Marked By Masks and Secrets (Everlasting Possession #1)

58

EVIE

A n arm looped around my waist, dragging me back.

“No,” I gasped. A scream lodged in my throat that never fully formed.

Kylo spun around at the sound of my voice.

The raw devastation in his features killed something inside of me. My heart felt like it was physically breaking as I studied the grief in his eyes, the way his beautiful features were twisted with rage and ruin.

The cloud of shadows grew darker, more violent, as they swirled around us in fits of screams and cries.

“Let me go,” I cried. “Let me be with him.”

I swallowed the urge to puke, trying not to look at Princeton’s lifeless, desecrated body. I only stared at Kylo.

“Evie, gods,” Kylo said bitterly, glaring at me. “Let her go, Blade.”

As soon as Blade released me, I launched myself through the bloodthirsty shadows and into Kylo’s chest. The sudden movement had black splotches encroaching on my vision, but I blinked the light-headedness away and suppressed the strong urge to retch.

Kylo was rigid, trembling softly with power or heartbreak—likely both. I hugged him tightly, and he eventually hugged me back.

“Why can’t you just listen ?”

The volume and the intensity of his tone made me wince. I took a deep breath.

“Because I love you,” I said, my voice shaking.

“Fuck,” Kylo rasped. His anger morphed into something else as he held me tighter, a tremor rolling through his tall form.

I didn’t care if he was angry with me. At least he was no longer stuck in that stupor, staring at Princeton’s corpse.

My sensitivity had always been a plague. On my family, on Jacob, on myself . But it was my sensitivity that allowed me to stand here and feel Kylo’s pain with him, my heart bound to his. Wave after wave of darkness crashed against us, bleeding from both of our combined wounds. But I didn’t let Kylo go.

I didn’t run.

A shift happened in the energetic environment. Kylo began to put himself back together, fury racking through his lethal form.

“Angel, I need you to listen to me, okay?”

He still didn’t sound like himself. It tore open my heart to hear and feel his brokenness, his abject horror, as the scent of death grew ever stronger.

“Okay.”

“If you want to help me, you need to let Allie take you back home— our home, where you will be safest right now,” he said, a desperate edge in his voice.

He pulled back, staring into my eyes with a severity that shook my bones. His beautiful features were tormented, even as he continued to maintain his cool, dominant authority.

His lip trembled. “You will stay there , and wait for me, so that I can—” He faltered.

My heart clenched, and I didn’t need him to continue. I just nodded. “I will. Don’t worry about me.”

Tears poured from my eyes, but I suppressed the building sobs. I couldn’t be selfish and take up any more emotional space. Not now. Kylo didn’t need anything else to worry about. I wiped the tears away.

Even if I wanted to stay with him, to be strong for him like he was always so strong for me, my desires didn’t matter in this moment.

Not with Kylo’s oldest friend, healer, and mentor brutalized and crucified on the wall behind him.

Kylo shook his head as he stepped back from me. “I hate that you’re here. Gods, I fucking hate it.”

I flinched as if he’d struck me.

When Harmony approached, I didn’t resist her.

“I’m sorry, Kylo. I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice cracking.

He didn’t say anything as I left the room. I avoided catching another glance at the grotesque murder scene.

Not that it mattered. The image would be with me forever. It was about time my nightmares were fed new fuel. They were getting repetitive.

And I knew that was what Kylo had meant, that he hated me being in that room. He hated that I’d psychically injured myself to be with him.

But the words stung regardless, in a way that was deeply subconscious. When Harmony passed me off to Allie, she squeezed my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Harmony. It was a useless thing to say, but the only thing I could think of.

She nodded, her face crumpled. Every last drop of her sunshine had been drained away.

My bodyguard was stoic as she led me out of the dungeon. I’d never felt more useless and ill-fitting. A clunky burden in a space that had no room for me.

The image of Princeton flashed in my mind, over and over, until I couldn’t breathe. I threw up on the street, tears staining my face, my dress, my soul.

Allie waited patiently for me to finish heaving, not uttering a word.

My vision was blotchy, my body still recovering from blood loss. But I made it back to Kylo’s estate before I let the darkness take me. It was a welcome reprieve from the deep, unrelenting sadness squeezing my shattered heart.

I spent the entire next day woozy, sick, and anguished. The house was eerily still and quiet without Kylo here. It took immeasurable effort to drag myself out of bed and feed myself and drink water.

But I did it. For him. Because I refused to give Kylo any more stress or concern. I pretended like I wasn’t dying inside, my brain consumed with worry for him, for Harmony and Blade and the rest of his inner circle.

I sat on the couch, my knees pulled up to my chest, just staring at the wall as my mind worked and worked and my stomach threatened to empty itself again.

Were they in danger? How in the world could something like that happen? To Princeton ?

Oh gods. The gravity of the situation was a crushing weight on my chest. The fact that the born had actually accomplished their directive, to kill the backbone of the Masked Order—I didn’t even know how to process it all.

