Chapter 17
Hannah
Warmth. Smoke.
I float in the space between sleep and waking, like I’m swimming up from the depths of a dark ocean. My body is heavy and disconnected, making even opening my eyes feel impossible.
A crackling sound reaches me. Orange light bleeds through my closed eyelids.
Something is wrapped around me. Fabric that smells like woodsmoke and apple cinnamon.
Slowly, sensation returns. My fingers and toes are no longer numb. The forest floor beneath me is damp and cold, but whatever covers me has trapped enough warmth to stop me from shivering.
How long have I been out?
My skin tingles everywhere, and I’m throbbing between my legs. My lips are swollen from Julia’s kisses. Heat floods my cheeks as I remember how desperately I begged for her, how good it felt to come apart and let her take control, and how shamelessly I spread myself beneath her.
I’ve never experienced anything that intense before. Her power seemed to flow between us, consuming me, connecting us on a level I didn’t know was possible. Like she was inside my skin and my mind.
I keep my eyes closed for a long moment, reliving every detail. Her body pinning me down. The way I arched into her, giving her everything, letting her take and take until…
My eyelids fly open.
I sit up with a gasp, and whatever is covering me slides off my shoulders.
I’m completely naked.
A fire is crackling beside me.
“Julia?”
My voice carries into the darkness, swallowed by the trees. No answer. Just the pop and hiss of burning wood and the whisper of wind through bare branches.
I look down at what was covering me. Black fabric pools around my hips. Her cloak.
Something twists behind my ribs. She left her cloak to keep me warm. Built me a fire. That was…thoughtful.
But where is she?
I grab the fabric and pull it around my shoulders, suddenly desperate for the illusion of safety it provides. My fingers tremble as I clutch it closed over my breasts.
My chest tightens. Each shallow breath comes faster than the last. I press my palm to my sternum, trying to feel past the thunder of my heartbeat to the binding spell beneath.
Is it still there? Did we break it?
I can’t tell if this crushing sensation is magic or panic.
Aching everywhere, thirsty, and groggy from passing out, I scan the small clearing for my clothes. They’re discarded right where I shed them when I stripped down for Julia.
So she built a fire, left her cloak, but couldn’t be bothered to gather my clothes while I was unconscious? Or freaking stay with me?
I bite my lip to keep from screaming.
She left.
The minute she drank her fill of my essence and the spell presumably broke, she abandoned me, unconscious, naked, still wet between my thighs.
Hot fury roils inside me. Not just at Julia, but at myself for being so desperate. For feeling powerful in my surrender, for feeling chosen, for confusing magic with desire. For spending even half a second thinking what happened was meaningful, even though I knew we only did it to break a spell.
My cheeks burn with humiliation. I’ve never felt so used. Whatever that sex meant or didn’t mean, I deserve better than to be left on the forest floor.
My hands shake as I pull on my clothes, fury building with each jerky movement. The fabric is rough against my oversensitive skin. Every muscle and every inch of skin aches from what we did, from how thoroughly she claimed me.
I leave her cloak on the ground and storm through the trees toward Elizabeth’s house.
Branches catch my hair and claw at my skin, and I welcome the pain because at least it’s real and mine, not tangled up in her magic or her touch.
My body is still singing with the aftershocks of what we did, and I hate it. I hate how good it felt.
The trees blur past me. My feet pound harder against the frosty ground.
My breaths rasp so loudly I can’t hear anything else.
I want to find her to scream at her, to make her look at what she did and see me as something more than a convenient body to feed from.
I want her to feel even the tiniest shred of remorse, if she’s even fucking capable of that.
At last, I burst through the front door, my pulse pounding in my neck. I pause, listening.
A thump comes from upstairs. Then, a choking sound.
I race up the stairs two at a time.
Julia’s voice prickles my ears, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. I follow the sound through an open door into a dimly lit guest room.
Julia stands between the four-poster bed and the ensuite, a stride away from Rebecca, her outstretched hand crackling with magic.
The invisible force pins Rebecca against the bookshelf without a touch.
Rebecca’s feet dangle, her eyes bulging as she claws at the unseen noose suspending her.
She’s dressed in nothing but a long blue T-shirt, clearly hauled straight from bed.
“Final chance to help me,” Julia snarls.
Seeing her hair neat and her body clothed while I was lying naked on the ground a moment ago makes my face burn even hotter.
“Julia!” I shout, my voice hoarse with anger.
She spins. Her expression is wild, her eyes dark around the edges. Her magic flares when she sees me, darkening her fingers before she controls it. Then she casts me that wicked smile I’m beginning to hate.
“You’re awake.” Her tone is maddeningly casual, as if she didn’t leave me for dead in the woods.
“Next time you want to abandon someone after fucking them unconscious,” I snarl, “know that wrapping them in your cloak doesn’t make you less of a monster.”
Something unreadable flickers in her eyes before her expression hardens. She releases her magical hold on Rebecca, who crumples to the floor with a gasping cough.
As Rebecca wheezes and clutches her throat, Julia scans me up and down, her nostrils flaring. Her gaze lingers on my neck, bitten and bruised, and then my hair, tangled with leaves and twigs, before settling on my eyes. “I needed to confirm that the binding spell had been severed.”
“By leaving?” My fists are clenched so tight that my nails bite into my palms. “By seeing how far away from me you could get?”
Her gaze turns frosty. “What did you expect? That we would embrace tenderly after the spell broke?”
Shame washes over me so fiercely that my eyes prickle. I offered her my body, my life force, my submission, and she took it all before abandoning me the second she thought she was free.
It’s not that I wanted to wake up in her arms. Not really. But I didn’t expect to be abandoned.
