“My ladyship, there are few I would trust with such a task. The penalty for—”

  “If you must go yourself, so be it.”

  A gasp ripped from Mary’s throat. “But ma’am, it’s half a day’s ride there and back.”

  “Then I suggest you hurry.” Lady Catherine cried out, and Mary backed away as the midwife barged her way into the room. “Please, Mary. Please don’t let me down.”

  “It will be done.”

  The midwife waved Mary from the room. “Enough talking. This baby is coming now. Push, Lady Catherine.”

  Catherine’s body shook from the effort as the midwife ripped a second baby from her body.

  “Another boy!” The midwife held him up.

  Tears blurred Catherine’s vision as she gazed at her newborn son. “Laith. I shall call you Laith.”

  Evening shadows etched the walls of her chamber as worry ate away at her soul. Mary had been gone too long. What if the guard had detained her? What if the old woman had resisted her pleas to come? What would happen to her boys then?

  A loud bellowing outside her door drew her attention away from her thoughts. Was that Mary’s voice she heard?

  “Lady Catherine bid me bring her here. You must let us pass.” It was Mary, and she must have the old woman with her. Then the door was wrenched open and Mary strode through, followed by a small woman in a dark cloak.

  “Mary, you’ve returned. I was so worried.” Catherine waved the young woman in but kept her eyes fixed on the figure in the cloak. “I trust your journey was uneventful?”

  The old woman laughed, tugging away her cloak. “You mean to ask if we were questioned, and the answer is no. That is, until we arrived here. It would seem your household is more distrustful than the guard.”

  “My apologies for not greeting you myself. But as you can see, I’ve just given birth.” Catherine turned to the cradle beside the bed where the boys slept, tangled together like two sides of a coin. “I wouldn’t let the nurse take them. I wanted to watch them sleep for a while.”

  “Them?” The woman scowled as she came around the bed to inspect the babies. She gasped and whirled back to face their mother. “Twins!”

  That one single utterance caused fear to rise anew. “Yes.” Catherine bowed her head before the woman in a show of respect. She could scarcely afford to offend her now. “Please, can you tell me if the blessing you bestowed upon them includes them both? I worry that one of my sons might be left out.”

  “You should worry more that he won’t be.” The woman shook her head, a look of great sadness passing over her features. “Your boys look to be a matched set.”

  “Yes, the midwife said they were.”

  “It’s as if the one is a mirror image of the other.” The woman pressed her hands together then turned them open, both palms laid bare. “Yes, these boys are but two halves of the same whole.”

  Catherine squirmed in her bed. “I don’t understand what you mean. Can’t you simply erase what’s been done… or perhaps modify things so that each boy would be given a separate blessing?”

  “You still don’t understand the implications of what has been done.” The woman stared down at her with cold eyes. “These poor innocent babies share a soul. They each have one half.”

  “But that would mean…” Catherine gasped. “No. It can’t be.”

  “It is. You have asked for their soul to be bound to its mate. And it has.”

  “But both bound to the same one? You must undo it.”

  The woman laughed, but it was without mirth. “Oh dear lady, would that I could. I would sooner cut out my own heart than see this happen. But my hands are tied.”

  Catherine reached out and grasped the woman’s wrist. “Please! Oh please, I beg of you to fix it.”

  “I warned you this could happen. You accepted the responsibility willingly. What was done cannot be undone.” The woman carefully extricated her arm from Catherine and stepped back.

  “You cursed my babies!”

  “I did nothing of the sort! You set this in motion. I tried to tell you. I begged you to reconsider, but you wouldn’t listen.” She shook her gray head. “You have no idea what you’ve done. The obsession to possess the other half of their splintered soul will drive your boys to destroy each other. Neither can be happy while the other draws breath.”

  “No!”

  “I’m afraid it’s true. I’ll go to my grave wishing I’d turned down your gold… and your avarice.”

  Tears ran down Catherine’s cheeks as she shrank into herself on the bed. “Dear God in Heaven, what have I done?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  After Laith dropped his last little bombshell on me, I laughed. It had been close to a decade since I’d believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. And I certainly didn’t believe in witches or curses. The concept of Maddox and Laith’s mother making a bargain for their futures seemed plausible. What mother wouldn’t want some guarantee for her child’s safety and well-being? But the idea of her seeking out a witch and inadvertently cursing her unborn sons to a life of misery? Instinct told me that was impossible. But I couldn’t deny the certainty in his eyes. True or not, Laith believed it. And apparently, Maddox did too.

  So why hadn’t Maddox told me? How could he keep something as life-changing as that from me? I walked around for the rest of the day in a daze. Had I really been cursed before I’d even been born? Wouldn’t I feel different, somehow heavier, with the burden of a curse weighing down on me?

  I thought of the prickling sensation I felt when either Maddox or Laith were near. It happened so frequently, I barely even noticed anymore. Maybe Laith was telling the truth.

  My empty stomach churned like a boat at sea. This revelation was all too much for me. I was only nineteen. Too young to be cursed. Too young to have my future set in stone.

