Creatures that breathe, p.29
Creatures that Breathe, page 29
I serve him a big, toothy grin. “You don’t want me. I’m not a virgin anymore.”
He hits me across the face with a force that makes my head spin.
Black dots my vision. I gasp and spit blood onto my thighs.
“Don’t you dare speak back to me,” Draven sneers, yanking a handful of my hair and pulling me to my feet. He scowls at the blood gushing down my forearm, splashing onto his loafers. “You’ve made a mess of yourself when this body isn’t even yours to play with. It’s mine.”
“Let go of me.”
He grabs my chin, forces me to meet his gaze, fingers like hot branding pokers. “Never.”
“I’m ruined,” I rasp, loose strands of blue whipping across my face. “Did you not hear me? It’s over.”
“Yes, you’ve rutted like a nasty whore.” Pain lances up my arm as he twists me, assaulting me with the scent of plastic and leather. “But who will tell the queen? You? You won’t dare to ever defy me again. I’m going to whip you with my name. When you see me coming, you’ll drop to your knees and open your mouth for me like a good little bitch.” His words are venom, his tone is pleased. “And if you ever disobey me, I’ll spend weeks ending you. Again and again. And all the while, I’ll just keep fucking that tight virgin cunt.”
I sway into him, closing my eyes, dizzy, angry.
So many of my plans have failed. Starting a forest fire on the royal estate. Getting caught stalking the Blackguard. Burning down a beloved city block.
“That’s it, angel,” the prince taunts as he rips at my hair once more. “To think, I was told your breed was biddable.”
Despite everything, I can’t help but laugh.
Draven shakes me. Hard. “You shut up.”
“I just realized you’re right.” I stare up at him, feeling like one big bruise. “It didn’t occur to me earlier, but it should have. Who is going to tell the queen?”
“Fucking Tartarus, you’re dumber than you look.”
“Actually,” I spit, hating this male with every fiber of my being. “I’m quite smart.” And everything, for once, has fallen into place.
This isn’t his check, it’s my check mate. It’s a royal flush. It’s my high score. My final plan has come together. Brilliantly.
Yes, the explosion was larger than intended, but it stopped the hand to hand combat from escalating, allowed discourse to begin. Carved out a temporary reprieve for me to say goodbye and prevent Cross from chasing me. And yes, the slash in my arm is an inch deeper than I wanted, but it works.
It’s all working.
I’m sleepy, the sky has turned milky purple and there’s rich, creamy raspberry chocolate sticking to my tastebuds. I don’t read medical journals, but they’d undoubtedly confirm these are sure signs of excessive blood loss.
I smell apples, or maybe oranges, something fruity, and I’m freezing. Colder than the Baltic.
It’s so close, but just to be sure, I retrieve the knife from my back pocket. “You’re going to spend the rest of eternity wishing you’d treated me the way I deserve,” I croak as I grab the Sixth Prince of Hope’s hand and stab myself in the heart.
The pain is excruciating.
My vision fades. Towering trees become hazy and distorted, the blades of the helicopter seem to rotate distressingly slow.
This is the end, and I am finally in control.
Warm dark shadows envelop me like an old friend, and I relax into it as Cross’s midnight voice curls around me, dangerous.
He knew. Right from the start.
35
Cross
the wrong fucking direction
Sin drags me. Chunky, chafing ropes bound around my hands and knees gnaw on my exposed skin. The back of my boots catch on roots and undergrowth, shredding patches of wet leaves off the forest floor. Each bump ignites fresh agony in the wreck of my fragmented ribs, and my thigh leaks like a river as I channel more and more energy into my gift.
If they forget me, they’ll drop me.
If they drop me, I’ll get to Leni.
I throw more shadows and feel my arm break.
The pain is nothing compared to the anvil crushing my heart.
Only Leni keeps me going. Her face swims before me, cloudy eyes wide with love as she pulled the trigger on me. Denied me the chance to protect her.
Because she didn’t think I could?
