Secret Legacy Read Online Free Page B

had become. Jarred would never leave her. Never judge her. He’d die for her, and she for him. It was an unshakableunion she suspected Sarah had once wanted to build with Metting—before he’d betrayed her.
    “Let’s go get your sister,”
Jarred said.
“I’ll anchor you here. I’ll make sure Metting brings you both back. I won’t let another dream rip you away from me.”
    Maddie let her mind linger for a moment longer, wanting Jarred to feel her need to stay. Then she looked down at Sarah’s sleeping form. She closed her eyes, reached deeper into the connection they’d rebuilt. She opened her thoughts more fully to Metting’s chilling determination, wrapped her consciousness in it, and sent her mind back into Sarah’s nightmare ocean . . .
    She could feel her twin identifying with the nightmare’s darkness. She could sense Sarah’s willingness to be absorbed in it, even to die in it, for the sake of a mystery child she insisted was in danger. Maddie could feel her sister’s mind slipping further away. And a part of her wanted to disappear into the dream’s darkness with Sarah. To fall away from the reality of how little chance their legacy had to be the healing, positive force Maddie had fought to make of her life.
    Embraced by the shifting currents of Sarah’s mind, it was easy to imagine a life of aimless drifting. They could both be free of the responsibility and the disappointment and fear and failure.
    “Careful, sweetheart.”
Jarred drew closer, both physically and mentally. His arms and mind wrapped tighter around Maddie, enveloping her with the love she could never leave behind.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
    His presence centered her, enabling her to safely connect with more of Sarah’s emotions.
    “You’re feeling the pull that’s bound Sarah to whereverher mind has gone,” Richard said. “Follow it, but stay focused on your connection to Jarred outside the dream. Join with Sarah’s mind, but be separate. Retain control of your own identity, just like our work in the lab.”
    “You’d better know what you’re doing,”
Maddie said to the shadow image of a menacing bird flickering beyond the dream ocean’s surface.
“Sarah doesn’t trust herself or me or, God knows, you. She just might prefer staying in this awful place to believing in anyone’s promises again.”

C HAPTER S IX
     
    “Sarah?” the voices called
.
Minds she couldn’t belong to and still follow Trinity. Voices insisting that she “Come back to us
. . .
”
    Sarah could feel her twin’s desperation. Maddie’s anger for how the Watchers had manipulated their lives until this madness was all they had left. Jarred’s energy was there, too. Calming. Soothing. Centering. Richard was closer than before. Stronger than all of them. Determined to keep Sarah’s mind under control.
    They were all refusing to—
    “
Let me go!” She drifted deeper into the ocean
.
    “
Never
. . .
” their combined thoughts pushed back.
    “
I’m not leaving until I find her,” she insisted.
    But the sea swirling around Sarah had grown more frigid. And the numbness made searching harder. It had been so long since she’d felt warm.
    “The light is here,” she reminded herself. “It’s on the other side of the door. I’m not quitting until—”
    “Whose light?” Maddie asked. “The ocean’s? The water’s trying to destroy you. Don’t trust it.”
    Sarah collapsed onto what felt like rocks covered in broken glass. The sea’s floor. There was no door in sight. There was nowhere left to look. She’d been waiting for weeks for thismoment. She’d lied to everyone, convinced she could find Trinity here on her own. Now she’d failed.
    “I was right there,” she said. “But I couldn’t
. . .
”
    “
I saw the door.” Maddie’s face became a reflection in the murky water. “We’ll get you back to the door, Sarah. We’ll find whatever is on the other side.”
    “
You know what’s there.” The dream choked Sarah