“I’m here,” I whisper soft as a lullaby and pull him in. It feels good holding Logan like this. Reassuring him everything is going to be all right because Holden isn’t wearing him like a coat anymore.
“Being apart from you made me realize what hell it would be to live without you,” he shakes his head when he says it. “I’m going to fight for you, Skyla.”
I glance back at the Madison Lights Ballroom, which has become a mere orb of light smothered in a thicket of fog.
“Gage,” I whisper. Gage is my life raft—my forever. A horrible sadness comes over me, thick as lead, knowing that I can’t have Logan if I have Gage and vice versa.
Obviously the Decision Council knows nothing about love and everything about rotten timing or they never would have put two wonderful people in my life at once.
“You know,” I whisper, “sometimes, I really hate my mother.”
The whites of his eyes glint. Logan shakes his head as if I should never have gone there.
A dull sound whips through the air, cuts through the wind as it fast approaches. A horrific thud erupts in the trunk of the tree just inches above our heads.
“Shit!” I hiss, jumping away from ground zero. “What the hell was that?”
Logan nods up at a silver hatchet artfully lodged in the timber.
“Mine,” a frazzled voice echoes from behind.
“We have to go,” I pull Logan by the arm and run blindly in the other direction.
Ezrina appears like a crimson stain, blocks our path at every turn—her image splinters in each direction like a funhouse mirror.
“What does she want?” Logan pants, holding me as she stalks us from afar.
“She wants, me.”
A bird screams in the night. The rustle of wings brings Nevermore straight to my shoulder. He lets out a series of aggressive cries before settling in, sinks his talons through the fabric of Gage’s jacket until he hits my flesh with a sharp bite.
“Trial?” Ezrina pounces forward. Her girth alone produces a solid thump.
“My mother’s working on it.” Even I know that’s bullshit. The one time I asked for help she outright evaded the answer.
“Your mother?” Ezrina steps forward, the dowager hump on her back pronounces itself like a stone laid under her cloak.
There it is—I take her all in. The gnarled fingers, the spasms of endless wrinkles that encase her eyes, her lips—hair like twisted wire hangers. My future is laid out before me, and it appears my mother could care less. I bet she’s already seen it, read it like a book—the Ezrina years. My forever will be spent wrapped in a curse that was never intended for me.
“My mom wants to talk to you herself,” I say, backing up with Logan. I’d gladly sic Ezrina on my mother. Now there’s a showdown I’d love to watch—lightning bolts and hatchets flying every which way.
“Liar,” she reaches up and snatches a branch right off the tree, thick as a leg.
“Shit,” I hiss.
“Time,” she takes a bold step forward, holds out a crooked hand and inspires Nev to scream out at her.
“Get Marshall,” I whisper to Logan in a panic.
“I’m not leaving.” He tightens the grip around my waist, annunciating the fact.
“I have Nev, just go,” my chest heaves wild with alarm. The last thing in the world I want is for Logan to take off, but I need some celestial tap dancing and he just isn’t going to cut it. “Please, I’m begging you. I brought you back—now I’m begging you to help me stay.”
“No,” he whispers it so low I barely make out the word.
“He’s behind us in the ballroom, grab him and drag him back out here. Just go—run!” I shout, pushing him away.
“I’ll be back in less than ten seconds. Don’t move,” he fixes his eyes on me with determined aggression. “You can count to ten. I will be back.” His voice strangulates tight as a wire as he darts his anger towards Ezrina.
Logan melts into the anemic teal fog, disappears like a dream—leaves me swimming in a nightmare.
Ezrina, lunges forward, snatches a fistful of hair from the back of my head and breathes her putrid stench over me.
“Nev!” I cry out, my voice trails through the forest like a siren.
Nevermore flutters into the air, dive-bombs Ezrina with peck after peck.
“You’re going to judge me?” She shouts into him. “You never had a day of labor! You know not strife—I will not allow you to judge me!” She swats him full force as he continues his aggressive assault.
