by Anne Malcom
That was a trick too.
Everything after Sophie’s death was a trick, because no one came in to save the day after the main princess died. Maybe she wasn’t the princess who wore pink and sang to birds—more like abhorred pink and shot birds—but she was the princess of reality. The badass, strong woman who fought for everything, who stood for everything.
For me.
So the princes, the flawed and beautiful princes, didn’t come in after she was already gone. That wasn’t how it worked.
They either saved the day or they didn’t come at all. And Sophie’s and my bodies would rot and decay there forever.
Yes, that was the real. Decay. Death.
This life, this beautiful life in front of me, with its arms around me, blanketing me in his presence, that was not reality.
So I didn’t move.
“Thorne, she’s lost it,” Rick said, his voice more urgent.
“Of course she’s fucking lost it,” Thorne screamed. “Look at her! Look at—” He broke off as if he didn’t have the strength to utter the words. There was a long silence. “Look at Sophie,” he all but whispered, his very words bleeding. “Of course she’s fucking lost it, because we’re too late.”
Rick snatched Thorne’s head in a brutal but somehow brotherly gesture, eyes on him. “You’re not too late because Isla is still fucking in there, Thorne. Maybe not all of her, maybe nothing like the Isla we knew, but something is still fucking there, so it’s not too fucking late.”
And then the knife cut through the air, exposing more of Thorne’s blood, letting it trickle down his neck in a steady flow.
My fangs throbbed.
Then a hand crashed at the back of my neck, shoving me forward.
“Drink,” Thorne, demanded, his hand somehow roughly pressing me to his neck and caressing it at the same time.
But that didn’t really matter.
Because my lips encountered the warmth of his blood, it washed into my mouth, and then there was nothing else.
Nothing but blood.
Chapter 17
One Week Later
The first days after I got back from Romania—that’s where they took me—were bad.
Like bad.
And not just because I was so weak that I couldn’t even walk under my own power. Not that Thorne would’ve let me even if I could. He didn’t let me out of his sight, nor did he let me go since I’d woken up on the jet on the way home.
It was full.
Of wolves.
Of slayers.
Of vampires.
One demon.
But no witch.
No live one, at least.
Everyone expected Conall to have to be sedated, knocked the fuck out in order to get Sophie on the plane.
But no one quite knew what to expect from anything at that point, though I guessed they were surprised as shit when he just gathered her up, walking in a dreamlike state to the cars, cradling her in his arms silently the entire time.
Scott had given me a description of it.
While holding back tears.
And not succeeding.
I hadn’t teased him. No, I reached my still-mangled hand out and squeezed his.
But I didn’t speak.
I didn’t do that for those first horrible days.
Mainly because I was afraid I might scream, afraid I might never stop. It had freaked Thorne out. More than he already was, of course. But he’d also seemed to get it.
He had his own silent screams painted in his eyes.
So he just stayed with me. He ran his hands over every inch of my skin as often as he could. Gave up his neck, his wrists as much as he could.
Took me gently and roughly at the same time as my body repaired itself enough to let him inside me. It warmed me up, all of that. His love. His pain that told me mine had a partner.
But not enough.
Not nearly enough.
I knew people didn’t know what to do with the silent, ghostlike, and damn creepy version of me.
I sure as fuck didn’t know what to do with her either.
But I didn’t really know how to do anything. How to exist without the witch being on this earth.
But she wasn’t on the earth.
She was under it now.
I’d refused to go to the funeral they’d had for her two days after we got back, along with the others who had died in the battles to get there and save us.
Because if I watched dirt pile over a coffin, that would make it real. That would snatch away any of those magical loopholes I’d been clutching onto.
No matter that the only magical loopholes in the matter of death were in the business with Hades. I would’ve done that business in a second. But I didn’t have his phone number.
So I just sat.
For four days.
I sat in front of the television. It was playing my favorite series on repeat, and there were enough seasons to tide me over, but I wasn’t watching. Instead, the screen played a repeat of Duncan’s head flying off. Then Sophie’s throat slashing open.
Over and over and over.
I barely even thought about the crunch of Jonathan’s skull underneath my hands—Scott, of all vampires, had finished the job of decapitating him—or of his blood, or of his death. It didn’t really matter, did it? He was gone. And so were Sophie and Duncan.
And that was that.
So I sat.
And when I wasn’t sitting, I was brutally and desperately trying to chase the cold grip of death from my soul, my bones, with Thorne’s touch, with our bodies.
There was nothing else. People came and went. Rick came with updates on what was happening with the rebellion now that Jonathan was dead. It didn’t disappear because we—I—cut the head off the snake. No, that kind of snake just grew another head.
Which was most likely my mother, since she was nowhere to be found when Thorne, the slayers, the wolves, and the vampires had led an assault on the kingdom.
Chace hadn’t made it.
That information bounced off me outwardly, but inwardly another large tear ripped at my soul.
The human had appeared again and was now Rick’s shadow.
Again, that was of little consequence.
