Ravenswood (Ravenswood Series Book 1)

by Christine Zolendz

  He pulled back his mouth from mine, breathing hard. His eyes found mine, and there was nothing but ache between us.

  “You didn’t stop me,” he said, his eyes wide and mouth red from mine. He sat back, stumbling away, and I drew myself up with him, suddenly afraid. I raised my hands to my cheeks, expected to feel the hollows there and the protrusion of my bones. There was nothing but soft, warm skin. I skimmed my eyes quickly over my hands and arms and touched them to my breasts and stomach—I was still me; I hadn’t shrunk like the other girls.

  “Why?” I asked, looking at my hands. “How did that work?” I scrambled up to my feet. Where a minute ago there was longing and ache and desire, I was now full of confusion and anger and emptiness. “What the fuck!?” I screamed at him.

  “We bring death, Raine. We are dead.” His eyes welled, brilliant blue oceans. His lips, the ones I just felt wrap around my heart, pursed tightly, and his chin trembled. “You were born here. Alive. You bring life. You bring hope. He’s going to try to keep you here to bring us back to life.”

  I backed away, the room spinning around me. What did that mean? We were back to more riddles?

  He moved forward and reached out a hand to me. “You need to live your life where you belong. You need to leave here and forget about—”

  “You lied to me,” I said. My face flushed with heat and anger. Leave here and go back to what exactly? I didn’t belong here, but I didn’t belong there either. All I ever wanted was to belong somewhere, fit in somewhere. All I ever wanted was to be loved.

  “Lied? I—”

  “You told me I was nothing to you. You’re just like my grandmother. You let me spend my life alone, craving for something I could have had all along?”

  My thoughts were irrational, I could hear myself saying the words, and I didn’t know if they were right or wrong. The only thing I was sure of was wanting to hurt him, to fight, to push away and scream at the top of my lungs how sick I was of everyone’s games. I was a pawn in all of them, and I still understood none of it.

  His face blanched. “I chose to protect you.”

  “No. You chose fear,” I whispered, trying to breathe, trying to clear my mind.

  “I wasn’t afraid to love you. I—”

  “Don’t. You chose fear because you are nothing more than a coward, leaving me there to fend for myself in that harsh world, knowing I belonged here.”

  “You don’t belong here! You were taken. Stolen from your world. I wanted to give you a chance at a life. To breathe, to live, make music, friends, to fall in love.” His voice caught at the word love, his eyes raw with pain. “I wanted you to have whatever you deserved before you ever stood in front of me. I wanted you to hate me. I wanted you to hate me so much, you lived the best life you could up there.” His breath caught, and his hands cupped my face. “I wanted you to hate me because I could never be okay with anyone I love to rot away in this forgotten world.”

  I turned my head, and his hand fell away. “How am I supposed to get back to normal now? I don’t even know how to get back home.” We stood in silence, both waiting for the right words. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff; behind me was what was real, and one step forward I would forever be stuck in one of Grimm’s fairy tales. Either way sucked. “I feel like my whole body is breaking in two, each side wanting to go in separate directions.”

  “Only you can decide what breaks you, Raine, and honestly, you’ve seen worst than this.”

  When I looked back up at him, all I saw was a handsome man with eyes like the ocean and lips that could melt my thoughts away. He was stunning to look at in every way, and something in me wanted to wrap my arms around him and run toward this adventure. Something else inside me wanted to see where my life would have brought me.

  His frown deepened, and yet the way he looked at me made me feel the beginning of things I didn’t want to feel with someone else, someplace else. God, couldn’t he have a flaw?

  Oh, right, he did; he’s dead.

  My stomach twisted at the thought, and my heart felt heavy and slow. I stood on the brink of fight or flight, not knowing the right road to take. I could no more control my spiraling thoughts than the heat of the sun outside. It was terrifying how the small knowledge he gave me just now utterly consumed me.

