“But soon we’ll go through the hidden wall. We’ll drop lower through the trick passages, and we’ll find the rooms of forbidden items. Once we go there, there’s no going back. The people who want these secrets to stay dead will know, and you’ll be in more danger than you can imagine.”
“No one knows I’m here,” I counter. “No one knows I’m not just here for schooling.”
She frowns, looking unconvinced. “The Society of the Ravens is dangerous, Emseray. Believe me.”
The Society of the Ravens? The name sounds familiar…somehow. Had I heard about them? Read about them?
Suddenly, she goes rigid. Her mouth opens, but no words come out.
“Abigail!” I don’t care that I shout her name as I stand. Something is wrong. Very wrong.
And then she begins to scream and scream. It only takes a second for her translucent body to catch fire, but then she’s a ghostly shape, burning, the flames lighting the tunnel. Fear chokes my throat. Someone…someone is burning her bones. If she dies this way, she can never cross over. She’ll simply cease to exist.
I shout, “Hellhound, show yourself!”
It only takes a second for the beast to creep out of the shadows. Surprise flashes over the massive dog's face, but its lips curls back to reveal sharp teeth. It tries to leap for me, but with a thought I send its knees buckling. Then, before me, the huge, shaggy black beast, with eyes that burn, kneels before me. My subject, even if he didn’t know it until now.
“I am a dark fae queen, and you shall do my bidding or return to the fires of your world.”
It tries to attack me again. Again it crumbles to the ground.
“You shall take this soul to the world that smells of sunshine. And you shall do it now.”
And then it stops fighting my control. I release it, but the beast continues kneeling before me, and I see on its face the awareness that I am of his kind. That I am a creature of the monsters and the night.
He moves to where Abigail screams and burns, and his teeth grasp her leg with teeth that can even touch the undead. He drags her ghostly form from the tunnels, and I chase after them both, heart in my throat. My senses are overwhelmed with Abigail’s terror, and her screams I know will remain in my memories forever.
As we turn another corner, a blinding light appears in front of me, and that smell of sunshine is overwhelming for a powerful moment. And then the light and the smell and the hellhound and Abigail are all gone. I find myself kneeling on the floor, the torch clutched in my hand. Just ahead of me is the door to the outside, and the rain falls hard.
But I don’t care that I’m back where I started. I don’t care about anything for a long minute, anything except that Abigail was able to cross over before her bones were entirely consumed.
Time ticks by and my shock wears off. I take a shaky breath and rise as realization dawns on me. Whoever was burning Abigail’s bones must have done it because they knew she was helping me. And I had to find out who it was.
Dropping the torch, I race forward to the exit. Shoving open the door wider, I explode out into the night and into the waiting arms that close around me. Fury uncoils in my belly, and I strike out at the mind of my attacker.
But something’s wrong.
13
Lucian
One second I’d switched directions on campus to check out the entrance to the tunnels in my search for Esmeray, the next I heard her scream. Never before in my life has a sound cut me so deeply. I went racing to the entrance, bound and determined to destroy whatever had made her scream like that, and the next thing I knew, a small body was crashing into me. I had one second to acknowledge that it was Esmeray in my arms, and the next a mind-numbing pain slammed into my head.
I’m pretty sure I’m dead.
The world is dark, and I feel nothing. It isn’t scary. It just...is. And then I hear my heartbeat start back up, the sound filling my ears. I open my eyes, coughing and choking, and Esmeray is kneeling beside me, her skin pale, her expression frightened.
“Lucian.” She whispers my name and touches my chest so softly that death was worth this moment with her. “Are you okay?”
I can’t quite speak. My lips seem like they belong to someone else, so I just nod.
“Never do that again! I could’ve killed you!”
There’s a ringing in my head as I start to feel more like myself. I force my lips to work. “You’d never hurt me.”
She sits back on her heels, and I want to touch her so bad. Esmeray might scare other people, but to me she always has such a raw vulnerability beneath that tough-as-shit exterior. “So you’re really okay?”
I nod and groan as I lift a hand to touch the back of my head. I must have hit the ground pretty damn hard when she used her powers against me, because there’s a tender bump in the back.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, and the question holds a strange threat.
I frown and glance at her, trying to read her face. “Looking for you.”
“You knew I was in the tunnels?”
I suspected, but I didn’t know. Still, it feels like a lie when I say, “No.”
Her brows lower and her eyes grow sharp. “Did you burn her bones?”
“Wh--what? Who?”
She rises, and now I see it in her face. She doesn’t believe me. “Are Bron and Dwade at her grave?”
“Esmeray--”
She turns and runs.
It takes everything inside of me to stand unsteadily and race after her. I feel like I’m walking sideways, and the ground seems too far away, but I run through the rain, keeping an eye on her small form far ahead of me. Already I know she’s heading to the graveyard, but I don’t know what she thinks she’ll find. Does she really believe we went out to burn some bones in the night?
She explodes through the gate to the graveyard, and I’m ridiculously far behind. For a minute I lose all sight of her, and my heart races. If someone was burning bones, if someone knew what Esmeray was doing tonight, she might just be running straight into the arms of a powerful enemy. But just as the thought makes me run harder, I spot her.
