Chapter One #2
I’m healing on the island, but I didn’t die. Instantly, my mind goes back to my fight with the Lycan during the warcraft games. When London took me to Silver’s Infirmary on campus. I had healed on my own. Something that doesn’t, can’t, happen here.
The only way to fix your wounds here is for your heart to stop beating. To die. It’s all part of the punishment of being here. A punishment worse than death, because death greets us over and over and over. This is not that.
The powers I was gaining back on Rathe…they’ve followed me here.
“Double what the fuck?”
Still, I step closer.
The gems should be buried beneath the soil, hidden, protected from the very poison their curse birthed into existence.
So how the fuck do they now sit in the petals, cradled in the center of each bloom, like a crown resting on the head of its throne?
Blue light flickers through the dark rubies, refracting against the cavern walls in shards that cut through the darkness in a way I have never seen before. Brighter. Clearer.
Wrong.
And it would almost be pretty if not for what coils around them.
Darkness seeps upward along the thorns and braids itself between them, black and gold shimmering beneath the surface like a living thing inside it. It pools at the base and climbs the stems in slow, deliberate trails, encasing the petals without smothering them.
It’s almost like…like tar has claimed the island at its core.
My pulse begins to pound.
Wait.
Black and gold.
The memory slams into me before I can stop it—the murder site in Darkadia. The stone slick with the same unnatural sheen. The way it pulsed faintly when no one was looking directly at it. No one but me.
I remember crouching there, feeling it hum beneath my boots, wondering if it was alive or merely pretending to be.
This isn’t a coincidence.
The flowers protect the gems, that’s a fact, but now the tar protects the flowers?
Or worse, feeds them?
The tar shifts, a teeny tiny ripple along its surface dragging answers through my chest before my mind can catch up. It’s a familiar weight, settling low at my spine in a way that feels primal and intimate all at once.
I go still and the air around me changes.
It presses gently between my shoulder blades, waiting to be acknowledged. Something in my chest, something that feels way too fucking familiar, gives the faintest, traitorous stir. But I will legit cut it from my body before I allow myself to be tricked by some witchery again.
I know he’s there before I even turn to face him.
Tar drips from his neck, down his chest, red eyes glowing deeper as they lock onto mine.
“You,” I say, my voice steady but my pulse fucking racing. I hate it, but there are too many unknowns happening around here.
The one thing the island always gave me was peace of mind that I knew what to expect. Sure, it was never anything good, but it was always consistently terrible. Maybe you die differently or by a different hand. Maybe a storm tears through your shelter or floods your food supply.
But the rules never change.
Everything is changing now, Haide. Don’t pretend you don’t feel it.
I clench my teeth, refocusing on what’s before me and the riddle I unintentionally solved.
I’m getting impatient, Hellpet.
“The murders. The notes scribbled in blood and tar. That was you.” I think back to what he said to me when I literally fell at his feet. “That’s what you meant about theatrics with your messages.”
He holds my stare.
“You called me Hellpet when I got here. Those messages weren’t for the royals. They were for me, weren’t they?”
His chest rumbles.
“You also called me your…mate.”
The beast purrs, his eyes flickering brighter for a moment.
“No, don’t get excited. I’m not. We’re not…” I let myself trail off when his purr turns into a warning growl.
Not sure why we’re favoring an animalistic approach over words, but okay.
My gaze roams across the cavern and back. “Did you do this?”
His chin lowers.
“Why? How?”
My head tips up as he moves closer, his muscles rippling in my line of sight as he reaches over.
“Wait!” I try to warn him when he slips his fingers into the petals. But the vines don’t snap out to eat him like they did me. Instead, they wrap around his arm in a soft caress as he lifts the gem from its little cocoon.
He holds it out to me, and the vines begin to shake.
“No fucking way.” I take a step back. “I don’t even know how you haven’t dropped dead yet just being in here. Now you’re just asking for it.”
The demon man keeps approaching and I back up until I hit the wall. “Wait—.” But he presses the gem into my chest.
