by Elena Monroe
“Shut up!” Luna screamed in his direction, like his voice alone was too vile for her to hear right now.
Patting his shoulder, I walked into the shadows and grabbed the canister of kerosene I had left there for whenever he pissed me off enough to light his ass on fire.
Per Luna’s request, when her legs were around me, she wanted to watch.
She watched carefully, not moving, with her fists still curled tightly.
Dorian was sitting in a metal chair, with ropes binding his ankles to the feet of the chair and his wrists twisted behind him, fastened so tightly I could see the red bleeding from the irritation of him trying to snake his way out of them.
Something about his truth strapped against him pleased me, knowing it would bring his death, and the other side of me was turned on by his discomfort. Watching him squirm against the ropes felt like he was toying with me, exactly how he did with Luna. I stood above him, snickering at his tricks, waiting for him to realize they only half worked on me.
His chin was high in the air, proud. “I’ve suffered worse. Some ropes? Seems amateurish.”
Letting an open hand meet his cheek with force, I let the slap sound off as my response. No words necessary.
Pouring the kerosene over his shoulders, he gasped at the cold liquid mixing with the stench that was truly an acquired scent to like.
I loved it. It was sharp, strong, and full of possibilities.
Towering above him, I stepped to the side, revealing Luna, the jilted woman who was trying to eat her dark side whole and forget about it. Instead, she was pushing it around her plate and pretending she didn't like vegetables.
Not anymore.
This reveal was a whole new woman. One who was willing to see Dorian’s life end as much as I was.
Luna turned her delicate demeanor to stone. Not one ounce of guilt, regret, remorse she typically wore.
Expecting her discomfort to be apparent once it came down to brass tacks, I was shocked when she stood with such power in front of the guy who convinced her falling for a liar was a good idea.
“Why? Why would you do this Dorian?” I heard her voice, and I forced my fists in my pockets. I moved around to the back of him, out of sight. This moment was hers.
All Luna, whichever version she wanted to be.
He swiped his tongue along his bottom lip. “Because you’re the weakest. Easy prey.”
I grabbed a fist of his greasy hair and forced his gaze higher, not breaking from the girl he hurt, my little lamb. He struggled against my tugging, but I held him in place, forcing him to take in her words.
Eat them.
Swallow them whole.
Maybe choke on them.
Her words were no knife, but they were gonna be her weapon.
“Easy prey? Easy prey...” she repeated his words, mulling them over against her tongue.
Clamping down a hand on his shoulder, I forced him still, as she lost all reason and sanity she held so close. I watched her small pacing and debating fade into the background as the dark side came out to play.
Luna was still high as fuck Olympus in the sky.
The dark side of Luna was blooming right in front of me, coming alive, and it made me tingle with anticipation. I loved Luna, all of her, but the dark side? I worshipped it. I kneeled and pronounced my loyalty, hoping she'd let this side hang around a little longer.
Luna didn't need to straddle two personalities; she simply was what she needed to be in every moment.
Salty and sweet.
The dark side was born out of being a constant sacrifice. Her subconscious was pissed, and this was revenge.
Her hand collided with his face and instantly left a bright pink mark, while I held his face against the motion. He chuckled like he had lost it too. “Still weak, baby girl.”
She straddled his lap, sinking down on him and yanking his shirt towards her, even though she knew he was fastened to the chair, not leaving an inch of movement.
“I'm sorry… Why would you respond to pain? You like your women weak, your schemes meek, and poisons to run blood deep. Maybe this will get you responsive...”
She pushed her hand out and past his line of vision towards me silently asking for something; the only question was what did she want. “Nyx, lighter.”
I fished it out of my pocket with one hand still holding his head in place when our gaze locked. She was a battered woman, but resilient and about to prove it.
“Did you know you were digging your own grave hunting us? Who do you think we are, Dorian?” She waited and only got his silence. “You're just mortal, baby. You can't stop us.”
Waiting for a response he wasn't giving, she rolled her finger down against the trigger and watched the flame ignite between their bodies.
“Last chance, Dorian. Repent of your sins or be cast to the Underworld… by fire.” Her voice was steel and eyes set on me, like a bullseye for her meaning.
I needed to repent as much as he did. We both knew it.
“To go to the Underworld, I’d have to believe in your gods. I have my invitation to Heaven. I have served The Cloth well… I got to you, didn’t I? Eternal life breeds eternal power in the light of the Lord.”
He was hellbent on not saying a word, and that was the whole point of bringing her here, to prove he was never what we thought.
She pushed the flame against his cheek. “I read that dying by fire is the most painful way to die.”
Manically laughing again, he welcomed the torture sitting on his lap. “Is that what Nyx is? Are you willingly dying by fire? Is it as painful as my fist against your skin, baby? All sacrifice and no reward.”
She held the flame to his ear, letting it lick his skin until it turned red and irritated. He squirmed against the searing heat with no true escape.
Luna was playing with her dark side, and I was enjoying the show.
She leaned into his ear. “At least he’s isn't a liar. Damning an innocent man, doesn't your God frown upon that?”
