A Bond with the Dark (The Beautifully Broken Saga #1)

1. The Darkest Dark

1

THE DARKEST DARK

SAYAH

W aves of nauseating grief threaten to drown me.

This doesn't make any sense.

My mom isn't supposed to die.

The police say it was an accident; the fire started in the kitchen.

I can see Dan downing a bottle of rum while cooking and forgetting to turn the stove off. My parents are alcoholics—one of the reasons I am sober. But something about it doesn't sit right in my soul. It's crooked and wedged into a place that doesn't fit.

Five minutes have passed, and the phone is still lying in my trembling hand. The meaning behind the worst call I’ve ever received is slowly sinking in, and I'm waiting for it to annihilate me.

My mom and stepdad have perished in a fire.

Perished.

What an awful fucking word.

My mom is gone.

Everything slows, becoming boiling hot while a searing, soul-deep pain swells up inside me.

My bones are mush; they've melted. My face, arms, and feet feel like they’ve turned to liquid as I topple out of bed. In a compulsory gait, I amble toward the stairs where my knees give out, forcing me to tumble to the top step as I try to wrap my mind around this. Feverous tears spill from my eyes, and my breath hitches; overwhelming agony rips me apart from my marrow outward.

Another witch in our family has died by fire.

It is our way.

A witch's way.

I have to call Mama's sisters.

Fuck!

I have to tell my son, Gauge.

This is quite possibly the worst thing imaginable. This is Gauge’s first experience with death. And it’s hers.

Death.

That is the only word I can cling to.

My thoughts lapse into the aching silence.

My mom is gone, and the world is turning dull and dreary right before my eyes, leaving an irreversible hole in her wake.

It's three o'clock in the morning, two in Washington, which is too early to call my aunts.

What else is there for me to do right now? Go back to sleep?

There's not a chance in hell that's happening. My heart is fracturing; the shards are suffocating me, constricting my airways.

My mom died, and I'm just supposed to go back to bed, shut my eyes, and pretend like the world isn't ending. Like it isn't tilted on its axis or spinning around the wrong way. That gravity isn’t thrown off, or the air isn't broken.

I begin to sob, taking a sharp breath, but it does not quell the hitch I have in my heart. This suffocating feeling. The strangulating grief weighing down on me and crushing me alive. She was my best friend.

When I beat leukemia five years ago, my mom was by my side for every bone marrow biopsy, blood transfusion, lumbar puncture, and chemo treatment for two and a half years. My mom had been there for me through all my trauma. My first baby dying, my sexual assault, the abusive relationships, my son almost dying, my cancer—all of it.

There are no words that will suffice as a raft in this rogue wave that is monstrous and threatening, engulfing me within its treacherous waters. The crushes of heaven and Earth are weighing me down beneath that water, and the splintered moonlight is piercing, like a beacon I can’t reach because the waves are too strong.

I watch the snow billowing outside through the giant picture window in a stupor, rocking back and forth. My left hand is clutching my heart, trying to prevent it from leaping out of my chest. There's a pain in my jaw from crying so hard and gasping for air, screaming the next breath out.

Somehow, I find myself stumbling back to my bedroom. I collapse at the foot of the bed, my phone still in hand, as though it’s the life force keeping me anchored in this realm. If I drop it, I will become untethered and end up somewhere time, space, and walls don't exist.

The winds outside my window whistle.

It's unclear how long I lay on the floor, the darkness of the room closing in on me, the weight of my sadness crushing my bones and snuffing out my light. It takes all I have to peel myself off the carpet and retreat downstairs to get another weed gummy—my only vice. It helps me on the nights my mind wakes up and doesn't let me go back to sleep.

My drinking adventures began in my teens, but it never became a problem until I realized I was miserable in my marriage. Paired with the chemo that caused insomnia, the alcohol had me in a chokehold. When I finally managed to break free, I never wanted to return to its clutches.

I fill a glass of water and pad back to the living room, flicking the TV on. Mindlessly, I scroll through my different streaming services, trying to find something funny. Something comforting.

Friends.

