The Complete Tempted Series

by Selene Charles

  “No.” He shook his head, watching with horrified eyes as the ground tore open beneath her and sucked her under, leaving nothing behind but a blood-red bloom.

  Scrabbling away from his cousin, he reached for the flower, shaking his head in shock. “She’s not dead. You’re not dead.”

  A tear slipped out of the corner of his left eye.

  “She’s not dead.” It was Eli. He’d walked around Cain and was now crouched down in his line of sight. “Because if she were dead, you’d feel the connection severed. You’d be wild. Crazed. Close your eyes and feel her, Cain. She’s there. I know she’s there.”

  Desperate to believe it, Cain did as he was told, and in just moments he felt the healthy bump-bump of her spirit vibrate through him. Her happy warmth was still there, still full.

  “Then what the hell was this?” he snapped, still terrified out of his mind. “How did she get here? And why is she gone now?”

  Eli shook his head, looking down with a worried frown at the pretty flower she’d left behind. “I don’t know, man. It doesn’t make sense to me, but Flint’s not like us, dude. Maybe what we saw wasn’t really her, maybe it was just an image or someth—”

  “It was her,” he snarled, then pounded the dirt. For the first time since bonding to Flint, he felt the stir of violence that preceded the berserker rage flow through his veins.

  Taking several deep breaths, he tried to console himself with the thought that she wasn’t dead. Their bond was stronger than almost any form of magic. It was unbreakable. He felt her in him; she was alive.

  But she’d also been severely injured.

  “She’s hurt,” he whispered brokenly.

  Eli gripped Cain’s forearm, forcing him to look into his cousin’s silver eyes. They were steady and full of intelligence. “And that might be why the vines pulled her down. To save her.”

  Shattered, Cain glanced back down at the blossom. “You’d better be right, Eli, ’cause if not, I’ll burn this whole damn world down.”

  65

  Flint

  She was in a place of dreams again. A fuzzy, half-formed place full of discordant noises and images.

  Cain had been there. And then he wasn’t.

  Rhiannon’s voice had been a ghostly echo.

  Her mother.

  With a gasp, Flint rolled to a sitting position and then frowned. What was she doing back in her room? In her bed?

  “You’re alive.” Idris yanked her into his chest tightly, and it hadn’t been her imagination that his voice had wavered just slightly.

  Clutching at his back, she whispered, “What happened? Did I pass?”

  He said nothing for so long she was sure he hadn’t heard her. All he seemed to want to do was hug her close.

  Only after several minutes did he finally let her go, and even then it seemed to be grudgingly. His hands framed her face as his pretty amber eyes studied her from head to toe.

  “You nearly died, darkling.”

  The moment he said it, she remembered the burn of water stretching her lungs, remembered feeling as though she’d become infected by brain-eating parasites the second she’d inhaled that black, briny water.

  Grabbing her forehead, she grimaced. “It was horrific. The worst pain of my life. I thought I died. I saw my mom.”

  His eyes were sad.

  “I failed, didn’t I?”

  That thought brought another surge of heat to her eyes and a giant lump to her throat.

  “We won’t know until the end.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “Great. So even though I probably failed, he’s still going to torture me for two more rounds. What’s the point? I’m your stag and I failed Abel.”

  Snapping her teeth together, she glanced off to the side angrily. She’d known the tests would be hard, but she’d never dreamed of something like that.

  The panic. The fury. The speed with which she’d had to make a life-or-death decision. No amount of practice could have prepared her for that.

  Tipping her jaw toward him, he sighed. “You have two more trials. Your mind has to be in the right place.”

  Snorting, she knuckled a tear that was about to fall from her eye. “You’re terrible at pep talks. Just putting that out there.”

  He smiled. It was more like a whisper of one, but at least she’d managed to make him smile if only for a second.

  “I want to see Abel tonight.”

  He nodded. “I’ll open the channel to him. Whatever happens, darkling, you did it. You traveled through dimensions. You were very brave in there.”

  Chewing the inside of her cheek, she nodded slowly. She didn’t feel brave. No, she felt stupid. And dumb. Dumb to ever even think it was possible for her to have passed.

  Of course The Ciardah wouldn’t let her escape her fate, and therefore Abel’s as well.

  “Death spoke highly of your bravery to the crowds today. Your efforts gained you some allies, halfling. Remember that.”

  “Dean was there?” she whispered. “Why?”

  Standing, Idris bowed deeply toward her before saying, “To make sure the fight is fair. Sleep well tonight, Flint, for I fear tomorrow may be worse.”

  Not what she’d wanted to hear.

  “Idris, you and I need to talk.” She reached out to grasp his hand, but he dematerialized like fog between her fingers.

  “Later.” That one word echoed like a ghostly whisper in the cavernous chamber of her room.

  Sitting back, Flint plunked her chin onto her fist and stared broodily into the full-length mirror in front of her.

  He’d promised to let her visit with Abel, if only for a short time. Flint didn’t doubt that Idris would do as he promised, but what she really wanted to know was why he was running away from her.

  Had it even been true? That they were family? Had he just said that to give her something to hang on to during her trial?