Luke’s wide, sweat soaked back is turned to me as he scans the trees with the scope of his rifle. Rune’s injured—badly—bleeding out in Lev’s arms. Atlas sets a brutal pace from behind me, urging us faster farther. The rest—a limping Meda, Drake, and Zeke—cover the flanks, anticipating attack.
Does Atlas think Leni leaving will hurt me less if she’s harder to get to?
Does he think distance will somehow stop me from succumbing to the curse again?
He’s wrong.
“She’s killing herself!” I shout, thrashing against the restraints. Leni’s bullet gouges deeper into my muscle, drilling greedily. “Turn around. Let me go! We need to stop her!”
“We’re in no shape to face the prince now,” Atlas grunts. “We retreat to fight another day.”
Another day.
A day while Leni suffers under that sycophant’s control? Bile and blood rise in my throat. “I’m not leaving her with that fucking monster.”
“You’re no use to her dead.”
A red and black haze clouds my vision. I twist in Sin’s grasp, fingers curling into claws, frantic to get free, but too exhausted, too spent to make any headway. I rasp to Atlas, to anyone that will listen, “I’m no use alive without her.”
“Keep walking,” Atlas directs Sin, as if he can’t hear me.
Fuck that. They can drag me into the pits of Tartarus and I’ll still never quit going after her. “Take me to Draven,” I beg, pathetic and not caring. “Take me or it won’t matter if I live. Please. Listen to me.”
Atlas is done hearing me.
He nods to his left. “He’s blowing position. Silence him.”
Then I see Zeke’s scarred eyes, and a rag shoves down my throat.
“We didn’t want it to come to this,” Atlas informs me, cold and clinical. “The female made her choice. She chose the Blackguard over herself. We’re the selfish bastards who have to live with it.”
Selfish bastards.
That’s exactly what we are.
Animals. Horrible, heartless beasts. Tears sting my eyes as I continue to struggle. “No,” I plead, muffled through the cloth, useless. “You don’t understand.”
Zeke shakes his head as he places his hand on my leg, trying to heal me.
I kick at him. Healing is not my priority. I need them to understand. It was not my secret to tell, but now I must.
“Stop it,” Zeke grumbles. “I’m helping.”
“Please,” I beg again, dropping the shadows until Zeke’s face is completely visible. “Please. I’m your brother. Please.” My voice cracks with emotion.
Zeke glances at Atlas, then he’s pulling the rag from my mouth.
Too late. A blinding white light flashes over us and seconds after, a teeth chattering blast sends the forest into deadly quiet. Fire, a blaze of white flames erupt straight into the air, then explode outward, searing everything in its path.
The inferno rages, scorching damp leaves and waterlogged wood like fuses. Massive trees become columns of silver flame piercing the sky like raised swords, casting an eerie glow over us.
I’m paralyzed, unable to breathe as I stare at the roiling colorless flames. It smells like heat and smoke, and my brothers converge into battle ready positions, injured in the center, strong surrounding, weapons out and armed. A form we’ve assumed a hundred times, every time prepared to fall on our swords for our family.
But there’s no one to fight.
Leni’s guaranteed it.
“Holy shit,” Luke gasps as white flames jump from tree to tree, rip across wet ground like it’s covered in gasoline.
It stops inches short of Atlas’s boots. “She’s …” His mouth gapes. He turns his eyes to me, face pinched with sorrow and regret. “She’s a Phoenix, and you knew. Why—”
A strangled breath catches in my throat. “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”
“She killed them,” Lev mutters, throat thick, entranced, face alight with the white glow. “For us.”
Zeke shoves the heels of his hands into his eyes. “No. She died for us.”
They’re quiet. Mourning. Observing.
I’m fighting.
I’m not mourning.
I refuse to believe she’s done this to me.
I didn’t think she’d ever risk it. She’d been so terrified of dying, of getting hurt. I should’ve told her I knew. Told her I’d never ask it of her the moment I figured out what she was, lying in that hospital bed with her.
