Chapter Two
I WOKE WITH A VIOLENT COUGH.
Air scraped down my throat like broken glass. My entire body convulsed as if my bones were being forcibly rebuilt, my skin stretched too tight over newly formed sinew, and organs rearranged as if they’d been tossed out and replaced.
Every breath was agony...
I tried to move but a bolt of electricity ripped down my back as if my spinal cord wasn’t properly attached to whatever nerve endings existed.
I groaned as everything flashed hot then cold then heavy. So, so heavy.
Opening my eyes took a herculean effort. Trying to focus took far too much energy. My sight flickered and fritzed, behaving as if it wasn’t just my spine that’d forgotten its purpose, but my pupils too.
What the hell is going on?
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to focus and—
White.
Dense, swirling white as the fiercest blizzard howled around me. I quaked as icy cold cut into me with venomous teeth, stealing what meagre strength I had and making me shudder. My bare skin burned from the cold. My fingers and toes ached with frostbite.
I couldn’t understand.
Why was I naked in a storm? How did I get here?
I fought to sit up. My heavy, sluggish limbs reluctantly obeyed but my mind stayed sticky with confusion. The lingering exhaustion felt as if I was either dying or coming back from the dead—
Something rolled off my chest and into my lap, wrenching my eyes downward.
My heart stopped midbeat.
For the worst second of my existence, I didn’t recognise her.
I had absolutely no recollection of the woman sprawled over me. A woman with blue lips, frosty eyelashes, and a naked body that seemed to be half in this world and half somewhere else.
My inherent dislike of being touched by others made my skin crawl as she lay unmoving across my lap.
No breath. No heartbeat.
Who the hell was she? Why would—?
I cried out as my skull suddenly shattered with memories.
The chaos, the fire, the volcanoes, the burning.
Grabbing my temples, I rode through an implosion of excruciating pain as everything returned.
Falling in love with her in Cinderkeep.
Healing her when she fell over the falls.
Taking her virginity as our energy merged.
Destroying everything when I went up the mountain alone—
“R-Rook?”
Her head lolled as I sat higher. Turning her over, I tipped her up to face me. “Rook?”
She looked so serene, so...dead.
Bone-tearing pain fisted my heart. A breathless howl escaped as yet more memories tore through me.
All the prisoners I’d failed to save.
Whisper running away.
Marcus screaming as the fire tore him limb from limb—
“Rook!” I snatched her with wobbly arms. “Open your eyes.” Cradling her close, I couldn’t fucking breathe. Half of her was real, but the rest...
Fuck, what had she done?!
Her left arm still looked marginally human but the other...that had dissolved into a cloud of hovering snowflakes, becoming one with the swirling storm. Her hair was no longer black, but shock white as if she’d used every dregs of power, leaving her with nothing.
Pressing my fingertips to her throat, I begged to feel a pulse.
Nothing.
Savage guilt broke me as her skin turned translucent, revealing the ivory of her ribs, the tapestry of her veins. Flecks of frost broke away from her cheekbone, slowly erasing her, piece by piece.
“Don’t you dare.” My arms tightened as I hauled her higher into my embrace. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me—”
A tremor ran down the visible beads of her spine. Her left collarbone fractured like fragile glass.
“Rook!”
Instinct had me reaching for the fire that’d tortured me all my life. To slam heat into her and erase the cold stealing everything but...
Nothing.
Not a single flame or spark.
That...wasn’t possible.
It had to be there. It had to be. It was the only thing that could save—
A concussive blast exploded from her.
It slammed into me with a teeth-rattling punch, knocking me flat on my back.
Scrambling upright, I grabbed her close again.
Her skin broke apart with the brightest light.
Silver and white, sterling and blinding.
The hair on the back of my arms stood up as she seized in my embrace.
Another shockwave of power escaped as her hair twirled, unravelling like ribbons, vanishing into the arctic wind.
“Rook!”
What the fuck was I supposed to do?!
Resting my cheek on the top of her head, I smoothed down her long hair, trying to hold all her pieces together as she continued to shatter. “Wake up. You have to wake up.”
Everything about her was wrong and cold and...empty.
Flinging open every barrier I still had between me and the torturous fire, I commanded it to obey me and help her.
My heart coughed with smoke. The tiniest flame spluttered out as quickly as it sparked.
The fire—the same power that’d made my entire life a misery—chose that moment to abandon me.
I wouldn’t let her die.
I’d told her that.
She would never be free of me because I wouldn’t fucking allow it.
“You’re not leaving.” Sinking into the smoky chambers of my heart, I commanded the fire to answer. It spluttered weakly again, giving me a single ember.
Fuck, why?
Why was it so weak? What the hell happened to make me this useless?
My pulse pounded as Rook kept slipping.
What else was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to stop her dying?
Blood.
Hurry.