  “Why did you tell me, then? Why did you touch me? Kiss me?”

  His gaze fell away, his lips becoming a tangle of emotions: dread, shock, dismay, all ending in defeat. “I…” he began but stopped and stared back up at me, wide-eyed.

  “You were only right in one thing, Mathias. You should have never told me.” How will I ever get back to being me again? And living a regular life instead of the fantastical?

  From the look on his face, my words were a straight punch to the gut. “I wanted you to get a chance to live, to be happy.”

  “Well, that failed, didn’t it? I spent twenty-two years thinking there was something wrong with me. And I wouldn’t be happy here either.”

  I wanted him as hurt and confused as I was. Everything I thought was real was a lie, and the only boy to kiss me the way I wanted to be kissed was already dead. That was why I wanted to lash out. To hurt him.

  The man I wanted to get to know, the man who kissed me like I’d never been kissed before, we never had a chance. He was already dead.

  His face began to fade back into the shadows he belonged to. The translucent image of his hurt face washed away like a dream after waking, vanishing into nothing until I was left alone in my cell with the other decaying humans.

  For a small moment, I held a long, lingering look at the spot he once stood. I felt lost and wild, scattered into a million pieces of thoughts and emotions. My knees weakened, and I fell back against the thick metal poles that imprisoned me.

  A cold wind fluttered against my neck, a small hushed breath skimming across my skin.

  “That feeling,” I whispered, my eyes welling with tears. “Of something brushing along my neck. Was it always you?” I cried out, my voice gaining momentum. “Were you always there, giving me this fucking feeling like I was supposed to be somewhere, do something? The thing that gave me fucking hope? Was it always you?”

  His voice was a weak whisper against my ear. “When you were scared. Hurt. Alone. I’d place my face in the crook of your neck and press my lips against your collarbone.” I slid down the bars, the tears breaking through their dam and racing down my cheeks. “When I was there by your side, that cold, tingling rush of air you never knew was the other half of your soul trying to crawl from death back to you.”

  I hung my head in my hands and shouted into my palms.

  “But you’ll always see me as the villain.” His voice cracked and turned louder and harsher. “And your name? It is Raine. The day you were born here, your mother let me name you. It means Queen.”

  Then there was nothing but silence.

  And I sat there alone on the cold, hard floor, with the sensation that someone had just left poetry on my skin, written with the lips and breath of a dead man.

  Chapter 23

  These cells were haunted. And so was I.

  Whispers beckoned from every corner, crawling up my skin and unwinding my nerves. I paced in anger, in shock. Mathias’s words clung to me like skin.

  What was the use of listening to his words? I couldn’t stay in Ravenswood. There was no choice; I had to go home. No one with a beating heart could live like this, and I hated him to making me think I had a choice. Life or death? What choice was that? How could I stay here? I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want my life to end, for my heart to stop beating. I couldn’t fathom not wanting to hold on to the gift I was given. There was so much I wanted to do. So many beautiful things I wanted to see and feel.

  The wisp of a memory returned to me, and I clawed at it, picked it apart, trying to remember. I walked around the cell, pulling at my hair, focusing on the small images that pulsed in my mind.

  There was a meadow of strange blue flowers and
a boy running alongside me. We were giggling.

  I stopped moving in the cell, the memory becoming so vivid and real, I could smell the sweetness of the flowers and that earthly scent when the rain first hits the ground.

  The blades of the grass reached up to my calves, and the faster we ran, the more they tickled that sweet spot just below my the underside of my knee. I looked up at the boy, and his blue eyes blinded me.

  Mathias.

  I looked around my cell, blinking back the visions.

  No. I didn’t want to see this. I didn’t want to know any of this.

  What good would it do to remember? All I was now was the king’s prisoner.

  I wished I never followed Madden into that house. I wished I stayed in New York and grieved like any normal adult would have. I never should have looked for Addy’s killer.

