Chapter 3
Run, Run, Run, Motherfucker, Run!
What felt like an entire lifetime later, I staggered onto shore. My legs flopped, my toes chipped at the sand.
Before I was free of the reaching tide, I pitched forward, breaking my fall at the very last moment. My wrists gave out, my body jelly. The lapping waves rolled in and out, wetting my heels. After endless hours, I finally didn’t have to move.
It was daytime when I’d first broken the water’s surface, late afternoon based on the positioning of the sun and the Fuerin Star that trailed it across the horizon before swapping it for the moon.
I had swum and swum and swum, only to discover I was swimming in the wrong direction, farther into the StarRay Ocean instead of toward Zaraga.
I’d wanted to cry then but hadn’t let myself. The time for breaking was over. Now that I was on my way to locate my brother, the only option was to hold myself together. If Teo was dead … well, no doubt I’d be breaking all over again then anyway.
It was deep into the night. The moon and Fuerin Star had reached their zenith and begun dancing back down toward the waves. But I’d made it.
I used to love the water. Now I wondered if I’d ever want to see it again.
I was so waterlogged I might never dry out.
My chest was heavy against the hard-packed sand, my breasts smushed.
A night breeze chilled my bare skin, heightening the shivering that had been a miserable constant during my escape.
I considered waiting for the trembling to pass, but it might never stop, and I was fed up with waiting. Fed up with being cold. Sick of being hungry.
No … that was an understatement. I wasn’t hungry, I was ravenous, a fact that was unsettling beyond my probable bloodlust. While I’d pushed my body to keep swimming, for periods my mind would clear.
I’d scour my memory for any hint of what had happened, but only remembered the night before.
I’d been with Teo in his rooms, which adjoined mine, at the palace.
We’d hosted a private party. Our guests had been lovely, eager participants.
We’d fed and fucked, then fed and fucked some more, all throughout the night.
I should be sated. My blood should be at full power.
My blood couldn’t have depleted this dangerously in such little time.
There was always dark magic, its effects often unexpected, but Teo and I knew better than to tangle with dark sorcerers…
Though my body insisted never moving again was a far wiser idea, I forced myself to my hands, my knees, then wobbled to my feet.
The palace crowned a sheer cliffside, overlooking the ocean.
Assuming my captor wouldn’t have bothered to transport me across an entire continent to dump me in a different ocean, if I walked the beach, eventually I’d catch a glimpse of it hulking far above.
How far and how long that would take depended on the disposition of the demigods.
Heartbreak seemed to whisper, Left. Hope: Right. The sisters were almost certainly fucking with me. Since I’d earlier called Heartbreak a cowardly cunt, I went right.
The Fuerin Star dipped behind the mountains. I’d been crawling for at least an hour, my knees scraped raw by grinding sand, when I scented blood, its call more potent than the drug olvidian, or the glittering black lotus aphrodisiac. It lured me in.
In the ocean, here and there, a few sea creatures had accidentally crossed my path. But they’d been too swift, and I too weak for any sort of pursuit.
But humans—and oh, these were humans, alright—didn’t dart away like the shadowrays and the fish, fast as lightning. Especially humans so drunk on sunrise spirits their blood smelled overly sweet and heady.
A man and woman were so caught up in each other, hands and mouths touching everywhere all at once, that I crawled within a few body lengths before the woman pulled away from his kiss toward some sound I’d made.
Her eyes grew wide as she blinked at me, dazed. The scent of her blood was stronger now, as was that of the sunrise spirits flowing through it. If the drinker indulged in too much, the liquor made your vision spin, and that was for fae. For humans, it had to be much worse.
While the woman attempted to steady herself, the man dragged his kiss insistently against her jaw, her neck, her cleavage. She didn’t react.
With a start, he glanced over at me.
Though I must look feral with my tangled hair hanging over my face, my eyes dark pinpricks— the woman in his arms topless, her dress bunched around her waist—his attention stayed on me longer than necessary due to his surprise, much too long for polite concern or even curiosity.
When his stare raked along the length of my body, only to then jump between my dangling breasts and my thighs and back again, his lover stiffened in his arms. Their heartbeats sped up at the same time.
She smacked him on the bare shoulder. Still, he dragged his eyes along my body again before jumping to hers.
“You’re staring.” She only slurred her words a little.
“No I’m not.” He slurred his more.
She scowled and reached for her dress.
His hands lunged for hers, stilling them on the fabric at her waist.
“Wait. Don’t. We were just getting going.”
She snorted, but did wait when she should have left and forgotten him. I knew when a man was lusting after me. This one had already been aroused, but his arousal had intensified, sharpened in a way I’d experienced countless times before.
When I opened my mouth, no sound emerged beyond a croak. Slowly, I licked my dried lips, and his head actually circled as he followed the movement.
“See? You’re staring!”
With visible effort, he tore his eyes from me to her. “Not staring. Just … we need to help her.”
Fuck yes, I needed help. I tried to nod. It was more of a rolling head loll.
“She must be hurt.” As if that were reason to check me out again, he took the opportunity to do so.
The woman crossed her arms over her breasts but left the dress off. “I don’t see anything wrong with her.”
“Hey, you over there. You okay?”
I shook my head, my damp, stringy hair bouncing; sand rained down from it. My vision swam as if I’d indulged in the same spirits. I quickly stopped moving.
“Lemme…” He extricated himself from the woman and beelined toward me, if not exactly in a straight line, close enough to it. He fell to his knees in front of me, spattering more sand against my hands and dangling nipples.
“Lemme help you.”
I’d never forget how animalistic my brother had looked when he’d been under the influence of bloodlust. And he hadn’t been as starved as I was, hadn’t been locked up and left for dead at the bottom of the ocean.
Hadn’t lost his twin and had his heart ripped out from his chest.
I had to be wearing the kind of look that would have anyone’s survival instincts screaming an insistent, Run, run, run, motherfucker, run!
But not this guy.
With both hands, he reached for my upper arms. His knuckles accidentally grazed my breasts hard enough to set them swinging.
The bloodlust overpowered my efforts at communication. I hissed like an angry, extremely venomous serpunta.
Behind him, his lover hissed at the contact too.
I didn’t take my eyes off him.
My head was pounding. My mouth was watering. He was well within striking range.
And he’d touched me, the moron.
In all the years since my rebirth, after I’d stabilized and learned to control my hunger, I’d never once fed on someone without securing their permission first.
Now my heart was thudding, and all I felt was need.
I needed blood.
Blood, blood, delicious fucking blood.
Needed fuel.
Power.
My brother.
Need, need, need.
My world zeroed in on the man and the lust that glazed his eyes, reddened his cheeks, and had his dick thumping.
With force I didn’t realize I still possessed, I lunged forward, snagging his lips with mine.
He squeaked with initial surprise, then moaned long and deep, then again while my pulse thumped more loudly than my thoughts could overcome.
The haze held me in its thrall as surely as I did this man. He pulled my chest against his.
Through the kiss itself, I called his blood to me. As if I were a siren, it responded instantly, happily, like it already belonged to me.
My eyes closed all on their own while I drank.
I drank. Oh fuck, I drank.
At some point he stopped moaning … and I started.
I didn’t stop until his heart did.