Chapter Twenty-Six
Haide
Complete and total silence.
Creed’s magic presses against my forehead as he seeks entry, searching for the truth that he clearly finds. “What exactly are you trying to say?”
“That you’ve got a problem.”
He gets in my face. “You are my fucking problem, little girl,” he hisses so only I can hear. “And he will see the truth soon.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I will make him.”
Anger, hot and swift, sweeps through me, and I’m five seconds from seeing if that little knife trick will work again. Only this time, I’ll take the handle in my palm and drive it through this asshole’s neck.
But before I can try, the cavern opens abruptly, a hollow pocket carved into the hillside.
The scent shifts; the rot is still there but it’s mixed with a metallic tang.
Only that’s not all. There is something beneath it.
something that doesn’t fit but is distinctly familiar.
Threading through the stench like a whisper of salt.
Ocean water.
I close my eyes and it’s as if I’m back on the island. My breath snags at the thought, chest locking for a beat.
An unexpected panic slices through me—because what the hell?
Since when did the idea of going back become a feeling of dread?
It’s not like I want to stay here.
Right?
A narrow opening yawns to the left, barely wide enough for one person at a time.
Knight ducks inside first, leading the group, and I go to follow when I realize Legend isn’t at my side anymore.
He stands several paces back, leaning against the stone wall, head down, his breath leaving him in heavy spurts.
“You good?” I ask, unease sweeping low in my stomach.
Worry.
That’s worry I’m feeling.
Why? I don’t…care about things. Especially not people.
Legend lifts his eyes, lids low but pupils wide. “Just tired,” he murmurs, pushing off the wall with a lazy, unfocused shove. “A little out of it, but nothing for you to worry about, little monster.”
My stomach curls tighter, because somehow, and without a shadow of a doubt, I know he’s full of shit. Something is wrong.
I take a step toward him, but Creed’s voice echoes behind me. “Move your ass, brat!”
Sighing, I let my shoulders fall. Legend grins, leaning in and sliding his lips across mine before tugging me along.
But his lips are…wrong. Warm instead of molten.
“Come on, mate.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to argue, to deny that word but…something keeps my lips pressed shut and I don’t want to think about what it is.
We push into the “murder zone.” I take in everything in my line of sight, which isn’t much at first glance, only small, glowing circles.
Sinner sees me looking and steps closer. “Magical markers Vicente placed when the bodies were discovered. They mark where the evidence once was or collected from.”
I nod, and I can feel my senses sharpen like they’re not my own as I study the place the hunter the island made of me.
Claw marks decorate every surface, but they’re not defensive and they didn’t come from a dragon. The gaps between are too narrow and there are five, like the hand of a gifted after a shift. What it shifted into, I can’t say for sure.
The marks run vertically and horizontally. Crisscrossed. They’re upward and downward and across every surface with zero finesse. This isn’t outrage, not in the literal sense anyway.
“He’s trying to get someone’s attention,” I mutter.
“He?” London looks my way, tossing a piece of broken brick to the side. “What makes you say ‘he’?”
I shake my head, a frown forming. “I don’t know.” But I’m sure of it.
I can almost feel the turmoil coming off the surface in a thick, invisible fog. A fog that seems to be washing over only me and not the others, both weighing me down and stroking along my spine like the touch of a lover.
My toes tingle in my boots and I fold them over in my socks, trying to make sense of the strange pull in my chest that I’m not so sure belongs to me.
A pull to what, though? Because I can’t grasp onto anything else on the other end. It’s like it’s torn or missing something and it longs to get it back.
The thought makes me frown, and I can sense the watchful eyes of the others, so I scowl my expression as best as I can and turn to take in the other side, telling myself I’m just tripping out.
That I’ve been around dragons all my life, so maybe I’m just more in tune with the place they call home than the royals are.
Yeah, because that explains the shitstorm in your head, Haide. Focus.
Thick black tar ribbons down the wall behind Legend. It moves, slow and deliberate, like it’s alive. Like something beneath the stone is flushing it outward.
Desperation claws at my insides, its source unknown. Those ribbons run fast; they tie and tangle. The lines crawl across the rock, twisting, linking, until they settle into a shape. No, not a shape, but words.
