Marked By Masks and Secrets (Everlasting Possession #1)

66

KYLO

S he fucking poisoned me.

I opened my eyes. Eventually, feeling returned to my extremities. I started to wiggle my fingers, to flex my muscles. Bit by bit, my body woke back up.

The sun was still out, which meant that clearly not much time had passed. Whatever ingredient Evie had misread had worked to my advantage.

I replayed her final words to me over and over again as I regained my ability to stand.

She knew about Jacob. I’d broken her trust, and now she was done with me. She was going to try to break our bond even if the risky procedure hurt her.

Or, gods forbid, it killed her.

I’d never hated myself more. This was all my fault. I should’ve come clean. I should’ve told her how Jacob had watched a vampire attack her and had done nothing to help.

Most of all, I should’ve owned what I’d done like a fucking man instead of protecting her with lies of omission.

In the end, I’d merely been protecting myself.

And now Evie was gone. I could sense her rapid, frightened heart at the outskirts of Etherdale. No doubt finding someone with a firebird to take her to a blood witch in a different city. She hoped she could break our bond before I could catch up to her.

It wasn’t rage I felt as I rushed to the nearest firebird stable. No, it was grief.

The kind of grief I’d been avoiding feeling ever since I saw Princeton’s desecrated corpse. It was as if the color had drained from my world, the warmth from my cold immortal heart—the heart that Evie had resurrected.

With her love, her softness, her resilience, her fire.

I loved everything about that girl. Even the parts she hated most. The parts I’d never seen before but had tasted in her blood—tales of violence and a deep, buried wrath.

She had become my entire world. I couldn’t build this future I’d been working toward for decades without her by my side, without her laughter in my ear and her hand in mine.

And gods, I couldn’t breathe right without Evie’s trust.

The thought of her believing I was no better than her parents, just a violent, soulless manipulator who sought to use her for my own gain—it destroyed me.

Even more ruinous were the crippling visions of Aisling and Princeton that assailed my mind’s eye, permanent reminders of what happened to those I loved when I couldn’t protect them.

My lungs ached, struggling to reach satisfaction. I’d never felt more torn up and exposed, like a giant gaping wound of a man.

I bribed a stable worker and climbed onto the nearest firebird, a testy beast who was slow to warm up to my energy.

Probably because I’d never been more out of my damn mind.

The wind rushed by as she leaped into the air, wings spread wide. I focused on the erratic pumping of Evie’s heart, the way it had begun to speed up, beating far harder than normal.

I closed my eyes, imagining the worst, as always.

My angel needed me.

And I needed her more.

It was the shortest flight of my life when we reached the end of the blood bond’s invisible leash. I peered down through the trees as we approached.

“Down,” I commanded.

I made out multiple figures. My lip curled.

We skidded to a stop behind an old cabin and thicket of trees.

An ear-splitting scream sent me flying off the beast’s back. I ran, dropping my glamour as I used my vampiric speed.

No one saw me approach, because they were all looking at her.

The screaming blonde girl in a darling floral dress, lifted up midair as her eyes turned onyx. Her hair lifted like a halo, fit for an angel of death.

I had three seconds to understand what the fuck was happening before my witch girlfriend killed me.

One second to home in on the ripe scent of blood—coming from Idris’s motionless body and the pool of crimson under his skull. One second to cover him. One second to use every last drop of my power to erect a shield of shadow.

No time to think about how I hadn’t fed in days, muting my already poisoned strength.

Not when, through the veil of my darkness, I watched Evie finally explode.

Shadows shot from her open palms, her mouth, her throat, her chest. The afternoon sky turned so dark that it could be mistaken for night.

I couldn’t tell who was screaming anymore—Evie, her victims, or the shadows.

All this time, my angel had been a shadow wielder.

Because of course she was.

She annihilated each born and the witch one by one, as if playing with her food. Shadow limbs impaled, squeezed, rotted, and burned flesh.

It took considerable effort to peel my eyes off such an unexpected, captivating sight. But the sound of Idris’s faint, labored breathing pulled my focus back to him.

I let out a string of curses, my shadow shield wobbling and warping against wave after wave of Evie’s suppressed, anguished, backed up power.

I tore off my shirt, applying pressure to Idris’s wound. The shirt was immediately drenched through.

“No,” I whispered. “You can’t, Idris. Don’t even think about it. You hold on for me. Hold on for her .”

Idris’s eyes were glassy. But he was still conscious. He was in shock and losing far, far too much blood.

Trees were falling to the earth. Smoke was rising all around us, as if Evie was killing an entire plot of forest.

Everyone was already long dead. But Evie couldn’t stop—just as Princeton had warned.

She’s bottled too much in. Her magick is going to eat her alive, he’d said, the day of the cyclone.

I watched in utter horror as Evie hemorrhaged power and shadow, all that she’d been denying and suppressing.

I’d never seen such unfathomable beauty. I’d never seen such utter devastation.

“Evie, you have to come back down now!” I yelled over the rushing wind, the impossible gusts that had the entire world trembling and the sky heaving.

She was a dark goddess, a being that didn’t belong in this realm.

“Please, baby. If you don’t stop, you’re going to kill yourself! You’re going to hurt Idris! ”

Her hair fell back down to her shoulders. She blinked at the sound of her brother’s name, and for the briefest second, her eyes were back to their usual stormy gray.

But her heart was pumping too hard, her body wilting like a flower underneath the enormity of her power. Idris’s face went slack. I was caught between begging Idris to stay, pressing my blood-soaked shirt against his cracked-open head, and pleading with Evie as she hung suspended in the air, wrestling with the darkness of this world and all the rest.

Idris’s eyes closed. My shield began to rupture, a fissure rippling through the wall of shadow.

A rare tear slid down my cheek. I looked to the angel of death.

“Come back to me, baby. Hold on, Idris. Hold?—”

Thank you for reading Marked by Masks and Secrets. Keep scrolling for a note from the author and more information on Everlasting Possession Book 2, Claimed by Fangs and Darkness . If you enjoyed this book, I’d be grateful if you left a review.