The sitcom had been there for me in my darkest hours while I walked with leukemia, slaying the beast I fear will return for me one day.

Neither here nor there right now.

Right now, I have to focus on holding myself together while everything I know comes crashing down around me.

I let my mind relax while I watch my favorite show, losing myself in the quips and banter of the actors on the screen.

After three episodes, my eyes get heavy and I feel as though I could possibly sleep again.

As I drift off, I wonder if Mama will come to me tonight and tell me she made it safely to the other side.

But it isn't my mom who comes to me.

I'm standing in a field at the foot of the mountains, fog resting on the ground. The moon is high in the sky, illuminating the fog eerily in a pearlescent glow, like it is glinting off newly fallen snow. It looks like a field of fallen stars. A black shadow is silhouetted against the moon. Whomever he is, the savage aura about him runs me through to my bones.

His face slowly comes into focus. The merciless beauty of his face unhinges me with a sharp jawline, jet-black hair, and lashes that frame the most crystal-blue eyes I have ever seen. Behind the sinister smoothness in his smile, something beckons me to him. I try to marshal the thoughts to run but as much as I fear this, I’m afraid I will never want anything more.

My white dress billows out in front of me in a beguiled breeze as I await his approach.

Perhaps he is the angel of death, coming for me, too.

He's tall and muscular; his black shirt makes his eyes pop, striking against the dark midnight blue of the sky. The moon bathes his face in light, contrasting the midnight black of his hair. He looks formidable as he draws closer to me, something fatal in his eyes foretelling a disastrous end.

I should run.

“Hello, I’m Sebastian,” his cruel voice reverberates through our misty midnight encounter. There is beauty in the deadly, smooth cadence.

I freeze in place as all-consuming, all-encompassing passion weighs me down like gel in a heating pack, warm and heavy, soothing yet passionate. Wanting nothing more but for him to reach me, to pull me up and kiss me urgently as though his life depends on it, I beckon him closer with a glint in my eye.

“I'm Lasayah,” I hear myself respond. “But I go by Sayah.”

“A beautiful name for such a beautiful woman,” he speaks through luscious lips, but the words don’t register.

The danger in his eyes, the destructive darkness, is like looking at something terrible for you, yet wanting it all the more because of that. He is darkness, and I want to be in darkness with him.

He inches closer, his cool voice coaxing and enticing, sexy and deep, “Sayah, what are you doing in my dreams?”

In his dreams? Isn't this my dream? Is this a dream at all? How is this possible?

He reaches me.

My breath hitches.

He is more beautiful up close than he was far away. The smell of roses and violets swirls around me, reminding me of a wild menace. This has to be part of my protection spell, but what does this gorgeous man have to do with it?

“Am I in your dream, or are you in mine?” Even in the dim light, I feel myself pale two shades.

“Oh, love, you have been in many dreams of mine,” he laments. “Yet you have never spoken. Until now.”

The knowledge of what he means escapes me. English is the language he's speaking, but the meanings are foreign to me.

He leans in and my heart races, wanting those lips to press into mine more than I want to draw another breath into my lungs. His eyes sparkle with malevolence. He grabs my chin, and I brace myself for the kiss, letting the rushing warmth of love and lust consume every pore.

Who is this man, and why do I want to go to the ends of the Earth for him?

Suddenly, he turns my head, and out of the corner of my eye, I see fangs protrude from his cuspids.

He's a Vampire.

His breath lingers around the yielding hollow of my neck for a few seconds. His fangs puncture me, and warmth expands inside me. It begins at my toes and then enters my knees; the heat intensifies by the time it reaches my waist. When the feverish incalescence scorches my middle, the heat burns me. Crawling up my torso, it reaches my neck as flames burst from my skin, bubbling up from the inside, torturing me with the agonizing torridity.

I am burning alive, and the agony ripping through me is causing a pain I have never imagined I could ever feel.

Sebastian backs away; the hurt in the depth of his eyes is like watching someone falling off a cliff. Sorrowful, scared; his face contorted with a resonant grief.

It’s the last thing I see before the flames consume me.