by Sarah Tobias
Still, my heart lurched and my throat swelled as my own beliefs were repeated back to me. Gwyn’s intended truth cleaved into my gut like a sharp, bloodied blade with every reminder she uttered.
“I … I saved your life,” I said.
Her sweet peppermint breath caressed her words as she whispered, “I’ll enjoy watching you die, you mutant mistake.”
Gwyn’s hand streaked to my neck, smashing my head back against the concrete. My hands thrashed uselessly in their bindings, the ice-fueled burn raining through me like sharp shards of glass. I wanted nothing more than hang here stoically while she strangled, showing no pain or fear as she watched my life ebb away. Instead, I flailed like a fish out of water, with guttural chokes, desperate for oxygen.
“Enough.”
The boom had Gwyn letting go, though I didn’t miss the fury that crossed her face before she released me. I gulped down air.
Two shadows come up behind Gwyn. They hit the light of the doorway, and the man who had netted me and dragged me here like an animal took shape, and Asher.
“You must be the one called Liam,” I said to the new guy, coughing against the scratchiness in my throat.
“The one and only. I’m these two troublemakers’ big brother.”
There were three of them. Three siblings.
“The Chaser. The Trapper. The Hunter,” I said.
When their true names crossed my lips, the meaning behind them became heavy on my shoulders.
“Well, she’s vile but quick,” Gwyn said, giving my leg an unnecessary kick before she went to take her place beside Asher. My eyes went molten, but I remained as still and discreet as they were.
“You’re not the Hunter,” I said to her receding back.
I refused to wince when she reeled. If Gwyn’s breath could have shot flames, she would’ve directed all the air she had at my face.
“Don’t you speak to me,” she hissed. “I’m just as powerful as the Hunter. I can inflict just as much pain.”
She forced my chin up, her manicured nails digging into my already tender cheekbones. With no ability to stop it, my right elbow twisted around in its socket under her gaze. Her eyes grew small with concentration, and my wrist, held solid by the chains, could not move with the rest of my arm. I almost blacked out at the resulting snap.
“You’re not the only one with supernatural finesse,” she said, spinning on her heel and waltzing back to her brothers.
I swallowed back as many whimpers as I could. My arm wasn't healing with these inscription chains confining me. I despaired at the fact Gwyn could touch me and not feel any burn.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt real, terrifying panic.
Make it stop, I begged. Kill me if you must, but end this.
My eyes landed on Asher as I pleaded silently.
Before my dark flame destroys you all.
Chapter 40
“Asher,” I said, clanging against the chains. “You know I’m not a monster. I’m not evil. There’s something that’s trying to control me, to swallow me up. But I’m fighting it. I know you understand what that’s like.”
He didn’t react. Asher’s arm didn’t so much as twitch. My heart screamed as my mind forced me to conclude I’d lost him.
Liam approached, carefully, as if creeping up on a rodent.
“I say we let her go,” he said. “It’s no fun this way. We can’t test her abilities. Or what we can do to her.” He lifted his arms, spreading them wide. “The net’s not my only special weapon, you know.” Smile. “You may have the burn, half-fae. But I have the rest of the elements.”
He sucked in a large breath, taking in more amounts of air than was possible, in one breath. Too late, I concluded that what goes in, must come out.
Liam’s eyes bulged unnaturally as he expelled the air from his mouth, causing such a gale force wind that my back crunched against the concrete wall, my broken arm blaring its dissent as my torso flattened along with it.
A spiderweb of cracks formed behind me. And the wind was cold, so frigid that even the dark flame within me sputtered.
I am so sick of this, I thought as shards of ice cut deep into my skin. I am so sick of being trapped, of being ignorant prey.
I am, allegedly, the most powerful fae there ever was, a destroyer of worlds, and yet I couldn’t break myself out of being chained to a wall?
The answer came to me in a sudden, agonizing wave.
