Chapter Five
I NEVER KNEW SUNSHINE COULD BE a weapon.
I opened my eyes and wow, it hurt.
I winced, trying to shield my face, but my arm wouldn’t obey. Everything hurt. My body felt dense and heavy as if it’d been torn apart and stitched back together all wrong.
Even breathing hurt—every inhale scraping like knives, and every heartbeat stinging with a thousand papercuts.
W-Where am I?
Squinting, I tried to focus on the dark beams, gauzy mosquito net, and familiar pearlescent walls—
Two golden eyes appeared above me, blocking the sunshine and giving me a reprieve. “Whisper—”
A rustling sounded close by, followed by the clomp of heavy boots.
The panther was shoved aside as another face filled my vision—this one just as familiar with bloodshot eyes, messy blond hair, and grooves carved deep into his skin as if he’d aged twenty years since we’d last met.
“You’re finally awake.” Dillon grabbed my shoulders and hauled me upright. “Thank fuck for that.”
Not good.
Not good at all.
The world sloshed, a rush of nausea made me flush with sweat, and the white nightgown I’d been dressed in weighed a hundred pounds.
“You certainly know how to piss me off.” Dillon glowered. “Three damn days you’ve lain here like a corpse! I was this close to taking you to the hospital. I would’ve had you there the second I found you, if only you were normal—”
My ears rang with a high-pitched squeal, blocking out the rest of his sentence. “Wait...” I tried to fight him off—to push him away so I wouldn’t embarrass myself by vomiting all over my bodyguard, but his fingers dug into my shoulders and...
I retched.
He cringed but didn’t let me go, almost as if he knew that the moment he stopped supporting me, I’d collapse.
At least nothing came up.
Not food, at least.
Only the thickest spray of the inkiest blood. It splattered over his black shirt and across the cloud-embroidered blankets covering my legs.
“Shit.” He supported me as I wobbled. “You alright?”
I licked my lips gingerly, trying to clean up my mess. I must look awful. “I’m really sorry, Dil—”
“Wait. Don’t ingest it.” Letting go with one hand, he reached into the many pockets of his jacket and pulled out a handkerchief. Dabbing my mouth, his face turned stony as tarry blood stained the white fabric.
Pocketing the mess, he grabbed a water glass on the bedside table and held it to my lips. “Here.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled, needing to wash away the awful metallic taste.
He was endlessly patient as I struggled to remember how to do such a simple task as swallowing.
The water was cool and refreshing, but for some reason, it refused to go down.
My throat closed up, my gag reflex kicked in, and my body vehemently denied even a single droplet.
I coughed again, clicking my teeth on the glass and convulsing in Dillon’s hold.
“Fucking hell, now what?” Dumping the glass back on the bedside table, he spilled it in his haste.
Gathering me close, he rocked me in his arms, patting my back like I was a child.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. Just breathe. I shouldn’t have given you liquids the moment you woke up. Just get your bearings first, alright?”
I appreciated his kindness, but his patting made fresh sickness roil. Having him this close felt wrong. Every inch of my body recoiled from him. I knew this man. I trusted him and loved him, but every part of me rejected him.
He made my skin crawl. His every touch was utterly abhorrent as if breathing in his air and feeding off his warmth betrayed the only one I belonged to.
He wasn’t mine.
He wasn’t right.
“Let me go.” I squirmed.
“You’re safe.” He held me tighter. “You’re back in Ashfall Cliff. We brought you back three days ago. You’re okay.”
I didn’t care about that. The only thing I cared about was getting free before I did something terrible.
I felt it building.
Felt the tether between me and the one person I was fundamentally born for, snarling and spitting, lighting up my insides, refusing to permit any other person to touch me.
“Dillon, stop—”
“No, you stop,” he snapped, cradling my head to rest on his shoulder.
“I’m absolutely furious with you. You slipped out during the night and almost died on me.
Again.” Pulling me back, he cupped my cheeks and held me tight for his scolding.
“I helped you harness the power inside you so you could stay safe, not go gallivanting into the forest and do who the fuck knows what. Do you know what would’ve happened if someone else found you? What they would’ve done to you?”
The wrongness intensified.
He was too close. Too fierce.
He wasn’t the one I needed.
He wasn’t allowed to—
Something icy and vicious snarled inside me. A different kind of power mapped the fragile rhythm of his pulse, traced the breakable beat of his heart, and ran a talon over the delicate thread keeping him alive in this world.
I could feel where his existence began and ended.
I saw how easy it would be to sever it.