She sat back, giving the pain and flame against his skin space to hurt. I wasn't nervous, until she got up from his lap and rummaged in her bag, producing hairspray. Shaking it vigorously, her doe eyes and swollen lips couldn't look more innocent against her villainous actions.
My eyes were glued to every motion. I tugged on his hair again, making sure my unease stayed under the surface. “Luna? What are you doing?”
“You know how Kate is; hairspray is a purse essential...” She walked closer to him, producing another flame, with her finger on the ticking time bomb.
“The dark side won't ever go away if you do this... again.” I shouldn't have reminded her about the last time she made a snap decision that led to Cheyanne dying.
She needed to hear it, the perspective.
“Where the light ends, the dark starts. Now, I'm just well balanced.”
Dorian’s smirk was obvious, even from where I stood. His jaw was smooth, and his dimples created craters in his skin. She pushed the flame and hairspray up like a gun at point blank range. She was standing in the danger zone, ready to be another sacrifice without realizing it.
Shifting her eyes to Dorian, leaning down to his level, “Any last words?”
“Last words? Trust no one. How do you think I found you? Sheer luck? Good luck sleeping with one eye open, baby girl. He's coming...”
I moved out of the way at the last second and quickly yanked her away from the flames already sticking to his skin and clothes like glue. All the heat sticking together, growing, I watch the flames take over the whole chair.
I tried to turn us around forcing her to look away, but she grasped on to my forearm and planted herself in his direction, watching the fire eat every part of Dorian. “I do bad things, Nyx, and I don't feel bad about Dorian, not one bit.”
Wrapping my arm around the front of her chest, I pushed her back into me, and we watched his skin melt along with her facade he perfectly created for Luna.
She pulled out of my grip
as I watched her fingers snatch the ring from his finger without flinching at the scorching flames overtaking him. Turning to me, she held up the ring. “I want to be yours forever.”
I hadn’t even told Luna about taking my birthright, but she was reading my mind.– Coming between her legs wasn’t enough. We both needed to be bound together in a way that was unbreakable.
“Luna, I can’t be king without you. I can’t take the throne without a wife.”
She nodded, agreeing. Tears welled up just from her confession of never letting me go. Everything pricked her soul, except she didn't bleed; instead, she cried. A strength none of us had.
Luna didn't bleed.
The flames grew bigger behind us and the smell of burning flesh stung our senses, but none of it mattered. It was how we got here.
I made sure my dark eyes swam in her emerald and amber beauties. “Since I met you, I wanted to… keep you all to myself. It was overwhelming. It was beautifully deranged to think something so good could be for me.”
Deranged, ha.
Both forged by fire.
I continued, “I am caught between needing and wanting you—a painful place to be when we aren’t bound together by something more.”
Luna held the ring she snatched off Dorian’s hand between her fingers, not one ounce of care if she got burned by me or the flames nearly licking our skin we were so close.
That ring wasn’t his anymore; it was her memento for accepting the darkness she wore perfectly.
I pulled my ring off and let my knee softly hit the concrete of Arcadia’s destroyed foundation. A tradition mortals stole from the gods, kneeling was a sign of loyalty and submission.
That's exactly what this was.
She realized if she wanted a piece of me, it was going to be stamped with a pound of my flesh, not someone else’s.
She wanted symbolism and was getting it.
“I’ve never taken this ring off. Not for any reason…”
I’m sure I rendered her speechless as I slipped it on her finger and stood up.
“You know what that means?”
“Accomplice, owner of your heart, one who reigns the Underworld… you’re my personal slayer of evil.”
My hands cupped her cheeks still soaked in kerosene as I stared into her emerald eyes, normally with hints of gold, but this time, they resembled embers sparkling back at me. “No baby, I am the evil—the only evil allowed in your life.”
With Dorian charring and the forest holding ritual memories, good and bad, only a few feet away, we were doing this in the chaos that made us, broke us, and pushed us together.
Caellum
T here are a few different types of phone calls you don't want to receive:
Crying.
Silence.
And when your best friend calls with an unwavering tone that doesn't sound like who you've become familiar with, even if he is quiet as fuck.
Nyx called me at two in the morning, and when I didn't pick up, he chose to keep calling until I did.
Finally rolling over in bed until I was close enough to my phone charging on the nightstand, I slid my finger across the screen before fumbling it to my ear, while keeping my eyes closed still.
“What?”
Nyx’s voice was unrecognizable. Something bad happened—the kind of bad that forced the silence he preferred aside.
I couldn't even think of the last time he called anyone instead of just sending a text.
Sitting up, I swallowed down the conclusions jumping into my head and drawing assumptions.
“Luna did it again; we have a problem.” His voice shook at the end, like the problem was really a lot more than that.
“Did what exactly?” I sat up, rubbing my eyes and trying to wake up enough to realize this was reality, not a nightmare.
“She lit Dorian on fire. I'm gonna send you the location. Just get down here.”
I laughed, like this was some kind of bad joke.
Fire? Luna? Dorian?
Good girl Luna who's been pretending to be bad? Killed someone else?