It was the little twit who jerked me out of the stupor that I could tell was starting to freak people out. I was the vampire known for sarcasm, great wit, and not knowing when to shut up. It might’ve annoyed the vast majority of those who hung around me, but it was at least familiar.
This was not.
So as I sat down watching season ten of Supernatural, the sofa beside me depressed. The smell of bubblegum and strawberries wafted into my nostrils. For once, it didn’t turn rancid and dank, transforming into the odor of that cell like everything else did. No, it somehow stayed what it was; my broken mind didn’t warp it.
She didn’t say anything for the longest time, just sat next to me, watching Sam and Dean fuck shit up.
Then she started swinging her legs, as she was only on the edge of the sofa. Her shoes caught my attention since they lit up pink with the motion.
She didn’t stop, and I narrowed my eyes at the offending tiny feet, scowling.
Then a small hand slipped into mine, her eyes still focused on the television, feet still swinging.
There was more silence. More swinging.
My eyes again darted to her profile, remembering the angry bruise that had been blossoming on the side of her small face. There was no remainder of that violence on the smooth, milky skin only afforded to the young and the vampires.
I had somehow expected the evidence of that violence to be burned into that skin, changing it and the girl wearing it forever. But she still swung her feet, still wore those ridiculous shoes, still had her curls pinned in a mess of butterfly clips.
There was no death or decay hanging to her.
Her grip was unhesitant against the pinkish and scarred skin of my hands, which were still healing. It was warm, strong. Somet
hing strange connected me to the past with that grip, to the Isla who was a lot more familiar than this silent and morbid one.
An irritated Isla.
“Can you stop swinging your fucking feet?” I hissed, unable to take it anymore. “I’m trying to watch Sam accidently trigger yet another curse that might kill Dean, and you’re distracting me with your ridiculous footwear and inability to sit the fuck still.”
The swinging stopped. The butterfly-laden head turned. Icy blue eyes twinkled at me.
“I’ll stop swinging if you come train me,” she countered. “I’ve got a lot of improving to do so next time someone tries to kidnap me, I won’t need you to save me. I can save myself.”
I blinked.
At the strength in her words. The certainty.
And at the words themselves.
Saved her?
Did I do that?
Didn’t I just get everyone killed?
Lewis, Duncan, Chace… Sophie.
The thoughts were toxic to my brain, poison to my soul. Because we’d won, sure, if you wanted to look at things so simply, so binary. Not the war, but the battle. Against Jonathan. Since he was dead, we could technically say that.
But winning came at a cost I didn’t know if I’d be willing to pay if I did it all over. No, I know I wouldn’t have paid it if I had a premonition of it, if I knew it would end with my best friend, my sister, dying right in front of me. Or Duncan’s head rolling to my feet. Or standing in front of Lewis’s headstone, watching his dry-eyed daughter at his funeral. Knew Chace was no longer going to cheekily smile and tease Thorne and me about how Thorne had a red meat diet because of me.
No, I would’ve stayed down in that dungeon forever if it meant none of that happened. Even if it meant that I was lost to Thorne forever. And that he was lost to me. Even though I knew it would be only a hair less than a death blow to my husband. He’d only stay alive for the small, annoying human beside me. He’d be ruined for however long his eternity was.
But he’d be alive.
And so would everyone else.
But I couldn’t change shit.
And the little human beside me was still there. And I found she was another reason to stay alive. Because I had saved her.
And that wasn’t enough for her.
She wanted to save herself.
So I wrenched her hand from mine, pushed myself up from the sofa and slipped into a pair of spike heels that had lain abandoned and unworn since I’d been back.
And shit was definitely bad when I couldn’t wear heels.
My feet savored the unnatural angle they were forced into, and my body relaxed into the power given by good accessories.
Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.
But I wasn’t looking to conquer it. No, I was looking to paint it in the blood of my enemies.
I folded my arms at the little twit staring up at me with bright eyes and a naïve smile.
“Well get the fuck up,” I ordered. “We’ve got work to do. I’m gonna teach you to make sure you save yourself, but also make sure you’re the person everyone else needs saving from.” I glanced at her shoes. “You’re not a princess, little girl, no matter what your shoes or your hair clips say. You’re a monster.”
She smiled, not at all perturbed by my tone or the words. “Just like you?” she asked hopefully.
And I knew she wasn’t stupid enough to mean the fangs and the need to drink her brother’s blood to survive.
“Yeah, kid, just like me.”
One Week Later
It wasn’t as easy as getting off the sofa, teaching an annoying but surprisingly dedicated human how to be a monster, and having all my demons disappear.
No, it was the trick of not banishing those demons but becoming one instead.
I thought I had been before, carrying the perceived loss of Jonathan around in my blackened and dead heart.
No, it was now that I carried the sorrow and grief in my still-blackened but beating heart.
Sophie’s death didn’t just disappear as the dirt on her grave settled—I still wasn’t brave or strong enough to visit it. No, it didn’t decompose like I imagined her body to be doing in the ground. It was fresh, as painful as the moment it’d happened every second of the day.