  I needed space and time to let everything sink in. But Laith wouldn’t give me either. Instead, he smothered me. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight for a minute, as if he feared I’d take that opportunity to disappear. And maybe I would have. The idea certainly had merit. But when it came right down to it, I had no place to go.

  When our professor dismissed us at the end of French, I jumped out of my seat and bolted for the door. He could follow me all the way to the parking lot if he wanted, but unless he’d planned on kidnapping me, that was as far as he’d get.

  “Ava, wait!” Laith called after me, and I heard his heavy breathing behind me.

  “What do you want?” I kept moving, weaving in and out of the crowd.

  “I think we need to finish our conversation.” He was too close, his voice acting like a cage ready to trap me.

  I surged forward. “I have nothing else to say to you.”

  “Well, I have plenty to say, and you should probably listen. I haven’t even made a dent in everything you need to know.” His anger snaked toward me like icy fingers as he closed in on me.

  “I don’t need to know anything else, Laith. I’m going home.” I stumbled over my own feet, and he caught up to me, wrapping his hand around my arm and tugging me back.

  “Then I’ll drive you. We can talk on the way.”

  I wriggled out of his grasp. I couldn’t be that close to him without wanting to kiss him. And I most definitely did not want to kiss him. “No, thanks. I already have a ride.”

  “Maddox won’t show up.” He chuckled darkly. “Not knowing I’m already here. He’d blow our cover.”

  I laughed. “What cover? You’re not Tom Cruise, and this isn’t the newest Mission: Impossible.”

  “I don’t think you’re grasping the severity of the situation.” He didn’t seem to grasp the humor in the situation. We were standing in the middle of a college campus, arguing about covers and secret twins and curses.

  “Listen, Laith. I need time to let things sink in.” Since nothing else seemed to work with him, I tried to appeal to his humanity. I only hoped he still had some. “I’d rather do that in the safety of my own home, if you don’t mind.”

  He shoved a hand into his hair as I turned to leave. “I almost forgot how stubborn you were.”

  That stopped me in my tracks, and I whirled on him. “What do you mean, how stubborn I was?” Maddox’s comment from the other day came back to me full force.

  “Never mind, Ava. Just go home and wait for your precious Maddox. Let him be the bearer of bad news for a change.” With that, Laith spun on his heels and went back the way he’d come, leaving me standing in the middle of the quad with my mouth hanging open.

  “You and Maddox have another fight?” Sam came up behind me and nearly stopped my heart.

  I clutched my hand to my chest, feeling the out-of-control thrumming beneath my fingers. “Shit, Sam. You scared me.”

  She giggled. “Yeah, I have that effect on people. You need a ride home?”

  “God, please.” I flashed her a smile. “I’m exhausted. I just wanna go home and sleep for a few days.”

  “Well, don’t sleep too long. We have a French test tomorrow.”

  Maddox was waiting on the curb when Sam pulled into my driveway. She stared at the flame-orange motorcycle and scratched her head. “Geez, he must drive really fast if he beat us home.”

  “Yeah, he’s a regular Doctor Who.” I frowned as he climbed off the bike and made his way toward us.

  Sam pulled down her sunglasses and spread her bubblegum-pink lips in a wide smile. “Maybe he’ll give you a ride on his TARDIS.”

  “Shut up!” I swallowed a nervous giggle then glanced back at Maddox. “I guess I’d better talk to him. I’ll see you in the morning?”

  Sam slid her glasses back into place. “Bright and early.”

  I climbed out and waited for her to back out before acknowledging Maddox—all the fear and anxiety that had been building since Sunday finally bursting like a dam. I made an attempt at replicating the Joanie Flynn patented bitch brow. “So… where have you been?”

  He flashed me a sad smile. “I got stuck in an elevator.”

  “What does that even mean?” I sighed and let my shoulders sag. “You promised to call me Sunday, and you didn’t. Then you didn’t show up on campus again, but of course, everyone thinks you did because your duplicate turned up in your place.”

  The muscles in his neck stiffened as he clenched his jaw. “Yeah, well, that’s why I wasn’t in class. The asshole beat me there.”

  When he mentioned Laith, I was reminded of the “twins share everything” comment. I crossed my arms tightly and stood stock still in the middle of the sidewalk, directly between Maddox and my house. “Whatever sort of messed-up game you two are playing, you can leave me out of it.”

  Maddox glowered at me. “I’ve told you once already: this is no game. But if it were, my brother wouldn’t be playing by the rules. He has his own code of ethics. And he doesn’t seem to be that familiar with this century quite yet.” He mumbled the last part, and I couldn’t quite make sense of it.

  His riddles were giving me a headache. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Another grim smile. “I know.”

  I tried to hold onto my anger but caved to the sadness I felt instead. God, I was such a girl. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “About Laith? I told you the other night. I honestly hoped you’d never have to meet him.”

  “No, not about Laith. About the curse.”

  A look of horror washed over his face. “He told you?”