Maybe this is Nevermore’s plan to save me, or maybe they really are having the argument of a lifetime.
I don’t really care.
Instead, I disappear.
Chapter 89
Eye Hate You
I don’t stick around to evaluate the situation. I take off running, hitting tree after tree, trying to navigate my way through the disorienting maze of the forest.
Ezrina’s voice dissipates to a whisper. Nev’s high-pitched cries melt into the vaporous night.
I clasp onto the smooth trunk of a Birchwood tree and try to control my erratic breathing. A gurgle of laughter bubbles up from the ground.
“Fuck off, Messenger,” a female voice snipes from behind.
I turn abruptly to find Nat and Pierce intertwined. Her dress is severely twisted and his shirt is unbuttoned halfway.
“Maybe she’d like to join in?” Pierce hops to his feet with a crooked grin on his face. It’s obvious he’s drunk or high or simply hopped up on the fact he’s a Kragger.
“No, really I wouldn’t.” I push my way past him, but he snatches me back by the wrist. “Let go,” I squeal, trying to free myself from his grasp.
“I’m not letting go,” he grits it out through his teeth. Pierce pulls me in with a bionic force as he runs his tongue up the side of my cheek.
“Gross,” I squirm in his arms, “Nat? Are you going to just sit there?”
“Hey, let go of her. Don’t be an asshole,” Nat bleats, still firmly planted on the ground.
“You heard her, asshole,” I hiss in his face.
“Did you know I have less than twelve hours before I have to turn myself in to authorities?” The unmistakable stench of alcohol sears across my face. “I’m not walking the stage at graduation—instead, I’m going to be locked up on some legal timeout all because of your sorry ass.” He slips a hand underneath my dress and glides it over my thigh.
“Don’t touch me!” I swat him away and manage to wrangle free a moment, only to have him pin my hands behind my back—my chest pushed hard into the trunk of a serrated pine.
“Nat?” I drill it through my lungs but she’s nowhere to be found.
I twist around and try to wrangle free. Pierce knocks my head back by way of an intrusive kiss—thrusts his tongue down my throat so far I retch into his mouth.
He’s all hands. His hot mouth emits a grotesque odor and I just want to kill him.
My blood boils. For the first time in a long while my anger builds on its own reserves, ratchets up my strength without relying on Chloe to kick-start the motor.
I give a viral shove into his chest and he takes me to the ground with him.
“Skyla?” It’s Logan. My name reverberates from somewhere far off in the woods.
Pierce pegs me underneath him, lands hard on my chest and dives into me again with his unwanted affections.
“Skyla?” Logan’s voice trails to nothing as he veers in the wrong direction.
Pierce burrows into me. I twist my head away from his disgusting mouth and let out the beginnings of a scream before he slaps a hand over my lips. I clamp my teeth down over his fingers, give one powerhouse bite that tears through tendons, sends a salty taste into my mouth.
“You bitch!”
My hands fly up over my head. Pierce locks me down with his arms and legs, pins me so efficiently with his own otherworldly strength, I’m no match against him.
A flash of pain ignites at the base of my neck as he grazes
along my skin with his knife-sharp teeth.
I can feel the puncture—feel the suction as he draws out my blood in smooth even pulls. His Adam’s apple rises and falls against my skin, his arousal made evident by the bulge pressed against my thigh. His fingers begin to loosen their grip on me.
The soft flutter of wings gets my attention. Nev procures a spot on a branch, high up above me.
I need Nev more than ever before.
Pierce groans with pleasure, his defenses weakened if only for a moment, and I slip my hands out of his grasp and wrap an arm around his head. I coil myself over his face like a serpent. It was his neck I was going for but he flinched.
“Shit!” He snatches for my hand but I pinch into his cheek, claw my nails like digging into a chalkboard. It’s a morbid slow pull as he tries to remove my death grip. I may never outrun or out muscle his Countenance abilities, but I’m sure as hell not letting go of the only stronghold I have.