I gasp, eyes going wide in panic as the gem burns through the leather of my top. “What the hell are you doing!” I slap at his hands, but he just bats mine away.
The vines do not just lash out. They fucking convulse!
The cavern erupts, every thorned braid shrieking at once—a sound so high and sharp it feels like it’s splitting my skull open from the inside.
I clamp my hands tight over my ears but it’s pointless.
Blood spills from my nose and down my lip, dripping onto the black-and-gold tar at my feet where it hisses on contact.
What…
The demon growls, low and guttural, as if the cavern itself has insulted him.
The thorns unbraid from their columns and come for me in a wave, weaving and threading around my wrists, ankles, and waist, pulling me backward as I claw uselessly at them. They climb my ribs, lace across my throat, thread through my hair and tighten.
“Stop!” I demand, whether at him or at the island I don’t know, but the beast only presses the stone harder against my chest.
Heat spreads through my body, touching every place the vines do as they tighten, drawing me upright until I’m suspended in the air.
I can’t fucking breathe…
Thorns prickle over my flesh, suffocating any chance of my screams being heard as more vines wind around me, tighter and tighter, until nearly every inch of my skin is covered, leaving only my right eye visible.
The demon man tilts his head, watching me, the forbidden gem in his hand now pulsing from shining a light that seems to glow across my entire body.
Heat explodes through my veins and then everything goes black.
…
I fly up from—where the fuck am I?
“You still sleep like shit.”
I swing around, the heaviness leaving my chest the second my eyes land on him.
“Zev!” I scurry off the bed and bounce into his arms.
He catches me, stumbling backward. “Hey, Luda.”
I squeeze him so hard my arms shake. He smells like saltwater and iron, same as always, and the familiarity of it nearly breaks me. Zevryn. My best friend. My only friend, if I’m being honest with myself. Which I often try not to be.
“You’re crushing my ribs,” he wheezes.
“Good.” I don’t let go. “You deserve it.”
He laughs, low and rough, and wraps one arm around my back while the other hand cups the back of my head like I’m something worth protecting. I hate that it makes my throat tight. I pull back before the feeling can settle.
A steel mask covers his face, but I can still see a flash of that sharp jaw, a touch of that crooked nose from the three times I’ve broken it, and those dark eyes that never miss a damn thing.
“What happened to your face?” I trace the metal lines. Despite the fact that I’ve buried this fool more times than anyone else on this island, the thought of someone else hurting him is enough to send me over the edge.
And I’m close enough as it is.
His hand covers mine, thumb circling the base gently before lowering. “Aw, what? You had no problem with my face when your thighs were wrapped around it.”
I sigh. “Zev.” I get the jokes. I appreciate them even, especially right now. If the silence isn’t filled with something then all I’m left with is the memories of him.
And her.
And that night.
“It’s nothing.” He steps back and crosses his arms, scanning me the way he does before a fight. His grin fades. “You look like hell.”
“Charming.” I glance down at myself. My scorched tunic is gone. Someone changed me into a loose black shirt that falls to my thighs.
I freeze. Wait. What?
Memories slam into me. Ilse Kiss. A gem burning against my chest. Thorns crushing the air from my lungs.
I shove up my sleeves. Running my hands over my arms, my legs—anywhere the vines touched. Nothing. My skin is smooth. Unmarked.
“Zev.” My voice comes out strange. “The thorns went straight through me. Where are the scars?”
He pushes off the wall. “There aren’t any.”
“That’s not possible.” I check again, pressing harder against skin that should be ruined. “Those vines were the size of my wrist. They punched holes—”
“I know what they did.” His words cut through. “He showed me.”
I still, too many thoughts rushing through me. If the wounds healed without leaving marks…
My hand flies to my sternum, but the gem is gone.
“Where is it?” I press harder against my chest, feeling for the edges of something, anything. I yank on the collar of the shirt, and there’s not so much as a burn mark between my breasts, let alone a gem.
“There was a gem. He put it right here. Where is it? What do you mean he showed you, showed you what? And why—”
“Slow down.” He tenses. “Take a damn breath, drink some water before you knock yourself out again or something.”