Whisper snarled somewhere in the room as if he sensed me pulling on things that were never meant to be pulled. The sweet scent of death and decay filled my nose. Despicable urgings filled my ears to do it, end him, stop him from touching me by any means necessary because he wasn’t the one—
“Rook.”
Whatever nightmarish power rose inside me vanished. My soul locked onto that one word. Onto the voice and the man it belonged to.
The bed rocked as Lucien fought to sit upright, rising from the covers beside me.
Everything inside me settled and calmed.
He was here.
He was safe—
Batting Dillon away, I twisted to face him. “Y-You’re alive.” Urgency tingled in my fingertips to touch him. To prove that he wasn’t dead. Memories slapped me, one after the other. Of halting time, twisting fate, and then giving up my body in payment.
I shook my head, struggling to understand.
If he was here—if I’d truly been able to save him—how was I not dead? Wasn’t that the bargain I’d struck? Did something go wrong or somehow...right?
Whisper tiptoed over the blankets and pressed against Lucien.
“Thanks.” Giving Whisper a grateful grimace, Lucien used him to haul himself higher.
I couldn’t look away even as Dillon wrapped an arm around my shoulders to keep me from falling.
My heart refused to calm down, racing manically, ecstatically.
He’s truly alive!
Why wasn’t he acknowledging this miracle? How was he sitting there acting as if he was merely hung over from too much blossom wine, rather than returning to his body after it had dissipated into ash?
My head pounded as I studied his too pale skin, too sharp cheekbones. But it was his eyes that held me hostage—locking onto mine with violent possession, cutting straight through my weakness and haze.
In the depth of his pitch-black pupils, hunger swarmed. Hunger to touch me, talk to me—
He never looked away as he snarled quietly at Dillon, “Let her go.”
Dillon’s fingers flexed around my shoulder.
“You have exactly two seconds to stop touching her.” Lucien never looked away, unblinking and deadly.
“If I let her go, she’ll fall,” Dillon snapped. “You’re both extremely weak. Now that you’re awake, you need—”
“I said—” Lucien sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes narrowing with terrifying focus. “Let. Her. Go.”
Muttering under his breath, Dillon obeyed. He gritted his teeth as gravity went to rip me back down, but Lucien lashed his arm around me and yanked me close.
The second he touched me—the moment our bodies crashed against each other—the world blinked out.
Reality folded, darkness swooped, and that bond between us snapped desperately tight.
I stumbled as light fractured through the sudden dark.
I staggered forward on bare feet, no longer in bed but somehow standing.
A foggy, misty realm manifested around us, hushed and hollow. “What...?” Turning on the spot, the weakness I suffered disappeared. A rush of wintery power shot down my veins, giving me back what I hadn’t even realised I’d lost. “What...what is this place?”
It was as if we’d tripped into a snow globe—recently shaken by some invisible hand, sending the sky thick with flurries.
My heart kicked with questions, but I wasn’t afraid.
It felt almost homely...familiar.
My eyes caught on Lucien as I completed my circle. Fog swirled around his ankles, licking up the black trousers encasing his long legs.
The wretchedness of his exhausted face had been replaced with a glow of power.
Fire flickered in his eyes and embers warmed his skin from within.
His black shirt was unbuttoned just enough to reveal a triangle of his chest—a chest that was flawless and smooth without any sign of the broken vitalsync core.
Rushing toward him, I pulled aside his shirt and dragged my fingertips over his heart. “It’s gone! H-How is it gone?”
His eyebrows furrowed as he looked down and studied where I touched him. His frown deepened as his hand came up and locked around my wrist.
Snow flurried thicker as his gaze turned pitch-black with feral anger. “You.”
I tried to twist my wrist free, a small squeak falling free. “Me? What about me?”
“What were you thinking? What did I tell you, huh? What did I tell you would happen if you ever put yourself in danger again?”
I blinked, remembering our conversation on the terrace. The ultimatum he’d given me, half-drunk but deadly serious.
“Answer the question, Rook.”
I narrowed my eyes. “If you’re mad about what I did, I don’t care. I’m not apologising for saving your life, Lucien.”
“I’m not asking you to.” His tone turned black as night. “But you do owe me a promise to stay alive!”
“You’re the one who started it!” I yelled back, falling into a fight I hadn’t planned on having. “Did you honestly think I would accept you dying in my arms? Did you truly think I’d shrug, bury you, and then return to my life as if nothing had ever happened?”
“Yes!”
“Can’t you just say thank you? Can’t you accept that I love you so much, I would happily risk everything to save you?”