It was too clear in her eyes. Who she was. What she was. Why she yearned for the ocean but never to swim. How she refused to be molded and used.
She had called them scholars, and she was the most cunning creature I had ever encountered.
Gritting my teeth, I gasp for air as white noise fills my ears, drowning out all other sound.
No. She can’t just waltz into my life and then rip herself out of it.
She can’t.
I dig my finger into my thigh, prying out the bullet stuck in the muscle. Searing agony takes over and I cry out, seeing stars behind my closed eyelids.
Ignore it.
Zeke scrambles to my side to saw through my bindings.
As soon as I’m freed, I sprint towards the heart of the raging fire, calling out her name with every breath.
Scorching heat slams into me, blistering my skin as I push deeper into the flames, groaning through the pain. Sure, somehow, that I’m headed in the right direction. “Leni!”
Her name echoes across the inferno, carried by the raging currents of wind and flame.
Twenty-foot trees are dust, decimated, turned to white ash. I trip, tumbling over my feet, crashing into the charred ground, coughing as thick smoke fills my lungs.
Luke’s hand shoots out, his breath ragged as he pulls me up from the ground. “We’ll find her,” he promises.
A wave of gratitude washes over me. I’ve never been so glad to have humanity on my side. With one arm around him, we dive further into the thick haze of smoke and ash, each step heavy and labored.
Amidst the crackling flames and crumbling trees, a faint sound rises above—soft crying.
My heart constricts. Luke tightens his hold on me and we sprint with every last ounce of energy to the sound.
I’d recognize the shape of her anywhere.
Buried deep in my shadows, glittering under the sun, kneeling in a wasteland of ash.
Nestled in her wreckage, tears streaming from her face, she rivals Aphrodite emerging from the foam.
She’s alive. The vise around my lungs slackens, if only by a fraction.
Releasing Luke, I scramble forward alone and drop to my knees at her side. “Leni.” I reach out to touch her, blind and deaf and numb to everything but her gently trembling body.
No tattoos, no markings, no jewelry. Her hair is silver and straight as a blade, long down her back, glimmering and smooth. No necklaces, not a stitch of clothing, just pure, unmarked skin.
A broken sob wrenches from my throat.
White fire continues to dance around us, licking at my clothes, peeling off my flesh. I ignore the sear, let the embers carve toward bone as the one woman who’s always remembered me looks up at me with dull, lifeless eyes.
My world shatters.
My fault. This is all my fault. I failed to protect her, to save her.
“I’m so sorry—” I take her hand.
She throws herself back from me, shaking her head frantically and covering her chest with trembling hands. “D-don’t!” she stutters, wide eyed, body shuddering.
I feel myself pale. Every breath seems to stick in my throat.
A Phoenix can only remember pain.
And she’s had so much.
Tears slide off her face, faster, more than I can follow.
Numb, in a daze, I take off my blood-stained shirt and offer it to her. Hoping, pointlessly, it’ll spark a memory, bring her comfort.
All it does is ram a dagger into my heart. The sight of Leni wearing my shirt, her body small and fragile beneath it, cuts me viscerally.
She has no flicker of recognition.
I drown with memories. Emotions tumbling like rocks down a cliff side, crushing me wit their weight and roar.
Alive, but at what cost?
She opens her mouth, closes it. Her eyes dart between Luke and me before settling on me with a questioning gaze. “Who are you?”
The question slashes at the deepest part of me.
I’m mortal again, returning from war, gun strapped over my shoulder, exhausted, lonely, walking into my home expecting warmth and getting nothing.
My heart jolts painfully. I can’t breathe. Pressure clogs my throat. I almost can’t hold her stare.
Leni clutches my shirt to her body, the black and bloodstains disturbingly stark against her all white.
I groan as I lift one knee up. The bad one, hers, and fold my hands over it. Bow my head. “My name is Cross,” I tell her, hoarsely. I force down a tight breath. “And I vow to keep you safe.”
She stares at me, expression unnervingly blank, and I stay like that until her shaking stops.
