Chapter 54
Ipressed my hands to my face, feeling mud in my hair, rain dripping into my mouth, swallowing the taste of earth, water, and my own despair. My vision blurred with my tears.
“I…I can’t…I can’t survive without it…without you…without…my light.”
The Harding Hunt had begun its masked maze hunt earlier today. I had watched Xanthy laugh and mingle, oblivious to what waited in the storm inside me.
She couldn’t see it. She didn’t know I wasn’t okay. I had deteriorated over the year. I didn’t belong to Alexandra Harding.
I belonged to the blood flowing through her veins.
Her brother.
He was mine to hold again. She was mine to destroy, and I would do just that if it released what I had been burying for a year.
It’s what he wanted. All he asked of me.
I was already a killer.
I stumbled back from the grave, the brown sludge clinging to my shoes, seeming to drag me under, pulling at my limbs to him below.
Every step I took back to my truck felt weighted, and every time I took a breath, it felt thick in my throat, choking me.
I imagined Carrington watching me from the sky. Maybe he wasn’t there at all, just the ghost I carried in my chest, the echo of what I’d destroyed and could never have again.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to the air around me, my hands pressed to my broken heart as I walked through the rain-soaked field.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Carrington. You were my light…
and it’s gone. And now…Now I can’t stop myself.
I want to accept the darkness. I need to feel you again.
I will do it. I will break her. For you. I will let the darkness in.”
The first row of hay bales rose ahead of me, slick with the downpour.
The maze loomed ahead of us, twisting paths disappearing into shadowed corners I remembered well.
My mind raced, replaying the past over and over—our memories, our fights, our touches, and the night I lost him forever.
All the blood, the pleading, the look in his eyes that haunted me for the rest of my miserable fucking life.
I remembered every time I had touched Xanthy over the past year, seeking comfort, seeking a tether to the humanity Carrington had left behind.
I felt hollow, and I couldn’t get through it without remembering she was a part of him.
That he wasn’t truly gone. I loved her because of him.
And now…she was the only thing standing between me and the darkness I had buried behind the mask.
The hunger he had left me with.
I paused at the maze’s entrance, Xanthy’s hand in mine. Our rings shone in the dim moonlight. Rain poured over our faces, mixing with the tears she couldn’t see, running down my neck and over my broken chest.
My hands trembled violently as the wind whipped at me, rain slapping into my eyes, yet all I could see was her. She didn’t know yet. She wouldn’t understand. But she would. She had to because it was the only thing that made sense.
The hunger coiled tighter. My chest constricted. My fists clenched. And I knew what I had to do.
I was going to take her. For him. Sacrifice the light like he wanted me to. I was going to make him mine forever. Make her feel what I had felt for the past year. She wouldn’t survive this. It needed to end. There was no light anymore for any of us.
The rain fell harder. The storm screamed in my ears. And for the first time in a year, I felt alive.
Not with joy. Not with love. Not with light.
I felt alive with the void inside me.
The darkness Carrington had left me.