Let me out, she said, taunting. I'll take over…
I didn’t shoot her down. Snowflakes fell from my eyelashes as I studied my captors, all of them set in stone. Each one readying to brutalize and kill. A tag-team of torture.
“Don’t make me do this,” I said to them, so low that I didn’t think they caught it.
Gwyn laughed. “Don’t make you do what? You’re already screwed. You were born malignant.”
“Let me speak with Emily alone.”
Asher’s voice startled me just as much as it did the other two.
“What could you possibly think that’ll solve?” Liam asked Asher.
“Let me speak with her,” Asher repeated, this time as a warning.
Gwyn huffed, but she did as he asked. She turned to the stairs, but not before shooting me a look of such scathing hate that she cracked the shards of ice coating me. Liam followed, saying to Asher as he passed, “You’re making a mistake.”
“I’ve already made the mistake,” Asher replied, walking towards me.
As soon as the basement door closed behind them, we were shut in silence, not even our breaths making a sound. My chest was tight, Asher standing so close, but his intentions were so clouded.
“Asher,” I said, breaking through the dead air.
In answer, he bent down, his eyes leveled with mine. A faint shred of hope sparked within me. His gaze, always so distant and flat, and his face, shrouded in careful command, now blazed with overpowering, inescapable longing.
“Stay with me,” I said, my voice rising and falling with every intake of breath. “Be with me. Please.”
I conveyed everything to him; every ounce of turmoil, torment and destruction, before I breathed to him, “Save me.”
He lifted his hand toward my face. I closed my eyes as his palm moved to caress my frozen cheek, giving in to this uncontrollable need to feel him. With his touch, he could heal. Asher was my light. He could guide me back.
Denial spread its spikes when his skin met mine. My gold turned to angry violet symbols, blaring their power. His hand burned through my soul and left it in tangled, shredded tatters. His contact charred my flesh. His touch ruined me.
Branded, shivering and barren, I let out a wrenching sob when the raw pain in his gaze transformed into arctic, murderous ice.
“You really are a fae.” Asher’s voice ruptured with the revelation.
“No…” I said through the convulsions. “Y-you touched me once, remember? You held me w-without pain.”
He stood up.
“You were weak then. You were ... Emily,” he replied. “If you had just stayed in that bedroom, if you’d just let whatever is inside you die, you would’ve been okay.” His lips peeled back from his teeth. “But you left. And you killed. You’re no longer human.”
“But…”
I wanted to deny it. I was going to—until the clenching hunger, the wishing to fade away as I lay in bed in his house, curling up and begging for release, rendered me still. I wouldn’t have died there. Not me. Not Emily. The only thing that was dying that night, the only tumor that was growing weaker, shrinking…was my dark flame. I would have survived.
The dagger of truth twisted into my stomach and ripped up into my chest.
Damn you, Derek.
Derek didn’t let me lose my dark flame when he came in and carried me toward more souls. He asked me to become it. He wanted me to be her.
And now, with Asher staring at me with so much distrust, so much contempt, I just wanted to lose myself.
My mortality was fading.
Asher turned, and my blurred, grief-soaked vision followed him until he disappeared up the stairs.
But they granted me no solitude. A shaft of light broke through the blackness, and I squinted with shame as the three of them descended back down. My time had come.
Gwyn had the gall to stroke my hair. Her lips almost touched my face. She blew out a sharp puff of air into my eyes, and I flinched back and knocked my head against the cracked foundation. She laughed, as if she were a spoiled five-year-old teasing a caged, helpless animal at the zoo.
“You were never meant to live,” she said as she tucked a loose tendril behind my ear.
I was never supposed to live.
Her opinion of me, said so cavalierly, one that lived inside like a rotten, poisoned apple all these years sent me over the edge. I didn’t have to call upon the dark flame when I caught her wrist with my teeth and chomped down.
She wailed, high-pitched and ringing as she ripped her wrist out of my mouth and held it to her chest, red streaks splattering onto the floor.
