“You can’t have me!” I screamed at the trees, my cries echoing across the orchard.
Everywhere my tears soaked into the earth, a pale yellow flower bloomed, then rotted, its cloying scent making the back of my throat itch.
“Fuck you!” I shouted. “Fuck everything about this place!”
The touch of a strong, broad hand on the back of my head pulled me from the desperation.
I sat up again, looking straight into Ronan’s coal-black demon eyes.
Now, I was naked, and he knelt beside me, running his hand down my bare backside.
I sighed at his tender touch, wanting to lose myself in it.
“It’s okay,” he said, stroking my skin. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Ronan turned to smoke.
And the torture began anew.
Endlessly I relived each torment, each regret, each mistake. The scenarios played out differently—sometimes Darius was beheaded instead of incinerated, sometimes my tongue was carved with the devil’s trap that banished Ronan’s soul. I watched Emilio shoot Bean, watched my mother skin Emilio alive, watched Sophie dance on Asher’s bloody corpse—but they always ended the same way.
Everyone I’d ever cared about was dead. Because of me.
Each loss hit me all over again, as fresh and sharp as if it’d never happened before. And each time they reappeared, their presence filled my heart with hope, as ifthistime might finally be the one to end this nightmare.
As if all of the people I’d so terribly wronged might finally forgive me—might finally live.
But they never did.
I spent days in the orchard, lying naked on a blanket of rotten yellow blooms and tattered, ever-changing tarot cards.
“Let me go,” I whispered, over and over, each time the loop began again.
But it never worked. No matter how much I begged, the ghosts of my past wouldn’t let me go.
Eventually, the parade of death and regret blurred, and a thick, billowy fog crept across the orchard, enveloping me in a white haze, slowly dissolving my body until there was nothing left of me but a whisper on the wind.
In the end, that was silenced, too.
Breathe, Gray. Just breathe…
I was suspending in nothingness, a momentary reprieve. And there, in the spaces between, I found my way out of the orchard.
I had to let them go. It was that simple—and that difficult.
I opened my eyes and returned to my body, still lying naked in the patch of rotten flowers. The mist had retreated. The ghosts of my past had returned, all of them watching me as if waiting to see what I’d do next.
Slowly, I got to my feet and took a deep breath.
Then, without another word, I turned my back on Darius, Ronan, Asher, Sophie, Emilio, Bean, and even the mother I missed more than anything in the world, and I walked away.
The orchard vanished behind me, and I followed the pull of my magic toward the sound of the ocean, feeling lighter for the first time in a long time.
One thing had become clear. Alive or dead or somewhere in between, I didn’t belong in the Shadowrealm.
I didn’t care how impossible and unnatural and unheard of it was. I didn’t care how far away the gateway was, or how many beasts and nightmares I might meet along the way.
All I knew in that moment was this: I was a goddamn Shadowborn witch. I was going to find some clothes. And then I was getting out of this fucking place.