  “You should have told me!” I snapped. His reaction told me he’d had no intention of telling me himself.

  He took a step toward me. “I know what you’re thinking, but I had planned on telling you Sunday, before Laith—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. I would have told you eventually.”

  “You should have told me that night at the lighthouse or when I found out about Laith. You had plenty of chances, Maddox. But you didn’t.”

  He barked out an empty laugh. “And you would have believed me?”

  “No!” I plopped down on the damp earth. “I still don’t believe it. Not really. How is it even possible? How is any of this possible? Witches don’t exist. People don’t go around cursing each other.”

  “Maybe they don’t now.” He eyed me cautiously, as if gauging my reactions.

  “What does that mean, ‘they don’t now’?” Comments the two of them had made swirled in my brain, making me dizzy. “Maddox, what’s really going on?”

  He reached his hand toward me. “Come take a ride with me.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  His eyes locked on mine. “Because I love you, and I’d never intentionally do anything to hurt you.”

  My mouth went dry. His admission left me speechless. I loved him too, God knew I did, but this was all too much to handle.

  “Please.” The sincerity in his expression got to me.

  “Fine.”

  He zipped me into his leather jacket and fastened the strap on my helmet before climbing onto the bike in front of me. Despite everything going on, I felt perfectly safe with my arms wrapped around him as we flew down the highway.

  I knew without asking where we were going. The lighthouse. This time, when we snuck into the tower, we made the daunting climb up the curving staircase, all the way to the top.

  “Was this your intention?” I gazed out at the panoramic view of the bay.

  He came up behind me and snaked his arms around my waist, resting his chin on the top of my head. “Was what my intention?”

  “To distract me from the issues with this amazing view?” I let my body melt into his.

  “It is stunning, but no. I just wanted to take you somewhere we could be alone.” His lips latched onto the sweet spot behind my ear, and I swallowed a moan.

  “Laith kissed me.” I hadn’t intended on telling him, but when I opened my mouth, the words just seemed to tumble from my lips.

  His body went rigid behind me. “I kind of figured he would.”

  “I didn’t stop him.” Admitting that to him was the hardest thing I’d done since packing my stuff and moving to Maine.

  He held his breath, and his heart thundered against my spine. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not.” I turned in his arms. “None of this is okay.”

  The corners of his mouth curved down, pain etched across his features. “No. No, it’s not. But what else can I say? Damn you for kissing my brother? I know you feel the bond with him, too. And I know you can’t help it.”

  The bond? Is that why I’m so drawn to Laith? To both of them? I buried my face in his chest. “I don’t want to feel… that with him. It goes against everything I know, and yet I can’t seem to fight it. Why didn’t I feel it before? Why now?”

  He tried to hide it, but I heard the agony in his voice. “It’s always been there. You just didn’t realize it. He can get into your dreams, work his way into your heart through your subconscious.”

  I pulled my head back, horrified at this new piece of information. “He can do that?”

  Maddox exhaled loudly and nodded. “We both can. But I was with you, so I never needed to.”

  “I. Don’t. Understand.” I stepped away, but he followed me, taking my face in his hands.

  “I’ll explain everything. You need to know what you’re up against. I should have told you before. I-I just didn’t want you to hate me.”

  My eyes glazed over with tears as I searched his. “Hate you? Why would I hate you?”

  “My family did this to you.” His voice cracked, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry, Ava.”

  Something about his reaction nagged at me. I had to know if what I felt was real or simply one of the side effects of the curse. “If not for the spell, would we have still been soul mates?”

  “Yes.”

  I reached up and tugged his face down to mine, bringing our lips together. The kiss was desperate, like the first gulp of oxygen after almost drowning. My lungs filled with him, and I could finally breathe. The draw I’d felt toward Laith all day shifted, and suddenly, my soul yearned for Maddox. I wanted to grab him and disappear where no one could find us. Yet in the back of my mind, the bond pulled me toward Laith. My heart had never been so full. Or so confused.

  My lips were tender and swollen by the time I tore them away from his. “What are we going to do?”

  His forehead rested on mine. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s just stay here forever.”

  He smiled. “Okay.”

  We stayed in the observation deck of the lighthouse long after the sun went down. I curled up on Maddox’s lap, listening to the sound of his heart and the waves beating against the rocks beyond the brick walls. We both fell asleep at some point, but thankfully, Laith had steered clear of my dreams for once.

  “We’re going to have to go back.” His voice was scratchy from sleep.

  “I know.”

  “But, Ava, there’s so much more I need to tell you. You have to be prepared, so Laith can’t take you by surprise again.”

  I nodded against his shoulder.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “God, I have no idea where to begin with this.”

  “Start at the beginning.” My pulse raced as I waited for him to speak the words that would change my life forever.

  He nodded and cleared his throat. “After Laith and I were born and our mother realized she’d, uh…”

  “Cursed you?”

  “Yeah. After that, she went crazy. Some said it was because of the consequences of the spell. Some said it was guilt.”