“And I didn’t even need my fangs for that,” I said through a bloody smile.
“You mutant piece of—!”
“Good one,” I said as I turned my head to the side to spit out her blood. “The monster name-calling is getting old.”
Gwyn opened her mouth to give me hell.
I used the immobile chains on my wrists to lift my legs high and clamp them around her waist before she could form another insult. I raised her up, crashing her into the wall above me before slamming her into the ground. I moved, quick as a cockroach, so one leg pressed against Gwyn’s neck and the other held firm behind her head. Lavender symbols on my chains glowed harshly, responding to my physical efforts by scorching their power in a blinding attempt to stop me. I bit down on my cheeks, unwilling to give my scream voice.
Liam and Asher reacted by crouching into defensive positions, Liam probably preparing to call upon his ice-wind and Asher… I wasn’t sure what he could do. Yet. Regardless, my words halted them both.
“Release me,” I said, and one more piece of Emily drifted away. “Or I’ll snap her neck.”
“You don’t mean that,” Asher said.
Asher coiled like a predator, ready to dart forward, but his expression thawed at my terrible misery.
“Emily. You don’t mean that,” he said again.
“I don’t want to,” I said. “But you’re leaving me with no other choice.”
There was movement on my left and I tightened my hold on Gwyn’s neck. She gasped, trying to breathe, and Liam stopped in his tracks.
“If something happens to one of you, you all lose,” I said, tremulous. “Don’t make me do it.”
Asher lowered his arms.
“I’m telling you the truth, Asher. I don’t want to be this.” A sob escaped. “But if I’m forced to, I will. Let me go.”
Liam glanced to Asher, who was outwardly steady and in control. Internally ... I could only dream.
“Please,” I said hoarsely.
Asher nodded to Liam. It was enough for Liam to lower his defenses and lay his hands across the iron cuffs at my wrists. The wretched sting disappeared when the symbols faded, though I remained bound against the wall.
“Back up,” I said to Liam when the inscriptions vanished.
Liam hesitated, as if daring me. For a few seconds I came to terms with the fact that I might have to kill two of them, but he eventually relented and resumed his position beside Asher.
I untangled my legs from Gwyn’s neck and shattered the plain iron cuffs and chains with my strength. They clattered across the floor and landed at Asher’s feet. My unfortunate fate held me immobile before him, but I had to accept our cursed, star-crossed future. There was no redemption here. I slammed through the damaged concrete wall, bursting from the basement and into the night.
In those last seconds of standing in front of Asher, free of chains and lies, I knew, without a doubt, that he was just as tortured as I was, that he was as pulled to me as I was to him.
Chances can endure misfortune.
It was deadly, but I hoped. Our tie was much too ethereal to fail. How could a bond that put effervescence in my blood, with a man who inspired light in the darkest of souls, be so short-lived?
I didn’t for one second believe, as I flew through the night with tears sliding down my cheeks and dissolving into the wind, that Asher would want to follow me into my dark abyss.
Chapter 41
I was wrong.
Asher somehow caught up to me and careened into my body, dead-dropping us from the air, and we plummeted into a deserted street. The streetlights flowed over our forms as we hit the curb with a thud, my left shoulder singing from the impact, but healing fast now that the symbols weren’t affecting my power. I flew upright, facing him before he could attack again.
There he was, my once knight, his breath coming out in short bursts as he regarded me with his head lowered, his arms out to his sides and his hands clenched into fists.
“You know I can’t let you go, Emily,” he said.
“And I can’t let you kill me. Not yet. Nobody knows who I am anymore. My kind no longer exists. What you know of me could be wrong. Maybe I am good. Maybe I can beat this.”
“I can’t take that chance with you.”
“You don’t even know what I am.”
“But you know what I am.”
His voice, so spiritless, yet filled with such tension, as if he were, before my very eyes, accepting the conflict within himself and finally choosing a side.