The grief, the terror, the harsh dose of reality.

I’d somehow found myself directly in the center of everything I’d grown to hate. Violence had closed up all around me, while I’d been too drunk on love and venom to care.

My reactive urge, of course, was to go to Idris. To compulsively make sure he was still safe, to soothe the paralyzing fear that had been fortified and nurtured since the day I was born.

But I couldn’t do that to Kylo. No matter how much I wanted to revert to my old self and her defensive coping mechanisms—to run from all of this and never look back—my need to be here for him trumped it all.

I couldn’t do that to him. Especially not now.

Kylo didn’t come home until late in the night. I’d fallen asleep on the couch, woken up by a broad hand on my forehead.

“You feel feverish,” Kylo murmured, moving a strand of hair behind my ear.

It took me several seconds to remember our new reality, and the moment I did, I spoke quickly. “No, I’m okay.”

I sat up, and the world spun violently. My stomach lurched. I shut my eyes tight. My hands balled into fists as I found my balance again.

Kylo grabbed my hands in his, slowly unfurling my fingers. When I opened my eyes, I realized he was kneeling in front of me.

“This is my fault,” he said. “You needed aftercare. I should’ve sent a healer. Gods, I’m so sorry, Evie. I left you completely alone and?—”

I cut him off. “Kylo, please. I don’t blame you. Please don’t feel any guilt over me right now.”

The lack of sleep was evident, despite his ageless vampiric beauty. Or maybe it was grief that haunted his features, underneath his impenetrable mask of strength.

“You’re under my care. Of course I will feel guilt for neglecting you like this.” He looked down at our interlocked hands. “Time was moving differently. It can do that, in the underground…” He cleared his throat, abruptly rising. He rubbed his face, his eyes utterly haunted. “I’ll be right back.”

I wanted to follow him, but I was scared vertigo might send me to my ass and ruin all hope of convincing Kylo that I was all right and his guilt was unfounded.

This was not my plan. I’d wanted to be his rock when he returned. He was the one who needed care, not me. Shame burrowed in my gut the longer I listened to him moving about the kitchen.

When he returned, he was carrying a mug of something that smelled potent. I recognized the herbal qualities immediately as I read its magickal signature. It was a healing tincture, for both the body and mind.

He also set a glass of water on the table, followed by a sandwich.

“Drink this first,” Kylo said, handing me the mug. “And don’t bother lying about being fine, because I know you’re not. What I want right now is for you to let me take care of you.” His lip twitched, intensity eclipsing his deep blue irises. “That is the only thing I want .”

I couldn’t deny him. Not when so many cracks were forming in his mask, unfathomable torment and sadness bleeding through like those screaming, wrathful shadows.

I only nodded, settling into Kylo’s lap while I sipped the tincture. His arms around me brought selfish tears to my eyes, remembering how it felt to still be flooded with his venom, alone, plagued by that horrifying vision of brutality between states of consciousness.

Kylo brushed his lips against my forehead.

I didn’t blame him for needing to attend to clan matters in the wake of Princeton’s death. But I was grateful he was here now.

“It doesn’t feel real,” Kylo whispered. “I’m scared to sleep, because I don’t want to wake up and remember. ”

I understood. Gods, I understood.

“I’m here,” I said. “Whatever you need, I’m here.”

I finished the tincture, moving slowly to set the glass down on the coffee table. Then I looped my arms around Kylo’s neck, feeling his impossibly soft black strands of hair beneath my fingertips.

His eyes were glassy, his lips turned down. I’d never seen him look so vulnerable, so scared.

It reminded me of the event that had brought him here. What he’d witnessed the born do to his best friend, when he was only a child.

The horror that Princeton had helped heal him from, only to end up meeting the exact same fate.

My heart broke for Kylo. It was physically panging in my chest, pain that echoed in the space between us until it was one shared wound.

“Thank you, angel,” Kylo rasped, his jaw feathering. “Your presence is more than enough. My only ask is that you move in with me. We—” he faltered, shadows escaping him to wrap around me protectively. “We don’t know enough about what happened for me to be certain of your safety. We believe he was killed by a fellow witch, a born plant. I know that this is a big ask, but I can’t risk it.”

Kylo’s expression pierced straight through me. It cut through all of my paranoia about moving too quickly, my doubts about leaving Mena or giving up too much of myself, my space, my spell room and my garden.

I opened my mouth to protest, but those deep blue eyes pooled with tears effectively dried up the words on my tongue.

“I can’t lose you,” he whispered, his voice raw.

I pressed my forehead to his. “Okay. Until we know more. I’ll stay with you.”

I felt Kylo’s exhale in my own lungs. If this was what he needed from me, then I had to do it.

“You don’t have to be strong for me,” I said. “You can be anything you need to be.”

Kylo swallowed. “I can’t let them win, angel. I need to be strong for the world now.”