Esmeray kneels before an undug grave, and I can’t be sure if it’s the rain or tears that track her face, but I’m relieved to see she’s alone. I slow and approach her carefully, having no desire to find myself flat on my ass again. But when I get closer, when I open my mouth to say something, anything, she stops me with her own words.
Her cold words. “If I find out you had anything to do with this, I’m going to kill you, Lucian.”
I believe her, and she must truly be my mate, because her words only make me love her more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her grey eyes lock onto my own. “You lie to me. A lot. So much that I don’t know when you’re telling the truth and when you’re blowing smoke up my ass. You may as well stop talking to me.”
Her words cut me to my core, and I kneel down in the mud beside the grave, staring into it to see smoking bones. “I only ever lie to protect you.”
“Well, stop,” she says. “I don’t need protection.”
“You don’t understand.”
Her eyes seem to weigh my soul and find it lacking. “I understand that I’m a dark fae in a school where I’m not wanted. I understand that I’m going down the same path that my brother walked, and that this path led to his death. And I understand that I thought that at least I could trust you three when I got here, but the truth is that I can’t trust anyone.”
I rub my chest, trying to take the strange ache her words bring away. “We care about you.”
“Then don’t stop me.”
She stands and her hands are curled into fists. I follow her as she exits the graveyard, and I find it hard to find the words to make things better between us. She’s right to not trust us. We are lying to her. But she has to eventually accept we’re doing it for her own good, right?
“You’re going back to the tunnels?” I ask, surprised when I realize our
direction.
She doesn’t answer, so I hurry to keep pace with her.
“Don’t, Esmeray! Don’t do this!”
She ignores me.
I grab her arm and spin her to face me, saying the only words I think might get through to her. “Rayne wouldn’t have wanted this!”
She slaps me, and the sting shocks me. “Don’t tell me what my brother would have wanted! You weren’t there when he was dying! I was! He came to me for a reason. He knew that I would stop at nothing to uncover the truth. Now either help, or get out of my fucking way.”
She keeps walking.
I follow her as if in a trance. “I’m coming with you.”
Her steps slow. “Have you ever been in the tunnels before?”
“No.” The lie slips so easily from my lips, but it’s a lie I’ve told a thousand times.
She keeps walking, her back rigid.
I don’t know what else to do, so I just follow her. Through the rain, through the night, and to the place my best friend was attacked. It all feels so wrong, and yet, I’d follow her to hell and back. So there’s no other choice.
When we enter the tunnels, it’s strangely quiet. She picks up a torch from the ground and doesn’t look back at me as she begins to lead us. I fully expect her to take a different path, but as time passes, a gnawing sensation eats at the back of my thoughts. This path is dangerous, and there’s no way in hell she should know to take this one out of all of them.
We come to a tunnel with blood smeared on the wall. I step forward and grab her, yanking her toward me. For the first time on this path, our eyes meet, and I stretch my senses out, needing to know how she feels…but there’s nothing. She’s locked her emotions down so carefully that there’s not even a trace of them. But her face…it tells me she’s angry.
“Esmeray, how do you know-- why are we going this way?”
“It’s as good a path as any,” she says, and there’s something taunting in her voice.
Is she trying to get me to admit I’ve been here before? I clench my hands into fists. If I tell her that, I’ll have to tell her everything, and she’ll never forgive me.
So I just say, “Okay.”
She turns away from me and we continue down the path. I feel sick as I see the blood smeared on the wall. Some of it is Rayne’s, but I’m pretty damn sure some of it is new.
And then she stops before a wall, and every muscle in my body tenses. There’s no way she could know… Her hand skims the wall and finds the subtle mark of the raven. Her fingers press the stone, hard, and it slowly sinks in. The door pulls back, and my heart hammers.
Inside, a few dim bulbs light the room. Four bedrolls lie on the floor. Food and water is sealed in bags in one corner, and there’s an array of weapons. She enters the room slowly, and sweat gathers on my forehead. Will she see anything that tells her I’ve been here more times than I can count?
She sets a torch in a holder on the wall and moves to the bedrolls. I feel strange when she selects mine and sits down. “Come here,” she says, and there’s something in her voice that I can’t quite read, but I do as my siren tells me to.
Sitting down beside her, the last thing I expect is for her to climb onto my lap. I know she can read the shock in my face when she leans closer and kisses me. In an instant, I’m hard, aching for her. The woman is like a sorceress. She sends my blood rushing straight to my cock, and every thought is gone. She kisses unlike any woman I’ve known. Her mouth is punishing. Hard. Her tongue flicks into my mouth like her only goal is to torture me.
I’m barely aware of it when she leans me back, but the friction of her sliding against my erection is enough to make me lose my mind. That’s why I’m at her mercy when she tears off my shirt. That’s why my desire sings when she undoes my pants and pulls my length out, tossing my pants and boxers on the floor.
When she kisses her way down my throat and chest, then lingers over my dick, looking at me and lifting a brow, I almost explode right there. Just a short time ago, she was sucking my cock in her room. I’d been so on the edge, and if I was honest, I’ve been on that edge ever since.