Pierce groans in agony as he summons the strength to break my hold. I land my fingers over his eyelid—dig into his socket until I can feel his eye push back.
“Let go!” he shouts. The command vibrates off my chest.
I can’t. I’m too far-gone, too lost in all of this bullshit, boiling mad, so ready for revenge against the miserable Kraggers and their asshole relations.
My fingers push into the soft round tissue. Instinctively I retract my hand and his eyeball comes out with me.
“Shit!” I sit up in horror. “Oh my, God! Oh my, God!”
Pierce slumps over, groaning—smacks the ground a few good times before passing out.
“I’m so sorry,” I pant staring at the mass of bloodied flesh.
Nev swoops down and bobs his head into the palm of my hand, feasts on the eye, gobbling it down in three swift bites.
“You ate it!” I scream, wiping my bloody hand in a bed of pine needles. “That’s so freaking disgusting!”
“Skyla?”
My name expels from the woods in a strange groan, as if an animal were trying to mimic the sound. I’ve heard it that way before in the Transfer only then it was a—
A small army of mutilated Fems appear—every one of them dressed to impress as Demetri the clown. Pale white faces, hair sizzling into the night, each of them equip with a long shining blade.
This is probably Ezrina’s way of getting me back to the chop shop—in pieces.
I back up on my heels until I right myself.
“This isn’t happening,” I whisper. “This isn’t real.” If I believe this, accept it on any level I’ll die, only I won’t, really die, and that’s not fair.
“Skyla?” My name echoes into the night.
It’s either Logan or Gage it’s too frantic to tell. And where the hell is Marshall? Herding the lost souls of the Transfer around Paragon like some demonic shepherd?
I reach down to grab a stick, a rock, anything, and touch down on Pierce’s hairy leg instead. I don’t overanalyze, or create a roster full of strategies. I simply give one hearty roar as I pick Pierce Kragger up by the ankles and spin him Mach 5 like a helicopter blade. I knock the clown Fems on their unsuspecting asses, easy as knocking back bowling pins. Pierce doesn’t make a sound, simply falls limp—pliable to my every whim.
They come after me one by one, and I shoot them down, swinging Pierce Kragger around like my own private baseball bat.
One of them grabs me by the ankles and lands me hard on my side. I pull Pierce over me as a shield in time to see the carbon blade of a knife plant itself into his back.
“Shit!” I cower beneath him as warm blood pools over my dress. “Mother!”
If there were no Marshall, no Logan, no Gage, no earthly savior, then my last breath would go to her. She witnessed the first gasp that filled my lungs—it’s only fair she hears the last.
A strangled silence fills the woods.
A slow applause builds in rhythm as it emanates from above. I squint past Pierce’s broad shoulders to see exactly who is applauding my efforts.
I give a depleted smile. “It’s you.”
Chapter 90
Borrowed Time
A bloom of fog lifts from around her feet. Her dark cloak hangs loose over her hunched shoulders—Ezrina.
“Expecting someone else?” She says it low, without the echo that peppers her speech.
I dart a quick look around to find the forest void of Fems in any shape or size. Pirece gurgles as the final reserve expires from his lungs. I roll him off in haste and pant into the carnage I’m suddenly responsible for.
“Dead as a doornail,” she laments. “You have much blood on your hands. Remedy your ills, come to me child.” She takes a careful step in my direction.
Everything in me sags. I’m heavy laden on the inside from the blood Pierce managed to purge from me before I plucked his eyeball right out of his skull.
I pull myself to my knees—bow my head in retreat.
There is no greater sorrow than that of surrender.
Ezrina was right, who else would come for me? Logan? Gage? Even so, what could they possibly do to rectify the situation?
Her hand falls over my neck, lays over my flesh cold as a blade.
“Pulchra mulier,” Ezrina sings the words, slow—morbid as a eulogy.
“I failed,” a puff of velum escapes my lips. “I couldn’t get you a trial. I have nothing.” No mother to help me, no earthly father who could pull a few heavenly strings.
