Smoke seeped from his palm, thick tendrils that snaked across the air, smelling of death, calm and calculating. One by one, each onyx arrow found a heart and sank deep, hitting true, disappearing within their targets. One by one, the humans fell. And one by one, they rose with hunger in their eyes, craving blood, transforming into mirror images of the monster the man she once loved had become.
They went for the women first.
She jumped forward and clung to him, begging him to end this, to make it stop, to pull the darkness back. If only to save the children. The innocent children. Children like the ones they had once dreamed of. Like the ones who had been so cruelly snatched away.
He wouldn’t listen.
Instead, he spread his darkness, throwing more out into the world, poisoning more people. The children kept crying, but the sound grew softer, one by one. She couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t listen. She jumped on him, fighting, punching, pulling.
He tossed her away.
She landed hard on the ground, crying out as her crumpled wings bent and crushed even further. They’d stopped working long ago.
He stared at her.
For the briefest instant, she glimpsed the unyielding sadness clinging to his soul. And then he was gone.
The crying stopped.
When she turned, chest aching, afraid of what she would find, the children were gone. Not dead, but vanished. Because he had taken them with him.
“Make it stop,” Pandora begged, shaking her head.
More and more scenes flashed. The nightmares that had plagued her childhood were rising from the depths of her subconscious one by one. Vignettes of terror. Memories that had haunted her through life and death, through eternity. Visions of the man she loved turning into the beast she’d had no choice but to contain.
“I’m not that man anymore,” Sam implored. “You have to believe me. You have to see. I’ve changed. We can be together now, the way we were always meant to be.”
Pandora released him, snapping her hands back from his shoulders, and jumped away. She couldn’t stand to touch him, to be near him, to even look at him.
“Go away,” she whimpered, voice weak, crushed.
“Pandora—”
“Go away!” she shrieked, unable to stand her name rolling off his lips, the way his voice still wrapped around her like a soft cocoon, making her feel safe and loved even as it terrified her.
Pandora tugged on the shadows, yanking on the darkness, trying to swim her way up through the abyss and back into the world. But the more she tried to run, the deeper she sank, the more she drowned, and the thicker the mist became. Black vines wrapped around her wrists. Onyx coils looped around her legs. Ribbons of darkness, solid and unyielding, held her contained, held her captive.
Sam walked through the mist.
The shadows spread like vapor around him.
Thin. Translucent. At his mercy.
I don’t know the darkness at all, Pandora realized, struggling against the power she’d wielded for her entire life. I don’t know him at all.
Sam stopped a foot away, close enough that the heat rolled off his body, seeping beneath her skin. She flinched at that warmth, hating the way her soul pulled toward it. He raised his hand to cup her cheek. Part of her yearned for that touch. Part of her felt destroyed by it.
“Remember what I told you, Pandora,” he murmured, voice silky. “You have a choice.”
“Let me go,” she demanded, tone far stronger than she felt.
“I will,” he said, calm and cool and collected. Totally in control. Sam brushed a wayward strand of hair back behind her ear, then rested his fingers against the hollow of her throat. “But first, I want you to ask yourself something. Why didn’t you kill me? All those years ago, why didn’t you kill me? Why did you choose to lock me in a prison world? Why did you choose to curse yourself with countless lifetimes of loneliness and death? Why did you choose an eternity of suffering when you could have ended it swiftly?”
“Because I was an idiot, apparently,” Pandora snapped, unable to control herself. “But I assure you, I’ve been cured of that little problem.”
“No.” Sam smirked, eyes flashing in delight, amused by her defiance. “No, it’s not that. It’s because you loved me. Despite it all, despite everything, you wanted to save me. You couldn’t find it within yourself to kill me. Because you loved me.”
The shadows loosened their hold and fell away from her body.
They soared to Sam, enshrouding him in a curtain of darkness.
Pandora swam through the smoke, dragging herself away.
The world grew brighter, clearer.
The light of the fading sun forced its way through the mist.
The shadows fell away.
But Sam’s last words chased her through the darkness. And as she landed with her cheek against wood and her shoulder still throbbing with the stab wound, unaware of where she was, they were the only things she could see or hear.
“And as much as you want to fight it, my stubborn, beautiful, strong Pandora,” Sam whispered, tone laced with amusement, confident and sure he spoke true, “you know you love me still.”
Chapter Nineteen
Pandora blinked, trying to unsee the nightmares, to force Sam out of her thoughts, to figure out where she was, where her heart had sent her. Her spotty vision cleared. The world slowly returned to focus.
Her cheek was pressed against a cold wood floor.
The room was bathed in soft pink sunlight.
Rustling leaves and chirping birds filled her ears.
The smell of wet forest surrounded her, so familiar.
Of course, Pandora thought, sighing. Of course my fickle mind sent me here.
The tree house.
Their tree house. The only place she could ever remember feeling safe in her entire life. Not necessarily confident or strong or independent, but safe.
Pandora eased into a seated position, wincing as pain shot down her arm from the stab wound still stubbornly refusing to heal. She was light-headed from the blood loss, drained by her conversation, and achy all over. But the tree house was still deep in titan territory, and she needed to find a way out if she wanted to survive.
