My lips touched his and there was nothing soft about the scorching heat that flooded me. I kissed him with a feral need that I didn’t understand but surrendered to anyway. My hands slid up his chest, my nails trailing over his bare skin as I went. Not hard enough to scratch, but enough to trigger a groan. I wrapped my arms around his neck, slipping my fingers through his still wet locks of hair.
Aaron broke the kiss abruptly, but his lips continued to pepper me with sensations as he trailed them along my jaw. He stopped at the hollow of my ear and whispered, “You have no idea what you do to me.”
I opened my mouth to refute that when he nipped sharply at my earlobe. Desire clenched in my abdomen as the bite acted as a line straight to the heat between my legs.
A moan slipped out as I dug my fingers into his hair, pulling him closer. He breathed hard and heavy against the sensitive skin just below my ear. The feeling rattled me further and I didn’t snap at him when he hoisted me onto the bed, placing himself between the part of my legs.
He released the tight hold he had on my waist to instead run his hands along my body. I arched into him, going against everything I believed in as I got caught up in the scent of wind and smoke. At least that’s what I told myself when his fingers slipped beneath my shirt.
The shudders that racked my body were different than the muscle exhaustion that my nightmares caused. This kind of trembling was unlike anything I had ever known. Maybe it was because I never let anyone touch me. Maybe my skin really was too sensitive. Or maybe, Aaron had the power to elicit such a strong reaction because I was exhausted to the bone from fighting him.
I once told Blair that I craved touch, but that wasn’t quite true.
I craved his touch.
As his fingers slid higher, my mind blacked out from sensation. A doorway appeared, brilliant and blinding against a world shrouded in darkness. Golden light slipped through the cracks, warming my skin without me even touching it.
It wanted me to open it. To slip my hands around the handle and just tug.
It would be so, so simple. So easy.
Had Aaron not just pulled away.
My conscience slammed into me as his hands fell to either side of me, pinning me to the bed with his strong body. His face was only inches away again, but the divide was enough to clear my senses.
“That was a mistake,” I said hoarsely.
“Would you have stopped if I didn’t?” he asked. The huskiness in his voice made me shiver again and he smirked.
“This changes nothing,” I spat.
“Yet you can’t answer the question.” We stared at each other, locked in a battle of wills before I averted my eyes and pushed him away. This time he moved.
I practically ran from the room, only letting myself succumb to shaking once the door was closed. I stumbled to the couch as my mind tried to process what just happened and what I was feeling. He could probably hear me right now and knew how close my control came to shattering in front of him.
I curled up alone on the couch, taking deep breaths that slowed my still racing heart. As the heaviness of sleep overcame me faster than normal, I realized in that place in between—that the darkness inside didn’t weigh as heavy on my broken soul right then, but I quickly forgot as the world faded black.
Chapter 14
The comfortable cushion of the couch disappeared as a light sensation filled me. Almost like I was floating…or falling. Flying? That wasn’t right.
My eyes opened a second too late as that feather padded cushion was replaced by a rock-hard curvature that didn’t give an inch when my shoulder blades impacted hard. My head whipped back with a thud as my arms flew out to catch myself.
My fingers brushed against soft silken material and I frowned. Groaning, I moved to pull myself up to figure out what was going on. Shadows danced at the edges of my mind, waiting to pounce when they saw the chance. In the darkest corners and recesses, a monster—no, a demon—watched intently. Violet stood at its side.
Warm arms wrapped around me, enveloping me in an all too familiar scent. It settled over me like a heavy fog I couldn’t shake, calming me against my will. The shadows dissipated instantly.
“Let. Go. Of. Me,” I choked out, clenching my fists in the sheets on either side of us until they ripped. I should have recognized the gold canopy that hung far above me. I’d stared at it plenty into the sleepless hours of the night.
“Couldn’t stay away, could you?” he murmured. His lips brushed my ear as he rested his cheek on my hair.
“Goddamnit—”
My cursing broke off abruptly as the door flung open. I turned my head to the copper curled spitfire that stood in the doorway. Her bleary, sleep-coated expression morphed into one of amusement as her lips tugged up into a satisfied smirk.
“I see how it is,” Amber mussed, crossing her arms over her chest. Aaron growled under his breath and I tilted my head to see his face.
“Get out of here, Amber,” he snapped at her. His eyes flashed between black and gold, but she didn’t cower like the others did. Like Lucas did.
Lucas…his name hit me with a pang in my chest, but I wouldn’t think on that now.
Vengeance would come for him soon enough once I sorted myself out.
For now, I would let him remain at Anastasia’s side where he could see every reminder I left that I was alive and biding my time.
“Does this mean she’s going to complete the bo—”
I didn’t let her finish before I twisted sharply and slammed my elbow back into his jaw. Judging by the sharp pop, the bond didn’t inhibit me from hurting him. Just from using my abilities on him.
Interesting…I tucked that thought away for a later time as I scrambled to get off of him and out of bed. I stumbled on the slick black marble, and without thinking, I flung out my hand to catch myself on the nightstand, accidentally taking off a chunk of wood in the process.
