Chapter 26: The Ghost of a Garden
Ethan didn't hear the laughter of the girls. He was miles away, standing in the middle of a modern hallway but seeing a garden from 1867.
He remembered the way the sunlight had filtered through the weeping willow trees in Lexington. He remembered the sound of Leila’s silk skirts rustling against the grass as she ran from him.
"You can't catch me, Ethan!" she had laughed, her voice like silver bells.
"Don't be so sure, Leila Pierce!" he had called back, his human lungs burning with the exertion of the chase.
He had caught her eventually, his arms wrapping around her waist as they both tumbled into a bed of wildflowers. They had collapsed in a heap of tangled limbs and breathless laughter.
"I got you," Ethan had panted, looking down at her. Leila’s hair was a dark halo against the green grass, her eyes bright with a life that was already a lie.
"That you did," she giggled, reaching up to touch his face.
"You are so beautiful," Ethan had whispered, his heart full of a devotion that bordered on worship. "I mean it, Leila. I’ve never seen anything like you."
"You know I love you, right?" she had asked, her gaze boring into his.
"And I love you."
He had kissed her then—a passionate, desperate kiss that tasted of summer and a future he thought was certain. He didn't know that she had said the exact same words to Noah only an hour before. He didn't know he was a pawn in a game played by a bored immortal.