Groaning as her muscles screamed at her to stop, Pandora tried to flip herself over, but the floor shifted. Scraps of wood slid across the nailed-down boards. Her brows came together. She paused, reaching to pluck a broken piece from the floor, curious. It was the color of rich mahogany, shiny and polished, totally smooth aside from the jagged edges. She recognized it immediately.
Jax’s guitar.
As many times as she’d tried, she’d never been able to banish the image of his fingers moving confidently over strings, of his guitar resting in his lap while he softly sang, of those deep saltwater eyes watching her beneath the curtain of black hair that always fell over his forehead while he played, lost in the moment.
Slowly, Pandora looked up.
Jax watched her from across the room, eyes laced with red veins, skin puffy, cheeks wet. He was completely still, surrounded by the broken pieces of his guitar and the shredded fabric of the pillows they’d always kept stacked across the floor. A curtain of feathers still floated in the air around him, gently falling. Those strong fingers were clenched around the latest victim of his anger, purple silk ripped to shreds by his fury.
Everything became clear in an instant.
Her subconscious hadn’t brought her to the tree house like she’d thought.
It had brought her to Jax.
Even after everything, he was still her home.
Her safe place.
Her person.
“You’re alive,” he gasped, words little more than a puff of air. The corners of his lips twitched. “I knew you’d somehow find a way to stay alive.”
Pandora swallowed, unable to control the rage clenching her insides, at him, at her heart, at everything. “No thanks to you,” she seethed, glancing around at the destruction littering the tree h
ouse floor. “I like what you’ve done to the place. Much more fitting.”
He dropped the shredded fabric and took a step toward her, then stopped immediately, uncertain. “I thought…”
“Thought you’d come here and throw a tantrum about how unfair your life is while my father and eleven other titans surrounded my house and tried to kill me?” she snapped, then let out a snort. “Grow up, Jax.”
“Dory—”
“Don’t Dory me,” she interrupted, stepping closer. Anger heated her veins. Her body burned with the spark. And she liked it, the warmth of rage. She was so over the frozen shards of sadness, of pity, of despair. So she let herself feel, let herself go. “You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself, Jax. You don’t get to hide away in our tree house and wallow in self-pity. You don’t get to come here and scream and cry and smash your guitar and rip apart our pillows and whine about how awful you feel. Because you know what? You’re alive. No one’s trying to kill you. You’re not the key to some mystical prison. You’re not the person whose death might save the world. You’re nobody. You’re no one. And you know what? From where I’m standing, that’s a pretty freaking awesome thing to be.”
Pandora released a heavy puff of air, relieved to at least have gotten something off her chest. Jax watched her, mouth falling open. But he had nothing to say. Which was fine, because Pandora was more than happy to keep going.
“You know what?” she spat, not giving him time to answer as she stepped forward, cornering him. “You’re a coward, Jax. A coward. You can’t make a decision. Do you love me? Do you want to kill me? Do you want to help me? Or do you want to be a good little boy and do what the titans are telling you to do? You don’t even know, so you do nothing. You find me after your initiation to try to stop me from running, and then you let me go. You follow me for four years but don’t do anything because you want to give me a small second to live. You finally do what you’re supposed to do and hand me over to the titans, and then you spend every morning sleeping outside my cell, begging for forgiveness. You know they’re setting a trap to try to kill me, and you hide here, so you don’t have to face it. Because you are a coward.”
Pandora shoved him in the chest.
Jax stumbled backward, unable to respond because he knew she was right.
She shoved him again, because it felt good.
His back hit a wall. Nowhere else to go.
Pandora sniffled, not aware that there were tears streaming down her cheeks until she tasted the salt on her lips and felt the clog tightening her throat.
“They held me down, Jax, like a caged animal. They surrounded me. Their hands were everywhere. I couldn’t get away. And my father stabbed me, not through the heart like he wanted, but he tried again. And you weren’t there. For some reason, I always thought you’d be there, that in the end, you’d find a way to be with me. But you were here. And I was alone. And I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to get out. I didn’t have any options, and I didn’t understand what I was doing. So I…I…I used the shadows, and I, and my father, and—”
Pandora screamed, releasing her frustration.
She was sure her eyes were wild, crazed as she searched the room.
“You need to pick a side, Jax. You need to,” she begged. “Because I can’t do this alone, not anymore. I’m weak, and I’m tired, and I’m still bleeding. I can’t escape them, not again, not without help. So you need to choose.”
She knelt, grabbed a broken piece of guitar, and pressed the point of the stake to the center of her chest, right over her heart. The spot was four inches to the side of the wound still bleeding below her collarbone, the mark her father had left. Pandora turned, facing Jax, and walked closer. He was mute, immobile, watching her in mounting horror. She didn’t care. It was time. It was past time. So she grabbed his hands and held them around the wood pressing into her skin. She stepped closer until the broken shard of guitar was the only thing between them. A bead of blood trickled down her chest from where the edge cut into her flesh.