“I’m going to ride you hard,” she whispers, and her sharp nails slice gently into my thighs. “Turn around so I can undress.”
She shifts back from me, and I do as she says, flipping onto my belly. Waiting for her to disrobe. My mind is filled with what she’ll look like naked. With what it’ll feel like to finally sink into her hot body.
But when I look back, Esmeray is gone.
Just gone.
I curse my stupidity. How many god damn times can a woman’s touch make me forget all logic? I scramble for my clothes and pray that she goes down another path. That she doesn’t follow in her brother’s footsteps.
Because this place echoes with death.
14
Esmeray
I continue forward, following the blood smears on the wall. Something dark burns inside of me. It wants to fuck the brains out of Lucian and possess him in a way that I’ve never imagined. But the other part of me wants to punish him. No man should be as beautiful as he is. From his blue eyes that are almost white to the way he looks like some bad-boy prince from a fairy tale, he feels like mine in so many ways. Like a man I dream about every night.
And yet he lies to me.
Did he think I wouldn’t see his name carved into the wall of that room? Did he think I wouldn’t find it strange that the room had four bedrolls and that the sugary snacks were all in a bag by his bed? Of course not, because these men underestimate me.
And they’ll pay for their foolishness.
I’d managed to light another torch, and I use that to light the halls now. The darkness is deeper the further I go down the sloping tunnels, and the sounds of the rain are non-existence. And yet, the blood on the wall continues.
I frown as I look at it again. Something is…off.
Reaching out, I touch the scarlet that mars the wall, and I’m shocked when I pull my fingers back and find red on my fingertips. Red. Fresh blood.
But whose?
That strange feeling moves over my flesh again. Is it fear? I didn’t know. But I turn back to the tunnel that stretches before me, and I know that somewhere up ahead I’ll find the source of this blood.
Lucian’s face flashes before my mind. Then Dwade. And Bron. I hate that I picture them. The men I can’t seem to forget, but who lie to me. Who don’t have enough sense to fear me.
But when I round a corner, I see the body that sprawls on the ground. Suddenly, I’m rushing toward him, heart in my throat. My senses stretch out, but already I know he’s dead. There’s nothing left within him, just the shell of a body that’s been torn to shreds. Blood splatters the walls. It covers the floors.
Whoever killed him didn’t just want him dead, they wanted to send a message.
I scream as I collapse onto my knees, and anger overwhelms me like fire in my blood. This time when I reach out, I send pain into the minds of every creature close to me, except Lucian. Within the tunnels, I hear a dozen screams that echo my own. My powers work best when I can touch my victims. They work even better when I can see my victim. In moments like this, when I just sense the minds around me, it’s like throwing darts and hoping to strike something.
I was glad I had.
Reaching forward, I close the eyes of the shadow man. He should’ve lived the immortal life of one his kind. He should’ve had a lifetime to enjoy. But someone took that from him.
And that someone was going to pay for this.
Suddenly, I taste something strange in the air. My skin tingles, and I leap to the side as a blade hits the spot I was sitting and clings onto the ground. The scent and smell of iron fills the tunnel, and I scramble back from it, holding my torch out in front of me. A masked man separates from the shadows, another blade in hand. His arm goes back, and I reach out for his mind.
The dagger tumbles from his fingertips, and his mouth opens in a silent scream of pain. And then he tumbles
to the ground, unmoving. But I can’t tell if he’s dead, not when some power kept him hidden from me.
Heart racing, I wave the torch around me, searching for any other attackers. I stretch my senses out, and realize something strange and horrifying. I can’t sense anyone or anything now. Never before have I felt this way. It’s as if a cloak has been dropped around me, and the cloak has left me vulnerable.
This man. How did he get so close without me sensing him?
Something is wrong. Very wrong.
I kneel down beside the man and touch his throat. There’s no pulse. So one enemy is dead, but were there more? I rise, my heart racing, true fear making my blood run like ice through my veins.
And then to one side of the tunnel, I feel them. A dozen minds that burn of iron. A dozen beings immune to my powers.
I don’t think, I just run. I run past the shadow man’s body. I run past the blood that soaks the stone like a scarlet pool of death. My torch just barely lights the way in front of me, allowing the shadows to stretch out in all directions.
Some sick logic recognizes that as quickly as the creatures appeared behind me, they could appear in front of me too, but my terror won’t let me slow. It’s as if every bit of fear I haven’t felt in this life has suddenly awakened, and it’s got hold of my heart. Maybe I’ll run until I’m too tired to run any further. Or maybe I’ll run straight into their trap.
Is this how they killed my brother? Did they surround him before driving that blade into his belly? And how did he escape to find me?
I don’t know. I have too many questions and no answers. But my feet pound the stone, and my heart races. Behind me, they’ve given chase. They blink in and out of my awareness. Not quite like the iron demon, but a brethren of sorts. And I know that should they catch me, my life will be over.
I’m fast. But somehow, they’re faster. I feel them gaining on me. My breath burns in my chest and a fire moves over the muscles of my legs. Sweat trails down my back, and I know what prey feels like. I know what it is to be hunted.
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