  It would make sense that he’d avoid her now if it’d been a lie, but not if it was true. What reason could he have for leaving her alone as he was?

  Grumpy, she kicked out her leg. She was soaked. The strange fae robes she’d worn to her first trial clung to her thighs. She should probably shower. Change. Get dressed for bed.

  Her nose curled.

  Yeah, but that was nothing more than a routine. Something to do to forget where she was, what she was fighting for. It was a monotonous repetition of what she did back home when things were normal.

  It wasn’t escaping her notice how easily she was slipping into that same predictable pattern in a place that was far from predictable. Nothing about sidhe land was normal. Nothing.

  And yet… every day made it feel more and more so.

  A flash of movement rippled across the surface of the looking glass. Looking up, she spied Abel’s dark form hanging suspended as it’d been the last time she saw him.

  Nothing but a tangled mass of limbs, torso, and head, black as the night was long. His chest didn’t even rise with breath.

  Watching him float, she felt her focus building. Before, she’d needed to close her eyes, to close out all distractions, but now she was aware of her every breath, aware of the way her vines rippled and danced beneath her flesh as though in fluttery anticipation, aware of the way the wet clothing shifted along her cool skin as she leaned forward.

  She was growing stronger. She felt the indwelling power of her fae blood stirring to life, buzzing with sparks of energy through her veins. How much stronger could she become if she stayed just a little longer?

  Maybe she was failing the gauntlet, but there was still hope yet. One kernel she’d failed to consider—the stronger she became, the more chance there might be to reverse what Layla had done to Abel.

  “Abel.” She said his name, sending the focused beam of concentration straight at him so that it throbbed with power.

  Without even consciously thinking it, she suddenly found herself not in her library but inside Abel’s floating fortress.

  He hung before her, eyes still
closed, but now she could hear his breaths. They were soft, but deep and strong.

  Frowning, she wondered if she could touch him.

  “Abel,” she said again, reaching out a hand to trace the dark grooves of his macabre visage.

  With him so close to her, he reminded her a little of the werewolves of Hollywood legend. Nightmarish, surreal, but his features were a little more blunt, his snout pushed in more than it should be, and his canines looked more like miniature tusks.

  Lightly she ran her fingers along his face, marveling at the marbled smoothness of it.

  His nostrils flared.

  She smiled. “Sweetheart, wake up. You’re safe now.”

  It wasn’t like the last time where he’d come to her fully conscious and aware. Whatever the fae had done to him to keep him passive was still fully operational.

  But she was fae now too. She was powerful.

  Maybe she was destined to die down here, alone and fated never to return to her own world, but she refused to roll over and allow that same fate to be his.

  Abel wasn’t like anything else in existence. He was powerful too.

  She stared at the claws of her hands, the rosebuds that now quivered with the first stirrings of life.

  Was it possible that what could harm could also heal?

  There was so much about herself she didn’t know. Often Idris told her to look inside herself, to feel the swell of her power, and now with no one here to watch, she decided to do just that.

  Flint had made Cain a promise that she would save his brother.

  Closing her eyes, she focused inward. Who was she really?

  And like a train moving in reverse, flashes of light manifested rapidly behind her closed eyelids, images of her life.

  Moments in Cain’s arms. When he’d moved deep inside her. When they’d been searching for Abel. The explosion at the school. The dance. Zombie movies.

  Girl talk.

  Her father smiling.

  Her mother’s arms.

  Her mother dead, a marionette without strings, shattered on a circus floor.

  The moment Flint had walked her first tightrope.

  The day she’d been born.

  The images flashed with fluid rapidity, going further back than she could ever have imagined, moving now into things she could never have possibly known.

  A seed of life kissed by the lips of a wandering spirit and then shoved deep into the ground. Song and life and breath, expansion of knowledge.

  Nature and wisdom.

  And from the ashes the sidhe were born.

  Not human. But favored guardians of the great mother.

  The mother was goodness, she was life. But something else came in. Something dark and twisted that changed her children. No longer just one, but now two.

  The father. A different wanderer.

  Opposing spirits and yet like as well. One could not exist without the other. Both a part of the whole, but neither strong enough on its own.

  Evil and good. Dark and light. Two sides of the same tree. Indwelling spirits that existed in one.

  That existed in her…

  And like being shot out of a cannon, Flint opened her eyes and sucked in a deep breath.

  She’d seen it all. Not just her own life, but the fabric of her grandfather’s people.

  Her people.

  She looked back at Abel and then down at her rosebud-tipped claws. “What can harm can also heal.”

  She was sure of it.

  Was this the sacrifice Dean had talked about? Flint wasn’t really sure how it was a sacrifice, but at the same time, deep down she sensed that she was on the right trail.

  Moving to Abel’s side, she trailed a claw down the side of his face. The petals of the rose that gently caressed his cheek bloomed under the contact, gracefully spinning open like a black velvet top, and the pistil coated in poison now gleamed an incandescent jade.

  Flint didn’t think, because if she thought about what she was doing, how she was about to kiss his face with poison, she’d stop. She’d tell herself she was crazy and back away.

  But she’d felt the mother, the father. Felt the power of their presence come alive inside her as though they knew what she would do and gave their consent.