Jax dropped his gaze to it and stared.
He swallowed, jaw clenched tight.
The air thickened, heavy with the history pressing in around them. So many memories in this spot, so many memories flickering in the depths of their eyes. His lips on her skin. Her hands in his hair. Their bodies pressed tight. Sighs a sweet song as they escaped into the silence of the night, slipping up into the sky.
“Choose,” Pandora demanded. “The titans are on their way. I know they are. They must sense that I’m here, and I don’t think I can outrun them on my own. Don’t let them hold me down like they did before, Jax. Don’t let them treat me like a monster. Either kill me, right here, right now—give me that little ounce of mercy—or help me, really, honestly help me. Because I have eleven months before I turn twenty-one, eleven months before the clock runs out, and I intend to use them. I’m not going down without a fight. I can kill him, Jax, I know I can. I can end this, but not on my own.”
His hands shook.
She wouldn’t release him.
She licked her lips and swallowed, holding his gaze as she passed her life into his hands. “You choose, Jax, because I need to know what side you’re on. For real this time. Either kill me now or help me. I don’t even care anymore. Just choose.”
His hands trembled as he tightened them around the wooden shard. He held her gaze, unable to blink. The muscles in his face spasmed, a visceral reaction to the agony of his indecision, to the way it tortured him. Jax swallowed once, Adam’s apple bobbing slowly as a bead of sweat made its way down his neck. The wood scratched her chest, drawing more blood she couldn’t afford to lose.
For a moment, Pandora really thought he was going to kill her.
And then he screamed, a guttural sound that tore its way up his throat, releasing all of the tension and torment that had coiled his insides for four years. He jerked his hands away from hers and threw the broken slice of guitar back onto the ground. Shoulders heaving, he took the deep breath of a drowning man who’d finally broken the surface to find fresh air.
And then his seafoam eyes found hers.
He lifted his hands to her face.
He held her as if he never wanted to let go, digging his fingers into her hair, brushing his thumbs across her cheeks, claiming her.
“I’ve been an idiot,” he murmured.
Pandora raised her brows, fighting the smile that urged to break out across her lips. “No, you’ve been an asshole.”
He snorted, edges of his mouth twitching. “You’re right. I’ve been an asshole.”
Hallelujah, she thought, he’s finally admitted what we’ve both known all along. I’m always right. And he’s a jerk.
“I’ve been an asshole and a coward, and it ends now,” he continued, voice impassioned, a sweeter sound than any song he’d ever serenaded her with. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness—”
“You don’t have it,” she cut in, because they both needed to be honest, completely honest with each other. And after the wounds that had cut so deep, she didn’t trust him. Even if he helped, she wasn’t sure she could truly trust him again.
“I know,” he murmured, closing his eyes and holding them shut for a moment. “I know. But I’ll do everything I can to prove to you that I mean what I’m saying. That I choose you. That I’ll help you. That you can trust me. That I love you, because I always have, Dory, and I always will. And I know we can win this fight. I know that together, somehow, we can figure this out. We can win.”
Pandora stepped back, lifting her hands to remove his from her cheeks, and held his fingers tight as she widened the space between them. “I need you to promise me something, Jax.”
“Anything,” he said instantly.
“If we don’t win…” She paused, taking a deep breath. “If eleven months go by and we can’t find another way, I want you to be the one who ends it.”
“Dory,” he implored, squeezing her fingers. “I can’t.”
“No.” She shook her head. It wasn’t his decision—it was hers. He owed her that much. “I won’t be the end of the world, and I’m not afraid to die if I have to, if it’s the only thing that will keep the monster I just saw contained. I only want the chance to fight before I roll over in defeat. And if there’s no way, I need you to do it, Jax. Not my father. Not a stranger. You.”
He stilled.
And then he nodded.
Once, but firm.
And before he could say anything else, her knees gave out, and Pandora stumbled, vision growing spotty as her body reached its limit. She was exhausted from the days of running, the lack of sleep, the fights, the stab wound, the memories that pounded her to the edge. And it hit her all at once. Just like that, every ounce of strength she possessed vanished. The ground gave out beneath her.
But Jax was there to catch her. She landed in his arms, and he cradled her against his chest, lifting her easily from the ground. Out of habit, her head fell into the nook of his neck and stayed there. She wrapped one of her arms around his shoulders, and the other, too weak to adjust, remained limp against her stomach. His gaze dropped to the stab wound by her collarbone, eyes widening as though noticing it for the first time. And then he ran, across the tree house in an instant, and launched out the door. He landed on the ground smoothly with his titan grace. Before she could blink, they were zipping through the forest. But even in her drowsy state, she could tell they were going the wrong way, were going toward the houses.
“We need to get out of here, out of the enclave,” she wheezed. With each step, her shoulder ached, and more blood spurted from the wound.
“Yeah, I got that,” Jax answered in a huff. “But you need a bandage. We need a plan. And I know for a fact that my parents are currently wandering aimlessly across the mountains, searching for a target they’re not going to find. I can sense them miles away, which means my house is empty.”
Freeze (Midnight Ice Book Two) Page 19