“You’ll be okay.” I brought my wrist to my mouth and tore like a beast. Blood welled—not gold like before or even crimson, but a thick, tarry black that looked as if I’d been dead for decades.
I didn’t care.
Pressing the bleeding wound to her blue-tinged lips, I begged, “Just a few sips, alright? Drink and you’ll wake up.”
She didn’t react.
Black blood smeared her lips.
But it was fine. More than fine. How many times in the past had she refused to swallow?
“It’s fine.” I forced a shaky smile. “See? I’ll do it for you.” Sucking on bitter, ashy blood, I held the mouthful on my tongue. Bending over her, I hinged her jaw open with my hand and released the sooty liquid into her.
Her skin accelerated its decay.
Her other arm exploded into snowflakes.
“Stop it! Wake up!” Cupping her cheeks, I smeared more blood on her perfect frosty skin. If I painted her in my lifeforce, perhaps she’d heal like she had when I’d poured blood into her punctured lung by the river.
I shook with horror and hope as I ran my seeping wrist over her forehead and chin. But...her skin continued transforming into twinkling dust, erasing her from my reach.
“Damn you, Rook! Don’t do this.” Snatching her close, I smashed my lips to hers, kissing her ruthlessly hard. “You can’t. I won’t let you.” Forcing breath into her lungs, I half kissed, half begged her.
And she didn’t respond at all.
It was like kissing a ghost.
A broken sound tore out of me as I kissed her again and again.
“What did you tell me, huh? You said if I died tonight, you’d die with me, right?
Well...same. If you dare die on me, I’m coming after you.
I’ll tear apart whatever afterlife exists until I find you.
But I’d rather have you here. With me. Alive. So fight. Fight, damn it!”
Her back arched as the death throes found her. Just like on the riverbank when she’d reached the end, I fought for a way to stop it. But unlike the time where we triggered an ascension and somehow healed each other, this time...I had no power to call upon and no miracles to use.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t watch her die.
I couldn’t sit here and be so fucking helpless.
Placing what was left of her onto the snowy earth, I crushed her beneath me and gave her all my weight. I begged the fire in me to kindle. I snarled at it to burst into the warmest hearth—to heat her and balance her and bring her back to me...
But it completely forsook me as her eyelashes disappeared and her entire body became frost instead of flesh. “You die on me and I’ll never forgive you, do you hear me?”
Pressing my lips to hers, I murmured, “I will literally commit every atrocity imaginable if it means I get to keep you so...you better wake up and stop me.”
If the fire refused to give me power, then...I would take it. I would snatch it from others by using something worse. Something unforgivable. I didn’t care that it might kill me in the process. I didn’t care that it would definitely earn me a place in hell.
I sank into myself. I went deeper than the fire, past all the anger and grief, and hauled on a completely different type of power. A power I’d felt when I’d been on the cusp of death—a power that ensured I could become the most monstrous thing in existence.
My ears rang with a million heartbeats. I heard the trees screaming as they burned. I felt animals dying as they succumbed to their injuries and...I snatched up all their souls and hoarded them.
I used the battleground where so many were slain, claiming each and every one. I shuddered as I grew stronger with every life I claimed, feeding off the trees and flowers, birds and critters. Each soul filled up the wrongness inside me, making me thrum with mind-warping power.
Brushing white strands off Rook’s mostly vanished cheekbone, I pressed my forehead to hers, slammed my hand over her frost-flecked heart, and arrowed everything into her.
She arched violently.
Pain blasted through me as if I’d disrupted the very fabric of the universe. Something ripped open in my chest—
The storm froze mid-flurry as the bond between us turned into a pathway made of sunlight and starlight, welding our spirits back into one.
My entire soul reacted, lurching with savage desperation.
I kept feeding Rook as much energy as I could. I claimed the faintest heartbeats of insects. The quietest flutter of reptiles. I used everything.
The faintest scent of ice-crushed petals and frozen honey filled my nose.
I recognised that scent.
That wondrous flavour of her.
Light fractured from her chest, illuminating the suspended snowflakes.
The tether between us strengthened, weaving around our hearts until there was no escape. No place she could hide from me. No thought or secret I couldn’t read.
I felt her on the other side.
Felt her fighting to get back to me.
With a choice that would paint me entirely as the villain, I stopped seeking souls to feed off and fed on life itself. I dug it out of the earth and tore it out of the air.
I devoured every shred of energy I could and fired it directly into her.
The bond snapped tight.
The blizzard ceased and the world went deathly still.
Agonisingly slowly, her body reversed its disintegration. A cloud of snowflakes descended over her as her body healed—rebuilding itself from snow to bone. Her hair bled from white to black. Her lips lost their blue tinge.
Bit by bit, she returned to me, and with an earth-shaking boom that echoed off the mountain peaks, everything suddenly...stopped.
The cost of what I’d just done made nausea claw up my throat.
I’d just murdered hundreds in return for one...
And I would do it all over again because I had no intention of ever letting her go.