In the ash, a second knee joins mine, Luke’s deep voice proclaiming, “I’m Luke and I vow to keep you safe.”
He bows.
And then a third knee lowers. A fourth. A fifth. Until nine of us are there, rejoining the fight.
36
Leni
a desert of ash and bone
The handsy one, Cross, tries to help. He tells me where I am, what’s happened, who the males on their knees are. He uses words like remember and friends and safe and I pull myself into a ball in the warm, smoking ash, press my hands over my ears.
My head aches, like my mind is endlessly expanding into jagged walls. Tears distort the males circling me, and I squeeze my eyes shut to block them out, block everything out.
Return to the numbness I woke up in.
I don’t know Upstate New York or Blackguard or Kingsguard or whatever he and his scary finds call themselves.
I have no knowledge of a prince.
Panic clenches my lungs, constricts, seeps into my very skin, suffocating and corrosive. Hot tears track down my face, sobs scrape their way up my throat.
Cross halts his futile attempts at explanation and gestures toward the males and one female around me. They bear the unmistakable marks of war, weary limbs, injuries, faces etched with horror.
The massive blonde one is on the brink of his own death. Shuddering, sweat-drenched, his abdomen riddled with holes.
The one in a crimson speckled suit—Atlas, Cross informs me—stands out in the sea of ash and smoke. A large chuck of his jacket is missing—burned right off—but he smooths it against his pecs like it’s a frayed thread as he talks into a flat shiny phone, ordering cars, making demands, exuding competence.
We hike through the wasteland, united, side by side under the ash gray sky. As night descends and cold sweeps in, a small shadow begins to follow me, a ball of black that emits warmth like a fire.
The others avoid it, fanning out, four stalking off to lead, four dropping back to follow. The handsy male stays within my reach.
Maybe the rest have had enough heat for the day. I move close to my warmer, focusing on how my little black friend rolls over hills and leaps valleys. The distraction helps me hold on to the numb feeling.
Eventually, the ash becomes dead leaves and those transform into rain slick pavement. I climb into the black SUV when Cross asks. I buckle and try to relax because everyone else does.
When I close my eyes, I still feel the sear of burning. It’s alive. Tearing through me, snapping across my skin with sharp, vicious teeth. It worsens when I attempt to remember something. Leaves me gasping for reprieve.
Cross stops me. His voice is firm and low, like the dark, starless sky outside the windows. “Don’t think about it now. Don’t do too much today.”
I flinch when he puts the top of his hand to my forehead. I jolt when he checks my fingers for bruises. Shut my eyes when he asks me how he can help.
It’s a constant battle to keep my mind centered, to not reach into my memories for echoes of his depthless voice, the familiar graze of rough hands, or the intense look of those eyes. Hammered gray, streaked with onyx, edged with the smallest hints of green.
It’s impossible.
I find it all. Let it slam into me, wave after crashing wave. Messy and bloody and violent. I wince when he offers me water.
He stops touching me then. Stops talking to me. A hard edge creeps into his gaze, and the grind of his teeth rivals the thrum of the car’s engine.
Worry begins to feast on me with tiny sharp teeth.
Cross knows what I am.
Pain flares beneath my left clavicle. Phantom pain from a past life, drowning me in a memory of receiving a small flame tattoo accompanied by a warning in my own voice.
Do not tell anyone what you are. They will use you. Shatter you.
It opens a floodgate of voices I don’t recognize, threatening to destroy me. The memories slice me up, sear over my skin, hurt me without leaving marks. I think the only way to get free might be to scream, but invisible hands choke me, stop the sound.
Black explodes in the car. I shoot forward in my seat, smash into my seatbelt. Tires squeal, the driver swears.
And then, for a fraction of a second, I’m warm, all is quiet, and everything is better.
Then I pass out.
We end up at a hotel in Boston. It’s a city that smells like sea and wet asphalt, and I don’t know if I’ve visited before, but the others seem so familiar, I must have.
The tall warrior with purple eyes and a Divine untouchable beauty asks Cross if he needs help with me.