  I didn’t want to know she wasn’t really my grandmother. I didn’t want to know there were horrors in the afterlife. I wanted a heaven and hope and love.

  The memory took hold of me, and I couldn’t shake free of it. My mother stood in the distance in a long white gown; her face was sad and heavy with mourning.

  When we reached her, both out of breath and laughing, she knelt down in the flowery grass and reached out for my hand. I looked up at her, smiling, and that’s when I realized how gaunt she looked. How pale and lifeless her body had become.

  “Mother?” My voice squeaked.

  “It’s okay, Raine. I’ll be okay,” she whispered, entangling her fingers with mine. I watched as she sat down quietly, slowly, like every move she made was sharp with pain. She closed her eyes, and a single tear fell from each of them.

  I looked up at Mathias, not understanding. His brow wrinkled, and he twisted the hem of his shirt in his hands. Behind him, the sky was thick with mist and tombstone gray. “You don’t belong here, do you, Mary? It makes you sick.”

  Her eyes, bloodshot and heavy with dark circles, slowly drifted up to him. “So very sick, Mathias,” she croaked.

  I squeezed her hand, and the alabaster color of her skin began to change. It was so minute at first, I thought I might be dreaming, so I stared at her without blinking. My eyes stung in the corners, but I saw, gradually—her skin softened and swelled out and blushed to a healthy glow, until she was almost back to normal.

  “There, now.” She breathed in deeply. “I feel much better.” She tried to smile, but it never reached her eyes. “One day soon, I’ll be too far gone to save, little one.” She touched my chin softly, her eyes still looking red and tired. “But before that, I will hide you somewhere safe.”

  Her head tilted back toward Mathias. “You’ll keep a eye on her, won’t you, Mathias? Make sure no one here touches her?”

  “I promise I will. She’s my soul mate,” he said proudly, crossing his arms over his chest in a huff.

  “Heaven forbid, Mathias. That would destroy the both of you. Never say that out loud again.”

  His forehead creased in confusion. “But I love her, Mary.”

  There were hurried footfalls behind us, and suddenly my grandmother appeared, younger and full of life. “Mary, I must go now. Now! Bring the child.”

  I cried as I watched the scene unfold in front of me. Seeing my mother was one thing, a thing I never knew, but watching my grandmother run into the meadow as if she still lived and breathed was shocking. Add to all that a seven-year-old boy professing his love for me, and it was breathtaking.

  Too weak to carry me, my mother handed me to Addy, who scooped me in her arms and carried me through the fields.

  I blinked and found myself huddled in the corner, cold steel bars at my back, shivering. I needed to remember the rest. I needed to remember how she took me out of here. Shaking, I closed my eyes and touched my hand to a rough spot on the floor and moved my fingers around in slow circles. The motion slowed my drumming heart, letting me focus once again on the memory. In my mind I saw Addy, slipping through the dark brambles and past the tall columns with the large ravens that loomed like monsters atop them. Then blackness and a brilliant explosion of stardust and fire. Then I was older and freshly woken and crying from a bad dream in our house by the sea.

  “It was all a bad dream, Rainey. There’s no such thing as Ravenswood.”

  I could remember no more.

  No, no, no. I had to remember. I had to get out of there.

  I banged on the prison bars and screamed. A few feet away from me, the girls from the party slowly shifted their heads toward me, both on the verge of death, just like my mother had looked in the meadow.

  I prowled around the cell like an animal, looking for anything I could use to escape. I slammed my feet against the bars over and over and screamed and shouted. My eyes caught the patterns of rot and rust and decay that covered the bars, and I decided wherever it seemed the thickest, that was where I would kick the hardest.

  Five good kicks bent a section of the cage, and on the eighth kick my foot flew through the debris. It made the rest of the metal break off until there was a hole the perfect size for me to fit through.