  The ancientness that lived and breathed within her breast understood what her human brain could not.

  She was a Green Man—a being capable of taking life and of giving it back. Focusing her thoughts on healing, she commanded her blooms to obey and felt a mighty surge of new power roll down her arms.

  This power wasn’t hot, but cool. Soothing.

  “Wake up, sleeping beauty,” she murmured as she traced her finger across his jaw, and his skin glistened with pearls of shimmering dewdrops that coalesced from the tip of her claw.

  His flesh glimmered like it’d been dipped in emerald powder before the drops were slowly absorbed into his body.

  Waiting with bated breath, Flint sucked on her bottom lip, trying in vain to quell the rising thrum of panic starting to filter through her bones.

  What if she’d been wrong? What if she’d misunderstood the significance of the images?

  What if—

  His eyes fluttered open, and they were the deep wells of bottomless warm brown she remembered them being.

  Tears sprang suddenly to her eyes, and she threw herself into his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck and squeezing tight.

  Abel’s chuckle sounded dry and dusty, but she didn’t care. To her it was as though she’d just heard the sound of angels singing.

  “Abel!” She kissed his cheek, her tears mingling on their skin as she buried her face against his neck. “I thought I lost you forever. Thought—”

  He rubbed her back with hands still tipped with claws, his skin as deeply black as it’d been before.

  “I’m here, Flintlock. But not for long.”

  Startled by his words, she jerked back, gazing at his face with eyes that wanted to see so much more than was actually there.

  His features hadn’t altered at all. And though there was sanity reflected in his face, she saw the furrows of concentration across his brows and the pinched wrinkles around his eyes.

  She framed his jaw. “Stay with me, Abel. Don’t leave us again.”

  He sucked in a shuddering breath, and she knew deep down she wouldn’t have him for long.

  “It’s so dark in here, Flinty. Dark and quiet.”

  Desperate he not leave, she crawled onto his body, wrapping her arms and legs around him as though by sheer force of will she could make him stay. Make him not leave her again.

  He never complained even though she felt the labor of his breaths with each inhalation.

  “Abel,” she whispered, “I think I might have died today.”

  The hand he’d been rubbing down her spine suddenly stopped moving. “What?”

  Leaning up a little until she could look him in the eyes, she nodded. “I’m being tested, Abel. By my people. We were brought here by treachery, and the only way for us to leave here alive is for me to pass what they call a gauntlet.”

  “But I don’t understand?” he said in a voice slightly deeper than she was used to from him.

  There was so much to tell, but she could read the fatigue all over him. Time was not their friend right now. She shook her head.

  “It doesn’t matter. I saw my mom.”

  “Your mom?” His eyes widened. Unspoken were the obvious words that she was dead.

  “Yeah, she saved me, Abel. She told me what to do.” She nibbled on her bottom lip. In a place where magic existed, was it so impossible to believe that with her on the cusp of dying (or in all probability actually dead) that she couldn’t have seen her mother?

  But the doubts were there all the same. “I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy.” She grabbed her head.

  And he squeezed her tight. “Or maybe it was a miracle and we should just leave it at that. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”

  Sh
e loved him so much. Leaning up on tiptoe, she kissed his obsidian cheek. “I’ve missed you, Abel.”

  He nodded gently. “Tell her not to cry for me, Flint. Can you do that? Can you tell her not to cry?”

  “Who?” She shook her head, confused and scared because she felt him slipping away. “Tell who?”

  “Janet, tell her not to cry.” His words came out a thin whisper and then his eyes closed and he was gone once again, back into that world of dreams and darkness.

  Chin wobbling, Flint pressed a kiss to his chest. “I promise, my friend. I promise I will.”

  Cain

  * * *

  Janet sat up and stared directly at Cain. Her gaze looked disoriented and terrified, her breathing was rapid and shuddery, but he knew something miraculous had just happened.

  Rhiannon had run to the library just minutes ago. It’d been hours since he’d last seen Flint appear as a mirage before him, and all Cain could do was go back to his work.

  Rhi had run into the room, screaming that Janet was seizing and to come quick.

  A minute later, she’d opened her eyes.

  “Ja?” Cain’s voice was a mix of a growl and grunt. He was almost terrified to know what was coming next.

  Reaching out to her, he gently gripped her shoulder and squeezed. Her eyes were bright and feral, like someone coming out of a long fever. Her hair was wild, her form not completely coalesced—his kalungan was fighting to maintain stability.

  Moving his hands to her partly materialized wrists, he squeezed the grounding bracelets, giving her what strength he could.

  She looked at him with wide, dark eyes. “He woke up,” she said in a voice that was strained from disuse. “Abel woke up.”

  That’d been almost a month ago. And Cain had thrown himself back into studying Grace’s books, reading anything he could about trees.

  For some reason Grace’s obsession with them hadn’t lessened.

  Then one day he found something.

  The legend of the Kissing Tree.

  Exhausted, but feeling the first faint tremors of excitement that he’d felt in a long time, he shoved the book under her nose and pointed to the twisted image of two blackened tree trunks eternally entwined.