I straightened slowly, feeling both their eyes on me as I opened my fingers and released a handful of ebony wood dust.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Amber quipped. I cocked an eyebrow at her, ignoring the groaning man behind me that was creeping closer.
“Is there a reason you keep barging in here to save him?” I asked, more amused than anything.
“She has strong protection instincts. It’s nothing,” Aaron started to say. He halted his approach towards me, and instead slipped off the bed on the other end, giving me the much needed distance.
“Liar.” His words were so smooth I wouldn’t have known better, if not for the scratching along the back of my neck that rubbed me wrong. I don’t know why or how, but somehow, I knew he was lying.
Amber stepped forward, all traces of humor gone. “It’s not what you think,” she said.
“Considering I don’t know what to think, that’s not a high bar,” I replied dryly. The air beside me rippled as they both stepped closer, and instinctively I wanted to back away.
Distance. Distance was safe. Distance kept the emotions at bay. Distance—
“We should just tell her the truth. Daizlei’s in the ground. She deserves to know,” Amber said, but she wasn’t speaking to me.
Aaron stayed silent. Her glare persisted.
“Asher Aaron White—”
“Asher?” I asked.
His first name was Asher? I glanced over his features, taking in the dark hair and flashing eyes. He always smelled like smoke. I suppose it was fitting that Asher was his real name.
“She doesn’t even know your first name?” Amber asked. She facepalmed herself, letting out an annoyed groan.
“Well I do now.”
“You seriously need to be filling her in. It’s only a matter of time until your dad summons us, and she isn’t going to appr—”
“She is standing right here,” I snapped. I hated being talked about like I wasn’t in the room. It transported me back to my first night at Daizlei all over again. Amber and Tori fighting, neither speaking to me like I wasn’t ther
e.
If only I knew then what I knew now. I would have…what would I have done?
The question irritated me more than I wanted to admit, because I had no idea. It seemed that every time I thought I had it all figured out, I was blindsided by the truth of how little I knew. We weren’t raised in this world, but we were raised with the knowledge of it. Except even those memories weren’t quite accurate. Dreamland had proved that much, although I don’t know how. What had happened to my memories? Had they been altered? Changed? Or did I suppress them because they were too much?
The lies mounted on all sides, but they didn’t stop there.
I came to Daizlei and thought I found a home, only to be the one to put it in the ground.
I befriended a boy I thought good and kind, and then he turned on me when I wouldn’t love him.
I found a group of friends, only to be cleaved apart by the secrets we kept.
And all along, I had an unbreakable bond with the one person that I resented most in my time at Daizlei. I went from loathing him, to tolerating him, to almost acceptance, and now…I didn’t know where we were or who I was.
I had emotions. I didn’t feel a thing. Violet was my own insanity. Then she became the beacon of light. I was Supernatural. I was demon.
The truth was I didn’t know anything.
But as much as I needed to find answers, I needed space more.
Without thinking, I walked to the other side of the room and tugged on my faded black boots. A leather jacket appeared out of thin air beside me and I pulled it on without hesitation. Behind me, their voices warbled and bled. I could hear them. I knew they were speaking, but the words themselves made no sense.
I had fallen into an ocean so treacherous that nothing could reach me. Within myself, my head slipped below the waves. It was funny, in a dark sort of way, that I could withstand the hard things without crumbling—but something so small could trigger me.
In the past, when I succumbed to such emotion, I chose limbo. Then, when my sister died, I chose Violet. Neither of those worked, so it was time to try something else.
I crossed the threshold of the room and they followed me, but they weren’t fast enough to stop me from summoning an elevator.
Magic. They called it magic.
I called it freedom.
I had one foot in the metal cage and the other in my marbled prison.
Ten days. I hadn’t made it eleven with this group before the need to run kicked in. Fight or flight. Sink or swim.
I descended deeper into the water than ever before. Me, my demon, and Violet.
One of them grabbed my arm and tugged hard enough it would have yanked a lesser being five feet through the air. I simply stopped in my tracks.
I couldn’t hear them, but it seemed that Aaron—Asher—had other ways to communicate than words or body language.
“Don’t do this. Don’t run.” his voice whispered across my mind like a stray wind.
“Outside,” I croaked. “I need to see the sunrise.”
Those were the only words I could get out before the water dragged me under again, to where even wind could not reach and smoke could not follow.
I stepped inside the elevator, barely aware of the two people that followed me in.
The doors slid shut behind us, and before any of the others knew it—the three of us were gone.
The elevator didn’t go far. It didn’t have to. I called upon it to take me out. To take me to the only place in this forsaken city where there were no lights. There were no humans.
And I was only a face in the crowd.
We went to the black market and no one attempted to stop me as the doors slid open again. I stepped out into the cold embrace of the early morning where twilight reigned supreme.
A sky so dark it looked black still spanned one end of the alley to the other. I raced into the streets that I had only seen once before, not paying any mind to vendors or the array of creatures that walked these streets under a moonless night.