No, not words…a message.
I’m getting impatient, Hellpet.
A shiver runs down my spine.
I step closer and reach out.
A hand clamps around my wrist, taking me to the side until I’m face-to-face with Creed.
“What the fuck did you just do?” he seethes, grip tightening.
“What?”
His hand jerks to the wall, his gaze even more accusing. “That! How the fuck are you doing that?!”
My brows jump and I look back at the words, only they’re gone. Nothing but the black veins slithering angrily along the stone.
Creed yanks me harder and their speed increases.
“I don’t think it likes when you touch me.”
“What—” He grips me with both hands now, his hold punishing but just as quickly, it goes lax. A sharp line forms between his brows. His head yanks toward his brothers, and his face morphs into horror.
Sinner grips his head. Knight struggles to hold on to London.
“Oh no,” I mutter, running to Legend, who looks even worse than he already did.
“Creed,” I breathe, leaning to Legend’s side. “The flowers. You removed them, right? Locked them away somewhere, at least? You know, with the bodies?”
“What do you mean?” Knight demands, even his voice sounds distant, fading at the edges.
“I mean…” I take a step toward them. “They were removed, right?”
“Haide.” London’s voice cracks. “What was the first symptom again?”
I don’t have to say it. They’re figuring it out now.
Her eyes widen. “But no one touched anything.”
I wince. “Yeeah… Did I forget to mention you don’t have to touch them for them to infect you? That’s why they’re called the Isle’s Kiss. They infect the very air, just like the scent of salt water.”
“No,” Creed denies, but he’s already struggling to stay on his feet. “Our men were here. They came and took the bodies. Mental memories were created and stored for extraction. They all walked out just fine.”
“Because they were full.” They just keep staring. “Oh my gods. Listen Royals, they are soul eaters. They eat souls. They had already eaten when they came to get the bodies, but now—”
“They’re hungry,” Creed mutters, head snapping toward the exit. “We have to move.”
All at once, everyone runs, but they make it only a few feet before they start to crumble.
“Fuck. A portal,” Sinner panics.
“But you said the dragons—”
“Shut the fuck up.” He throws his hands out but nothing happens, his eyes blowing wide. “Knight!”
Knight lurches forward with a sound torn straight from his diaphragm. With one hand braced against the wall, he uses the other to try to carve a portal. His magic fizzles uselessly at his fingertips, sparks scattering and dying before they even form.
London staggers next, her breath catching mid-step. Her pupils flare black, drowning in ink, then flicker back to normal in a frantic pulse that screams loss of control. She reaches for Sinner but her fingers barely graze him before her knees give out.
Sinner tries to pull her upright, only to choke on air so heavy it seems to clot in his throat. His hand clamps around her arm but there’s no strength behind it—not enough to hold her, barely enough to hold himself.
Creed lasts seconds longer, shoving past them all in a last attempt at the exit. He manages two steps before his shoulders lock, his spine seizing, and he slams a palm against the cavern wall to keep from collapsing entirely. His head whips toward his brothers in clear panic.
“Move!” he rasps. “Everyone move.”
But no one is moving.
Not anymore.
The poison is in them.
Every breath dragging it deeper.
That’s when Legend drops.
He goes down like the world just cut the strings holding him up—legs folding, palms striking stone, breath tearing out of him in a harsh, fractured gasp. His hand flies to his throat, fingers pressing deep enough to whiten the knuckles as he fights just to draw in another lungful.
His body lurches, shoulders trembling violently. His head tilts toward me in a desperate, blurry attempt at focus, but his eyes are glassy. Unanchored.
Something detonates in my chest.
It’s dark.
Possessive. A single, primal command claws up my spine:
Get to him.
Now.
Yours.
The cavern seems to narrow, collapsing inward until the only thing that exists is the distance between us and the sound of him trying, and failing, to breathe.
I push off the stone, stumbling closer to him.
The poison thickens, slowing everything, weighing down my limbs like they’re filling with wet sand.
But the instinct dragging me toward him is stronger.
It tears through the resistance, ripping me forward until I crash down beside him, catching his weight before his head hits the ground.
His breath shudders against my neck, broken and uneven. A low, animalistic sound tears from me, protective to the point of violence.
