“Of course I did, my nýchta.”
That voice didn’t belong to Malachi.
A flicker.
I opened my eyes—and the mouth at my throat wasn’t his anymore. The eyes above me weren’t gold. They were molten copper.
Kaelith.
He moved like I belonged to him. Like I never hadn’t. His body strained over mine, abs tightening with every roll of his hips, gaze dark and consuming. I tried to twist away, but he caught my hair in a fist, yanking my face up to meet his. Ink coiled over every inch of him, marks that pulsed beneath his skin, catching the lantern glow.
“Do you even know what you are?” he hissed against my neck. “What you’ve done?”
I shoved at his chest, but the hands pinning me didn’t yield. They changed. Warmer now. Familiar. Softer.
Hayat.
The first boy who made me laugh when I thought I’d forgotten how. His eyes were gentle, lips brushing my jaw with aching tenderness, but the shadows curled around him.
“You asked me to stay,” he whispered. “You begged me to.”
“No…” I choked, the word lost.
Then Malachi again—above me, breath warm against my throat, golden eyes molten with something wild. His mouth skimmed my skin. But I saw them this time—those too-sharp teeth, bared and gleaming. He was going to bite. And gods, some part of me wanted him to.
Then Kaelith. Then Hayat. Then?—
Nothing.
The warmth disappeared. The touch turned cold. I was alone.
No one above me. No one beneath.
Just blood.
It coated my hands, my thighs, my chest. Dripped from my fingers in thick, hot rivulets.
And then I saw them.
Malachi. Santiago. Hayat. Lysara. Gabriel. Aeryn. All of them, lying in a circle around me. Pale. Mouths open. Eyes glassy and wide.
Empty.
Dead.
And I stood in the center of it. Breathing. Untouched. Wrong.
Kaelith’s voice broke through—low, dark—his face materialized through the fog of the dream, but he didn’t move toward me. He didn’t offer his hand.
“You’ll kill them all,” he said. “You were always going to.”
“No—” I tried to scream it, to deny it, to reach him?—
But he stepped back.
“You don’t get to run from what you are. I am the only one who will accept the darkness within you.”
The shadows surged.