CHAPTER EIGHT
My eyelids feel like they’re made of lead, dragging themselves open in slow, uneven blinks. The world swims into focus in broken pieces—light, shadow, the outline of a Saint mask hovering too close.
Elijah? I breathe in because I want it to be him so much. I have been avoiding him the best I can, but I have missed him more than I could ever convey.
He’s leaning over me, and he looks really small, though I can’t tell if that’s real or just my disorientation.
What is wrong with me? My eyes feel foggy.
My breath catches hard in my throat like my body is trying to remember how to scream but can’t quite find the signal. I try anyway—try to move, to push, to scramble away—but my limbs don’t listen. They feel wrong and heavy, like they're not mine.
“Get off—” I think I say it. I’m not sure. It comes out broken, swallowed by the fog in my head.
His hands are on me before I can make sense of it, lifting me like I weigh nothing. My stomach drops violently, fear snapping through me so fast it almost clears the haze.
No. No, no, no—
I should be fighting. I should be clawing. I should be doing something, but I can't seem to do anything at all. My heart hammers against my ribs, and I try one last time to force my body to obey me—but it’s like shouting underwater.
I'm being carried somewhere, and I'm absolutely sick with the certainty that I can’t stop any of it.
I try to hold on, to have any sort of control, but the darkness pulls harder than I can fight.
My eyes flutter once, and then once more before they close.