MAJOR ARCANA: Part Three, Chapter 13

Hollow Lake

Major Arcana is a serialized novel for paid subscribers. For more details, both about the novel and about subscriber amenities, please see the Preface. Previous chapters are accessible (in reverse order) under the Major Arcana tag.

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PART THREE

Chapter 13. | Hollow Lake

If she’d thought Jacob Morrow was weak because he wanted to die for her—to die, literally, in her stead—she would not have allowed him to do it. She would not even have continued speaking to him. He was the first person she’d met since Ari Alterhaus she could have a real conversation with, though he, his apparent optimism and simplicity, stood at the opposite pole from Ari Alterhaus’s elaborate moroseness. Somehow, after only a few days—after only a few hours—she never wanted to stop speaking to him; she didn’t want to speak to anyone else. If she didn’t know he needed to die, needed to die alone, without her, that she had to live to be his witness, she would have done anything to keep him alive or would have followed him into death. It wasn’t desire. She felt no desire for him—no disgust and so no desire. If he could have persisted as a voice in her head, it would have been enough.