The laughing hit my ears again and I raised my eyes back to the roof. Back to the man. The storm swelled around us, thunder shaking the house.
“You’re going to fall, Davenport!” This time, the cry did leave my lips, oxygen tearing back into my chest like a cyclone.
Preston, still balancing on the edge, suddenly stopped and tilted his head as if only noticing me now. Lightning struck down nearby, momentarily painting him in a ghostly purple glow, revealing the unhinged grin stretched across his face.
“That’s where you’re wrong, poison.” He leaned forward, and I instinctively reached out my arms, believing—foolishly—that I might catch him if it came to that. “We will both fall.” His eyes locked onto mine, ghoulishly calm. “Tenebrae nos omnes consument.”
Then he plunged.
The storm swallowed my scream as I lunged forward, desperate to see the stupid boy who had jumped to his own death through the pouring rain.
We will both fall.
His words reverberated in my head, as the world twirled around me and?—
Gasping for air, I jolted upright. I was covered in sweat, my pyjama’s glued to my skin.
“Dreaming of me?” A low, lazy voice melted through the darkness, and I drew back against the headboard of the bed.
My fingers slid beneath the pillow, curling around cold steel as I drew the knife forward.
“Threatening to kill me? Again?” Preston’s silhouette leaned into the moonlight, a smirk playing on his lips, uncomfortably similar to the one I just saw in my dream. Cold pressed against my skin like ice, the image of him falling clinging to my mind like a leach to blood.
“If I didn’t know better, I would say it’s becoming something of a love language of yours.”
I lowered the blade with a sigh, brushing the damp hair from my forehead. “You,” I said, though the word didn’t hit the edge I wanted. It was too relieved for my liking, and I could only hope he didn’t notice.
“Me,” he said, unbothered, lifting the book in his hand. My book.The Greatest Works of Edgar Allan Poe.
“And darkness and decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all,” he quoted, his voice like velvet stitched with menace.
Heat climbed up my neck, and I snatched the book from him. “What’re you doing here?”In the middle of the night.
“My room’s right above yours. And you screamed loud enough to wake the dead. I thought maybe you were being murdered.” His gaze landed on my knife in the light. “Or worse—you lost it and were murdering someone yourself.”
I rolled my eyes at the weak try of a joke. “Well, I’m clearly alive. You can go now.”
I reached for the teacup on my nightstand, only to knock it over. The dark liquid flowed right onto Hudson’s empty note. Panic seized my chest. I jumped to my feet and lit a candle, holding the paper above it, letting the warm flame hopefully do its job.
“Well, I’m glad I drank from it beforehand.”
My hands froze mid motion. “You drank from my tea?”
He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with exaggerated elegance. “Trying to wake you up made me thirsty. Though I’ll be honest, it tasted like regret and sadness.”
“So you drank from it, only just now?” I glanced at the clock, my stomach twisting.
Preston caught the look and arched a brow. “Why are we suddenly analysing my hydration habits?”
“Because there was Nightshade in it,” I blurted.
He blinked, his expression blank as if he was incapable of processing my words. “As in the poisonous plant Nightshade?”
“No, as in the life elixir Nightshade,” I answered bluntly. “Of course the poisonous plant!” I turned the paper so the other side could dry as well.
“Are you telling me I’m dying?”
“I’m not that lucky.” My lips twisted. “It was a small dose, and you barely drank from it. You’ll be fine.”