“You’re the Hunter,” I said, my dulcet tones rising with his true name. “It’s your voice I’ve been hearing in my head. Every time … every time I confront a fae.”
“Yes.” He paused. “And therefore your enemy.”
“I’m not just a fae.” I was determined to convince him I was not evil. I was not becoming my darkness.
She seethed within me, wanting out, and soon. With the Hunter in such threatening proximity, it was a battle to keep her caged. I tore in half at the thought of hurting him.
“You’re part of the fae realm,” he said. “I can’t ignore it.”
“You know me, Asher. You’ve seen me as I am. I’m not my darkness. I’m me, I’m Emily. You’ve got to let me fight this.”
He shook his head, and I sensed the sorrow in it. “It’s not my choice. You can no longer live, Emily.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m meant to live.”
I said it with such conviction that my heart swelled with the words. With everything that had happened in this one short day, I’d found the answer to the most important question: I would live, and I would win. I’d prove to everyone I wasn’t doomed.
But by the rigid set of his shoulders, my pleas would not prevail over his convictions tonight. I stood at the ready, prepared to fight him, but never to kill him. I would do what I had to get away, but I would stop short of that.
The dark flame charged against her prison walls in defiant fury. If you want to live, then he needs to die...
Asher remained immobile. Trepidation crept down my neck, Derek’s teachings of the Hunter’s invincibility coming to the forefront of my mind as I waited for him to make the first move.
Apprehension changed into oh, crap, when his silver eyes brightened to an unnatural sterling and the ground rumbled beneath our feet.
I went rigid when I felt a pull within me, like a magnet as my tendons stretched taut, reforming themselves into thin strings under my skin as they were forced to move forward by Asher’s silent command.
I stumbled forth, my feet betraying me. “Wha—Ash—”
It stopped. My tendons snapped back into place and I regained control of my limbs. I lifted my head, thoroughly suspicious on why he allowed me to move on my own again.
And staring back at me, with glowing, pewter eyes, protruding cheekbones and an elongated mouth filled with deadly sharp teeth, stood A
sher. His skin blazed with a blistering light I knew all too well.
He had absorbed my power. He’d mirrored my fae.
Asher rushed forward, hooking me by the neck and lifting in one swift, fluid arc. I ignored the spears of burning pain from his hand on my skin. My legs wrapped around his waist and I forced him off-balance, tumbling after him onto the asphalt. I thrust my hands up in defense, driving his fangs away from my neck at the same time I twisted away.
The dark flame rammed against me, ricocheting through my head and screaming for release, and my focus had to turn to her. She used my attentions to her advantage, coming to the surface in quick bursts, my eyes flashing with her power and then receding as I tore between battling him and holding her back. Her black smoke infected my mind. My body went limp, but only momentarily, as I used all my energy to send her spiraling backwards in one giant surge of white flame.
Asher could’ve seen his chance. Yet, instead of bracing myself against a vicious strike as he took advantage of my distraction, I was clutching at empty air.
I sat up, unsure where Asher went or if I had somehow unintentionally evaporated him. I came to my feet, unsteady, but poised to fight this new, unseen threat. The silence of the night bothered me, broken only by my heavy breathing as I scanned the neighboring tops of buildings.
The quiet shattered. A rush of air whooshed from above. Asher was a missile, his eyes streaking the sky with lightning as he thundered down.
I dashed sideways, barely escaping the impact as he exploded into the asphalt and sent chunks of hardened tar flying across the roadway and into the cars parked on either side. Alarms wailed; lights flicked on in surrounding apartments.
I burst up, becoming a shooting star aiming for the sky to escape.
Asher came up behind me and I veered left. He sensed my evasion and preempted my feint. He boomed into me, cutting off our ability of flight, and we sprawled onto a high-rise rooftop, bones fracturing upon impact.
I wrestled out from under him and into a standing position, stumbling over the cracked concrete as I tried to jump off the roof and into the night again.