“Come,” she helps me up. The night mist enrobes me, cleanses me like only the truth can do.
Ezrina pulls back my hair, extends my neck so taut the fresh wound Pierce inflicted stings like a sunburn.
My neck releases, I open my eyes to find Ezrina gone. I loathe to look down and confirm that the transformation has already taken place. My arms rise—far lighter than the last time I donned her like a bad Halloween costume.
“It’s me,” I whisper disbelieving. “I’m still here.”
“And here you will remain.” My mother glows ethereal, illuminating an aura of iridescent light. A pink haze surrounds her, lays over her skin like a bruise.
“You came!” I run over and wrap my arms around her tight. Perfect love emanates off her being, vibrates through me, pleasant, welcome as water to this thirsty soul. “So Ezrina gets her trial?” Maybe it’s already happened?
“Yes, and no it hasn’t. I’ve scheduled a hearing post faction war. There is much to be considered.”
“Oh, thank you!” I jump up and down, taking her with me for the ride. It feels so good like this I never want to let go.
“You’ve killed another,” she sighs, wrapping an arm around my waist as we step over to Pierce.
“Oops?” Not quite sure what to say to that.
“And his eye,” she tisks at the sight.
“I’m sorry.” It hits me hard like an unexpected wave. My personal death toll rises—Chloe—Kate, Holden, and now his brother, too.
“An apology won’t be necessary. This was ordained.”
Pierce groans, his body twitches before he fully rolls over, vomits onto the ground.
I jump and scream, ducking behind my mother for cover.
“I thought you said he was dead!” I disrupt the silence for miles.
“He is—the world won’t miss him.” She steps in further. “Holden, however, gets to live out the rest of his days as his twin. He shouldn’t be a bother to you anymore.” She waves her hand and he evaporates, still gyrating from the severe case of upchuck.
“Where’d he go?” I take in a quick breath not sure whether to panic or cheer.
“He’s turning himself into the detention facility. The infirmary just had a bed open up.”
“Can you help Mia?” I plead, squeezing her hands.
“Mia is safe.”
“Safe as in?” I’m pretty sure she thought I was safe while I was held captive in the Transfer.
“Why, yes, I did believe you to be safe in Sector Marshall’s care.”
Sector Marshall.
“Nice.” I take in all of her immortal beauty. “So you’re here to right all the wrongs in the world? I can get used to this.” I see my own face radiating back at me like a reflection. She is neither human nor Nephilim, but a perfect Caelestis. “Would you do one more thing for me? Well, not really for me, for Logan?” Already she’s done enough, but I’d hate myself if I didn’t ask.
“What would that be?” Her eyes soften over my features. They sparkle a brilliant shade of violet before returning to their natural cellophane state.
“Give him back all of his Celestra powers. Please, I beg of you.”
“Reinstated.” She blinks a benevolent smile.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Her demeanor changes, her mood polarizes and there’s a darkness that coats her, dims the light she radiates like covering a lamp. “I must go. Do you remember what I told you a few months back about trust?”
I consider this a moment. “You said, trust is a word humans dangle in front of one another as a threat to get what they want.”
She gives an approving nod. “And after that?”
“Trust only your heart.”
“Words from your own lips, Skyla. Believe them.”
***
I run into Logan just shy of the resort.
“Skyla,” he wraps his arms around me, gives a searing kiss just above my temple.
“Where’s Marshall?” I look past his shoulder for a moving herd of Transfer transplants.
“Couldn’t find him.” His eyes rove over me pensive. “I swear I looked everywhere. I wasn’t giving up.”
“I was with my mother.” I glance up at him.
“Everything OK?” He runs his hands up and down my arms making sure it’s still me.
“Ezrina gets her trial.”
“Yes!” Logan spins me through the air, lands me soft on the ground before taking me in, his grin melting into a gentle sorrowful smile. “And we’ll win the war.”
“We’re not doing so good,” I remind him.
“We’ll do better.” He wraps an arm around my waist. “Rumor has it you’re my queen.”
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