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Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tamsin
When I wake, everything is black, and I am very, very cold. I don’t know where I am. And I don’t remember falling asleep, for that matter.
Then, with a rush of adrenaline, it comes back to me.
I must have lost consciousness when Darkness took me, when she swirled her shadows around me and vanished from the hospital room. I remember Blake’s look of shock and horror, and the sound of Luciana’s panicked breath. At least the two of them are safe. I saved my sister, as I set out to do.
Now the question is, what exactly is Darkness going to do with me?
As if sensing my wakefulness, I hear the click of her spike-heel boots approaching. “Ah, you’re back,” she says in her voice of velvet and barbed wire.
She walks in a slow circle around me, and I carefully push myself up on my elbows. The world spins, and bile rises into my throat. Whatever way she’d transported us, it wasn’t the same way a witch or warlock would do it. My body feels like it’s been put through a paper shredder.
We’re in some sort of temple. The floors are smooth, black stone, and far in the distance I see a perimeter of pillars holding up a roof. There is no electricity or flame, but my eyes have had time to adjust, and in the ambient light I can see sky and the moon and stars beyond. I also catch a glimpse of snow-peaked mountains on the horizon. We’re somewhere at a high altitude, that much is clear.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“You can hardly expect me to answer that,” Darkness scoffs. “I like my privacy.”
“Well, I can’t very well create chemical compounds in a temple on the top of some mountain,” I say. “I’m going to need a lab.”
“Does this mean you’re ready to get to work?” Darkness asks. “I do appreciate your drive. I could tell that about you before I even met you.” She throws me a blade-edged smile. “It’s why I chose you, of course. I’d researched many potential candidates for the job, but you were the cream of the crop. Do you know how many times your name appeared in articles, awards, social media? Fame is a bitch, isn’t it?”
“You seem to be wasting a lot of time talking when I could be getting to work,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
Her smile is wicked. “I can wait another day before we begin toppling global powers and bringing about the next world war.”
I feel a flutter of unease in my heart. “It can’t be my lovely company you desire.”
“Ah, but you’re quite wrong about that,” Darkness says cheerfully. “I very much want some one-on-one time with my new favorite witch. Because I made a promise to you.”
My heart goes from movement to stillness in an instant.
“I told you, Tamsin, that if you even tried to escape, I would haunt your dreams. And well, I have done that, but only a little.” She makes a pinching gesture with her fingers as if she’s squashing an invisible beetle between them. “The punishment must match the crime. Such an extraordinary crime it was.”
Darkness stops pacing around me, and I feel those copper eyes burning into me. “You not only had the audacity to escape, but you attempted to hide from me, you wiped the memory of my spy, and worst of all, you had the gall to cure your sister from the gift I gave her in the first place.” She shrugs. “I know, I’ve since decided I want your cure, but that’s beside the point.”
I notice then something strange happening. The stars are going out one by one as a blacker black sweeps across the night sky. Shadows rustle and whisper and crawl across the floor toward me. Cold fingers of darkness crawl up my legs and encircle my waist. My heart is racing so fast I think I might pass out again.
“Oh no, my dearest witch. You’re going to stay conscious for every moment of this,” Darkness coos. “When I’m through with you, you’ll never dream of disobeying a single thing that comes out of my mouth. Ever. Again.”
And then Darkness slams into my mind like a hurricane.