I had planned on spending eternity with Thorne, that was correct. He was the man prophesized to be mine forever. And he was.
But he wasn’t my soul mate. Soul mates weren’t for men and women; that was horseshit dreamed up by Hallmark and Hollywood. Soul mates were the girlfriends who knew that sometimes, you just had to kill a guy. Who would tell you if your ass looked big in something, even though they knew they might get a broken arm in the process.
They were the ones who fought right at the end of the world with you even if they knew they were going to die.
And Sophie had known.
I didn’t know how, but the look on her face before the knife tore her throat followed me everywhere, playing on repeat. So I had enough time to inspect that look. That resignation.
She had known.
I didn’t know for how long, but she definitely knew at my wedding. Maybe she’d known when she’d thrown the wolf from my apartment all those months ago. Because I was never one to think there was such a thing as an overreaction, but tossing your boyfriend thirty stories was a little excessive just because he forgot to give you choice details of his lineage.
Thorne had done that exact thing to me, and I, the queen of the overreaction, hadn’t even tossed him from the top of a parking building, let alone a skyscraper.
She had been trying to soften the blow that would hurt a fuck of a lot more than the impact of hurtling from thirty stories.
Her death.
But it hadn’t worked.
The werewolf had no longer remained a man after the loss of his mate. Apparently the man inside could not remain when his mate was lost, according to Liake, who looked tortured and pained when explaining it.
He thought he was tortured and pained? He hadn’t just watched his best buddy of all time get her fucking throat ripped out and had to walk around with the aching and gut-wrenching human emotion of sorrow.
I wouldn’t have been able to breathe around it, so I had no idea how humans did it. How they kept walking, talking, sleeping, eating, breathing when someone they lost was gone forever.
My mind went to Lewis’s widow. His children. I’d felt pain then. For the man I’d considered a friend. For the family’s loss, sure. But I’d expected his death to come one way or another, protected myself with that certainty.
Sophie was an immortal. And my main bitch. Immortals and main bitches weren’t meant to die.
It didn’t work that way.
But apparently, with my crazy ex, it did work that way. He was quick to take away every single thing I loved and held dear before he died.
As it was, I was still walking, talking, having great hair. Because I was accustomed to pain. And because I had Thorne to use as a crutch. To make mad and brutal love to me. To hold me when I pretended I wasn’t crying.
To be my everything.
But the wolf wasn’t a strong, kickass vampire. And the wolf had lost his everything. So he’d gone apeshit—or wolfshit.
First he’d tried to kill me.
That had not ended well for him.
I’d merely knocked him unconscious, sustaining a rather smarting rip to the side of my neck for my efforts.
That had made Thorne want to kill him, since I did almost die from that. Again.
I did not die.
Again.
And Thorne did not kill the wolf. Namely because a handful of other wolves had come to the party—late—and dragged Conall off.
Thorne had been too busy making sure I didn’t die—again—to give chase. And when I came to, chipper until I realized it hadn’t all been a dream and Toto, we were still in Kansas, I’d lost it. Like bad.
So he’d had to deal with that.
O
nce I was lucid—well, as lucid as I could ever be—he’d informed me of the werewolf-killing mission. I’d put my boots on and was out the door. It was only in the elevator, when he’d told me which wolf we were killing, that I stopped him. And the elevator.
“No,” I said, folding my arms, the motion hurting my chest, though that didn’t make sense. I’d regenerated from all my injuries, injuries that Rick informed me should’ve killed me with my slowed healing, but they didn’t. Something knocked at the corner of my mind when he said that, the memory of warm ichor entering my mouth in the sewer, of the knowing on Ambrogio’s face.
Could he have seen something like this?
And wanted to give me a chance with his blood?
It was impossible to imagine, but my recovery was on the right side of impossible according to a blank-faced Rick. Yet I carried an insurmountable pain with me still, because it was the kind of wound even an immortal couldn’t recover from.
Loss.
Hence me being pretty fucking gung ho to end some werewolves, even with our treaty still in effect. The war wasn’t over, after all.
“No?” Thorne repeated, tone dangerous. “The dog tried to fucking end you,” he all but roared.
I assumed my face stayed blank, despite me bleeding on the inside at the memories whirling through me. Not of my almost death; that was small potatoes. No, at what had come directly before it. Sophie’s actual death.
I congratulated myself for not doubling over when the memory assaulted me worse than any crazed werewolf ever could.
“He’s just lost his entire reason for existing,” I said, my voice less than a whisper. “And he saw me—rightly—as the being responsible for it. Tell me, if you’d watched me die—for realsies this time—right in front of you, and the person you considered to be responsible was also right in front of you, what would you do?”
Thorne’s anger immediately disappeared. He stepped forward, face softening. “Isla, this wasn’t your fault,” he argued.
I held up my hand and was impressed to see that it wasn’t shaking. “We’re not here to discuss fault. We’re here to discuss not murdering a being going through insufferable torment.” I sucked in a breath, not because I needed it but because I needed something to distract me from the pain. That, of course, only made it worse.