  Carefully, I pulled myself over the sharp metal, praying the jagged edges wouldn’t get near my skin, but it caught at my ankle, and the burn of the scrape had me cursing my own existence. I fell face down, hands slapping against the hard floor. I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled my ankle up to press my palms against the pain. It stung like a bitch for a second, and then the pain faded away to a dull throb. I pulled my hands up to my face to see how much blood there was, but oddly enough they came away clean.

  “What in the actual fuck?” I knew I just cut myself. I felt the warmth of the blood. I felt the bite of the wound as it opened in my skin. But there was nothing there. I touched my fingers to my chin and neck along the line where I had felt the king drag his knife across my flesh.

  There was no wound.

  No scab.

  Nothing.

  I looked down at my hands, turning them all sorts of ways. I healed my mother with them—just like Mathias said—he takes life, and I make it. That was why my mother hid me. That was why she let Addy take me away. She wanted to hide me from him. From all of them. I bring life.

  And the flower? Could I have actually made that grow?

  A weak moan echoed out from one of the corners, and I ran through the human sludge and bones scattered across the floor to get to the sound. My shoes crunched and sank into what was left of over a dozen other prisoners, maybe even more. I swallowed back a gag and slid onto my knees, crawling through the filth to find anyone left alive.

  “Hello?” I called out softly. “Hello? Can you make another sound?”

  A small, muted shuffle led me right to the girls from the party, both of them skeletal bodies that looked barely alive.

  Overhead, a small white candle flickered to life, spreading a dim glow over me. I blinked up at it, confused. Was that Mathias? Was he trying to help? Or was it Ravenswood itself?

  “Thank you,” I whispered. An icy breeze against my back was what I received as a reply.

  I shook it off with a shiver and brought my attention to the sight before me, which was probably the worst thing I had ever seen. Open sores had ripped apart their skin, and dry, graying flesh flaked off from the edges. I inhaled deeply and swallowed hard, fighting the hot bile that began to crawl up my throat. If we were in the real world, this room would reek of death and decay. I’d also be able to call for an ambulance and police, and King Suck-the-Life-Out-of-You would get a life sentence.

  “I’m going to take your hand, okay?” I asked gently. I didn’t expect consent. I could see the grooves of her esophagus through her neck; she probably couldn’t even speak. “I’m going to try to help you.”

  One single tear escaped from her eye. It rolled down her cheek and collected inside the hollow of her sunken skin. Her eyelids fluttered, and I realized that was all the answer I would get.

  Reaching out, I gently placed her hand in mine, careful to avoid her wounds. Then I slid my other hand
over her friend’s palm. Both girls gave my fingers a little squeeze.

  I said a silent prayer that this would somehow work.

  But nothing seemed to change.

  I exhaled a shaky breath.

  Tears welled up in my eyes and fought to break free.

  I was horrified. I thought I could help them.

  Maybe I could help only one at a time? But I couldn’t let go of either girl to find out. I couldn’t just let one of their hands go. I wanted to help them.

  My throat swelled from holding in my sobs. The bridge of my nose stung from fighting my tears. My collarbone sparked with fire, and my heart felt as if it would leap out of my throat. I hated myself for not being able to help them. I hated this place for being the Hell it was.

  Chills trembled up my arms and down my spine, watching how unaffected the girls were from my touch. I was useless. How was I supposed to get them out of here? Carrying them out of there would surely kill them both, and who knew if I was strong enough to even lift them? And I still didn’t know how to get home.

  I sat straighter, holding on to them tighter. Maybe Mathias was a lying sack of shit. Maybe he showed me those memories and they weren’t even real.

  A wet, raspy cough shuddered through one of the girls, bulging out the veins in her forehead.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, my eyes blurring with tears. “I thought I could help you. I thought—”

  But through the haze of my sight, I began to notice a subtle change, something in the color of their skin. I tried to wipe my eyes against my shoulder to no avail—I didn’t want to release their hands—even to clear my vision. I blinked furiously until my eyes dried and I could see definitively see the filling in of concave cheeks and flush of color and life across their skin.