I'd ever heard it. "If you keep reading, Maya... your memories may start waking up before your body is ready to survive it."

I didn't understand what that meant. I didn't understand any of this. But I understood the way he looked at me when he said it like he wasn't guessing. Like he'd watched it happen before.

My grip on the diary loosened.

He reached out, slow, like he thought I might bolt.

I hesitated one more second.

Then I let go.

Kai took the diary from my hands and, for just a moment, closed his eyes.

It looked like relief.

It looked like grief.

I couldn't tell which one it actually was.

He crossed the room and locked the diary inside a black cabinet I hadn't even noticed was there. The key disappeared into his jacket.

"You'll have it back," he said.

"When?"

"When it's safe."

"When I trust you, you mean."

"You don't."

"No," I said. "I don't."

He didn't even try to argue with me. Didn't try to convince me otherwise. He just let the truth sit there between us, plain and unshaken.

I folded my arms. "Fine."

If he wasn't going to tell me anything, I'd find it myself. However long it took. Whatever it cost me.

Later that night, someone knocked once and walked in before I could answer.

Draven, of course. Two mugs balanced in one hand.

"I figured you'd throw something at me," he said.

"I might still."

"Brought hot chocolate anyway. Emotional damage control." He set one mug on the table beside me and dropped into the chair across from it like he owned the room. Which, for all I knew, he probably did.

I didn't touch it.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. "Still think I'm trying to poison you?"

"I don't know what to think about anything right now."

"Good answer," he said, and almost smiled like he meant it.

Unlike Kai, Draven actually talked. He made jokes at his own expense, teased me about the way I was glaring at the mug like it had personally wronged me, complained about the temperature of the castle like it was a hotel he was two stars away from reviewing badly. For a few minutes, sitting there listening to him ramble about nothing, I almost forgot how terrified I was.

"Who wrote the diary?" I asked.

The smile dropped off his face like it had never been there.

"You already know," he said.

"I don't."

"You will."

"I hate answers like that."

"I know," he said. "That's why I gave it to you."

Silence stretched between us, long enough that I thought he wasn't going to say anything else. Then he sighed, and glanced toward the closed door, checking actually checking that Kai wasn't standing on the other side of it.

He leaned closer. His voice dropped to barely more than a whisper.

"You should ask Kai something."

"What?"

He held my eyes.

"Ask him why he watched you die eight times."

I stopped breathing.