My throat is too tight to say any of this, so I just stare at her, blinking back the hot prickling in my eyes. I refuse to cry and let her see how deeply this cuts.
She drops her gaze and turns back to Rebecca’s crumpled form. “Anyway, it didn’t work. We’re still bound.”
The words take a moment to sink in. A heavy sensation settles in my chest, and I step back. “That can’t be. I—I submitted like I was supposed to. Gave you everything.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
On the floor, Rebecca lifts a hand toward Julia, magic crackling. But Julia is too quick, sweeping Rebecca’s hand away without even touching her. Rebecca grunts and hits the bookshelf again, blood trickling from her nose.
My stomach drops. That feeding has clearly made Julia stronger. Too strong.
Footsteps thunder closer in the hall. Elizabeth and Riley burst through the doorway, out of breath.
Elizabeth is wearing a black nightgown edged with lace, with a black satin robe flowing open.
Riley is still in jeans and a white top under that crimson cloak, like she was nowhere near ready to sleep despite the late hour.
“Enough!” Elizabeth roars. With a sweep of her arms, she forces Julia and Rebecca apart, sending them flying to opposite walls. The whole room shudders, and books fall from the shelves.
“Hannah.” Riley’s voice breaks on my name, no more than a whisper.
I turn.
She’s staring at me like I’m something ruined. Her hand covers her mouth, and her wide, watery eyes trace over every visible mark Julia left. The bruises from her fingers and teeth. The scratches from the tree bark. The leaves tangled in my hair from when I lay spread beneath her.
My face burns hotter.
Julia gets to her feet, breathing hard as she fixes her hair. Rebecca is slower to stand, wiping blood from her nose. The three of them face each other in a triangle, the magic in the room so taut that it feels like the air is statically charged.
The grandfather clock downstairs chimes, and we all go still. Three in the morning. About four hours until the moon sets and I’m stuck as Julia’s pet forever. The binding spell tightens like a vise around my ribs, like it knows time is running out.
I catch Julia’s eye, seeing my own frantic questions reflected back at me.
What did we do wrong? Did I not submit enough? Was I holding back?
“Everybody out,” Elizabeth commands. She points to Julia with her fingers curled into claws. “Except you.”
Rebecca squares her shoulders and shoots Julia a deadly glare before obeying. She grabs a blue silk robe off the back of the door, then guides Riley out ahead of her.
As I turn my back on Julia, her voice stops me. “Stay close, pet.”
I scoff and keep walking, my spine rigid with barely contained fury.
I can’t tell if it was a threat or a joke. With Julia, nothing is sincere.
The moment we’re downstairs, where the front door is still open from when I burst through it, Riley whirls to face me with watery eyes.
“You surrendered to her.” It’s an accusation, not a question. Her voice is so broken, so hurt, that a flash of unexpected guilt shoots through me.
Rebecca ties a knot in her robe with jerky motions. She swipes her hand, and the front door slams so hard that the chandelier rattles. She paces the foyer, clenching and unclenching her fists as if itching to blast something with magic.
I look past Riley, where an oval mirror hangs behind one of the cat statues. The woman staring back at me is almost unrecognizable.
My hair is a wild tangle, leaves and twigs caught in the strands like I’ve been dragged through the forest. Dark bruises bloom across my neck in the clear shape of Julia’s fingers. Scratches rake down my collarbone and arms. My lips are swollen.
I look ravaged. Like someone who begged a monster to devour her.
Humiliation burns through me so intensely that I have to look away.
But I tamp down those feelings, refusing to be embarrassed that everyone in this house knows what we did.
It’s not my fucking fault I’ve been bound to a sanguine witch.
“Don’t look at me like that, Riley. You broke up with me.
And it’s not even like that. I did what I had to in order to get my freedom back. ”
“Did it work?” she asks, her tone telling me she already knows the answer.
My jaw tightens.
The silence that follows is suffocating. My rage is still there, coiled tightly, but it’s bumping up against the reality that I’m running out of time and options. The fury doesn’t change the fact that I’m still bound to Julia. Still trapped.
Riley takes my hands. “Hannah, please don’t try it again. There must be a way to break the bond that doesn’t involve her feeding on you. Right, auntie?”
Rebecca glances at her. “Surrender is the only way.”
“But—”
I pull away from Riley. “This doesn’t concern you.”
I can’t stand the pity in her eyes. It’s the last thing I need right now.
“It does,” Riley insists. “I love you, and I won’t watch you become another Charlotte.”
I furrow my brow. “Another who?”
Rebecca stops pacing. Riley goes very still. Even through my anger and exhaustion, I can feel the shift. A creeping dread settles in my stomach like ice.
“She didn’t tell you,” Rebecca says, almost inaudible.
My heart stumbles. “Tell me what?”
“What she did to my sister.”
Between her dark tone and the knowing glance they exchange, I’m not sure whether I want to hear this.
She moves closer, and I fight the impulse to step back. Having Riley beside me is a small comfort.
“Auntie, don’t scare her,” Riley says, but Rebecca slices her hand through the air to silence her.
“She deserves to know.” Rebecca’s eyes bore into mine. “Charlotte deserves to have people know.”
Riley bites her lip.
Rebecca moves even closer, her hands glowing with pale light. The room swims around me, and I sway.
“What’s happening?” I ask, my voice wobbling.
“Auntie…” Riley says, sounding far away.
A sliver of another room ripples into my vision, like peering through blinds. Ornate picture frames and bone china on the walls. Bright yellow wallpaper.
I want to back away and refuse whatever Rebecca is about to show me. But I can’t move. I need to know who Julia really is.
So I let Rebecca come closer. I stand still and squeeze my eyes shut as she presses her glowing palms against my temples.
The world dissolves.