Nyx hung up the phone without me even agreeing. That wasn't out of the ordinary for him, actually. He wouldn't make demands like Bolton.
He'd leave information on the table and not care what you did with it. If you wanted to stay on his good side, you'd at least pay attention.
Still groggy, I pushed the covers off and sat on the edge of my bed, still trying to see the bigger picture.
I wasn't on the side of everyone else in the circle. I wasn't rooting for Luna and Dorian. I didn't believe it at first, but if you stopped calculating jealousy and your own desires for other people, you'd see the evidence all around Dorian.
Henry Jon's journals.
The weapons.
Once Dorian pointed me in the right direction with my research, I found The Cloth—something we were blissfully unaware of.
The Cloth was the cult dedicated to hunting us down and killing the gods—all of them, including us.
The ritual shook up Luna, taking all the awful intentions and proper behavior, until she didn't know which was which.
She wasn't confused enough to make the same mistake twice.
I stepped into my jeans and left my boots unlaced, while I searched for a muscle shirt in the top drawer. Pulling it over my head, I knew I had to get keys from someone without triggering any kind of suspicion.
Almost stumbling down the stairs of my building and pushing the heavy door open, I looked at the garage stocked with SUVs with tinted windows and bars on the grills that made you think of the authorities.
The ones who couldn’t touch us.
The ones who couldn’t touch Hades because he paid them to turn a blind eye.
They fed right into his influence, balancing the scales.
My better judgment stopped me from texting anyone for permission. I looked over my shoulder and jammed a small knife into the door lock quickly. With a hard twist, the door popped open.
That shit seemed hard on television and in movies.
Guess we all can't be godly.
Hot wiring cars was a Nyx trait, but right now, I was forced to figure it out.
I pulled my phone out to type “YouTube,” then I proceeded to type “How to Hotwire a Car”, while I unsystematically ripped wires down from the steering wheel column, letting them hang there like the knots they were.
Waiting for the video to load, I balanced the phone on my leg until it finally got to the part I needed: the red and yellow wire, marry them, and twist the key—or in this case pocketknife.
Gods, did Nyx owe me.
The whole way there, I went over every event leading up to now, trying to pinpoint the one moment in time we should have avoided.
Nyx cut Luna off.
Luna fell for her boss.
Nyx became obsessed with finding out what he was hiding.
Luna blamed Nyx for scaring him off when Dorian ghosted her.
And now, Luna lit someone on fire?
Even mulling it over silently made me laugh. Luna wasn't bad.
I turned off the headlights as soon as I was navigating through familiar territory. This was the road to Arcadia, and I was too busy piecing shit together to notice the navigation on the screen.
It was hard to see in the dark with everything covered in a glossy wetness, making everything shine more than the streetlights did. Everything became reflectively blurry.
Slowly rolling without pushing my foot on the gas, I saw Nyx outside, standing in the light rain, outside the skeleton of my once home.
With my arms open wide and a puzzled upturn to my brows, I walked over to him. “What's going on?” As I got closer, a choking stench filled my senses—a sulfurous odor and something burnt I couldn't place.
I managed to swallow, even though my throat was drier than my dick had been the last few months. Every feature was twisted into horror, and the back of my hand hovered around my mouth, like it would quarantine the smell.
; It didn't.
It was a chemical barbecue, and the combination was nauseating.
Luna was crying with her head between her knees and shaking with guilt already.
Nyx was most himself, but he kept pacing, like the discomfort threatened to eat him alive.
I peered down the middle of them, into the large amount of space left between them. I used the flashlight feature on my phone to shine it into the storage unit, and I saw the evidence I always demanded to have.
Dorian was tied to a metal chair that was barely damaged. Or at least I assumed it was Dorian, or what was left of him. It was hard to tell with him half melted and charred to a crisp.
Luna set a man on fire.
She killed someone... again.
I pivoted on my feet and stood in front of Nyx, speaking in a low voice, one I was hoping she didn't hear, “How the fuck did this happen?”
Nyx pulled the joint from his lips after inhaling. “I kidnapped him, and Luna needed closure.”
This was the moment I wish the limitation on his words was lifted. I needed why's, how’s, when’s… not bottom of the barrel sentences.
“I know that part, dumbass. I meant from you dicking Luna down a few hours ago to now.”
Letting my head fall backwards, I cursed the stars in my mind. Nothing was getting easier, and we weren't any closer to going home.
“She can't be here, Nyx. We have to get rid of the body.” I looked at Dorian’s remains, which were still burning despite the light rain falling through the building’s barely there roof.
Nyx walked closer to him, like Dorian’s body didn't bother him. He was elated he was gone for good. I followed behind Nyx, and he handed me a plastic jumpsuit and gloves.
“Why do you have these?” My voice was just as unstable as I was at the moment. I was ready to do anything for the circle, to go back home, I just didn't know that meant hiding a body.
“I knew he wasn't leaving here alive. Luna beat me to it.”
The bile in my stomach wasn't really okay with this and was determined to make its way up my throat. However, Nyx, seemingly immune, walked over to the body.
??
The body was poetically disposed of, by dropping it into the water, while tied to a cinder block.