This was a place of shadows and death. Of secrets and lies. It was where the darkest entities of this world did their dealings, and the monsters that never saw daylight lurked.
It was where I felt most at home now, as I sank to my knees.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as the light appeared on the horizon, chasing the darkest of blues. The light acted as an anchor, a signal that reached me even in the deepest parts of an ocean filled with blood. It was the blood I spilled. The pain I caused. The scars I bore. The secrets I killed for.
It was the dawn, and it beckoned me forward.
“I see the sun and still think of you. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what really happened, and the part I played.” My words were hardly more than a whisper, but I didn’t doubt the ears behind me were listening intently.
Let them listen. This isn’t for them. It’s for me.
“I wonder if you would be proud of the monster I’ve become,” I continued. The blinding light rose slowly but surely, and I didn’t blink. Not even once. “Or would you be ashamed? I failed you, father. I couldn’t keep my promise. I couldn’t protect them.” I took a stuttering breath, and my heart expanded and bruised as it fought with the bars of my ribcage that kept it contained.
“I don’t know who or what I am anymore. Do I have you to thank for that? For the memories I was supposed to never remember? Or is there another?” My mutterings were the words of a drowning girl, trapped by things I couldn’t even comprehend.
“I never understood when I was younger. I couldn’t make sense of why you pushed me, or the secrets you burdened me with that never should have seen the light of day. You taught me to fear them. To fear myself. So much so that I would die for them.” The first cracks of a burning star rose above the horizon, scorching my eyes blind.
Still, I did not look away.
“But I wasn’t the one who died.” If I could have cried, I would have. “Did you know that? Did you know it would be her? Did you know I would lose control and end her life?” A gust of wind slapped my face, blowing my shorn hair behind me.
“I have to think you did. That you knew, somehow, the darkness that lives inside. You saw it. You fostered it. Mom thought you were breaking me, that it would destroy me, but I see it now. I see the truth, and it’s a terrible thing to behold.” The cold air made my throat burn and taste like blood. I licked my cracked lips, relishing the way they stung.
“You did break me, Daddy. Over and over again. But every time, I came back. And you knew then that no one else—nothing else—would ever break me the same way. For every time I broke, I healed. I am strong because you made me strong, and maybe I’m not invincible—but if I could heal from what you did, then I will heal from this. One day.” My heart was an iron casket that contained the embers and ashes of a dead girl, but I was a phoenix.
And from those ashes, I would rise again.
Not as Violet. Not a demon. Not an unfeeling, rage-driven thing.
I would rise from nothing, but for the life of me—even I couldn’t see what I would become.
“One day I will be whole again, because anything else means she won. And if there’s anything you taught me, it’s to be spiteful enough to heal.”
And then I broke.
One by one the barriers in my heart and mind split apart at the seams. My chest cracked down the middle. Crashing, falling, tumbling into nothingness.
Pain racked my body, hotter than hellfire and colder than the waves that held me below. The pain edged with grief and rage consumed me so wholly that I finally broke.
I broke in the way that I wouldn’t let myself for Lily.
I broke in a way that could only be described as a time bomb.
For so long I ticked away as people chipped at my heart and humanity. It’s almost amusing that the thing that broke the dam within was so small. So simple.
Amber talking over me served as a reminder from a time I thought I was whole. It sent me spiraling through memories in a w
ay I never could have predicted. It triggered an avalanche inside of me that I had withheld for so long.
But kneeling in the dirt, I made one last promise.
And then I gave into the sobs as the sun rose in the sky.
Chapter 15
There’s something to be said for feeling pain so acute that you literally black out from it, and that’s exactly what I did. At some point, the sobs and shudders became too great and it was only the warmth tethered around me that kept my mind from slipping into those watery depths again. Here in my mind, only an endless darkness existed.
But I was not alone.
“Am I in limbo?” I asked them. On one side Violet stood, on the other, my demon.
“Not quite,” Violet replied.
“What do you mean?” I looked from one to the other. It was a strange thing to come face-to-face with your demons. One, a glowing-eyed carbon copy that seemed to level up the more time that passed. The other, a dark-eyed version of myself that stared at me with a savageness that was all too familiar.
“You are dreaming, for now. Your signasti is already trying to pull you back, but the dragon has assisted in keeping you here.” I circled them both, although there was no floor. Somehow my body stayed upright and moved just as if there was, even if I was in a place where only shadows and smoke existed. I suppose if my mind was to have a physical representation, this would be fitting.
“The dragon?” I asked. She had given me bits and pieces of information before, and there was only one person that she had ever referred to that way. “You mean Johanna?”
“They are one and the same,” Violet replied. About as straightforward as it usually gets with her.
“Alright. Given how things were when I last saw her, I assume it’s not out of the kindness of her heart. So why am I here?”
Violet’s lips curled up into a cruel smile. “Because it’s time,” she said simply.
My heart stumbled in my chest as her eyes swept from me to the demon.
The other.
The very real entity I fought my entire life.
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