Behind us, the others collapse fully.
Knight’s back hits the dirt.
London slumps sideways, hands twitching weakly.
Sinner falls to one knee, then both.
Creed makes one final attempt to stand, growling through gritted teeth, before his legs give out from under him.
They’re drowning in it.
Suffocating.
Legend’s fingers curl into my jacket, knuckles trembling.
“Mate—” he chokes, barely a sound at all.
That’s what breaks whatever thin border existed between me and the creature pacing under my skin.
Heat slams through me, stealing my breath for a heartbeat before releasing it in a surge that feels like the world is exhaling with me. The cavern trembles, the stone beneath us vibrating, dust falling in thin sheets from the ceiling. The air thickens again, but this time it’s not poison.
It’s me.
The poison should be winning.
I can feel it trying to. The way it thickens the air until it feels like I’m breathing wet wool. The way my arms want to turn to stone and my thoughts want to scatter like frightened birds. But something in me refuses to let it take a single inch more.
The cavern doesn’t just hold the rot but is part of it, soaked in it, fed by it. And now that it knows the Kings are failing, it leans in—greedy.
The ground trembles beneath my knees. Not from my magic. From the land.
A low groan rolls through the rock like a throat clearing, ancient and annoyed. The black tar on the wall begins to move again, and faster this time.
The ribbons unwind and unspool across the cavern walls in a frantic crawl, branching into thin tendrils that stretch toward the bodies on the ground as if tasting them, choosing them.
One curls around Sinner’s ankle, slick and quiet.
The second it touches him, he jerks like he’s been struck, a choked curse torn from his lips before his jaw locks and the sound dies in his throat.
London tries to lift her hand, tries to summon the ink-black blade of her power, but the poison steals it from her mid-thought.
Her fingers twitch, useless. Knight’s arm shakes so badly it looks like his bones might rattle free of his skin.
Creed’s attempt to bark an order only results in a raw rasp.
The tendrils slip closer, dragging across the stone with a soft, wet sound that makes my stomach twist. One threads up Knight’s boot, another snakes over Creed’s palm. When Creed tries to rip it away, it clings harder—like it’s delighted he noticed.
I search for the source. For the thing behind the thing, and the moment I do, the air shifts.
A shadow moves deeper in the cavern. It slips past the evidence markers, past the claw marks and the dark that isn’t dark but the absence of light entirely. The shape presses into the stone like a stain, and my pulse pounds heavily.
My stomach turns over as I wait for it to reveal itself, but then Legend’s breath stutters in my arms. His fingers dig into my jacket like he can anchor himself in me if he holds on hard enough.
His head lolls toward my shoulder and his mouth opens on a sound that isn’t a word—just instinct and need and that horrible, failing pull.
And the moment I feel him slip, something in me snaps.
It’s like a chain going taut, like a door being kicked in, like my blood remembers it’s been waiting to spill into a flame.
I don’t think. Deep in my marrow, something buried inside me refuses to allow this cavern to take him. I will not let it take any of them.
The tar lashes out again, whipping toward my wrist like it wants to wrap me up and mark me.
Magic roars to the surface, feral, wild, and nothing like the clean, sculpted spells they’ve been teaching me.
This is older. Uncontained. A raw, ungoverned force slamming against the cavern walls like it wants to tear them apart.
Just like when the knife appeared at Sinner’s throat, I don’t lift a hand.
I don’t draw a symbol.
I don’t even fucking speak, yet a portal erupts upward, forced into existence by nothing more than the brute strength of whatever lives inside me. It’s no ordinary portal.
It’s one ringed of fire.
Even through the effects of the poison, their confusion is obvious.
Legend tries to lift his head again, brows furrowed, but struggles to maintain his balance.
I can’t make out whatever words London gasps out as Knight stares through barely open eyes, disbelief mixing with panic.
As for Sinner and Creed—the former tries to crawl toward us while Creed fails to move a muscle.
It’s a shit show.
I tighten my grip on Legend’s waist, dragging him up with me, my pulse thundering in a rhythm that matches the trembling in the air. Then, somehow, I’m carrying them all through.
We hit the floor with a hard bang, and the last thing I hear is Legend’s roar echoing inside my skull.