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Chapter 5
Darkness continues. I sift through it as though lost at sea. Not seeing. Not hearing. Not moving. Or if I’m moving, it’s impossible to sense it.
I’m a prisoner to the darkness—always a prisoner.
A weight appears in my hands. I look down. I’m holding a book, suddenly. One with circles on the cover, side by side with a triangle in the center. It’s familiar. It makes me feel safe.
It’s the book I used to summon Mrak. To bind us. To make our pact.
But there’s no line through it right now, and that seems important.
Before I can figure out why, the book’s torn from my hands, pulled into the darkness.
And I’m lost again.
At sea.
Bereft.
When the darkness finally faded, it was with a burst of movement so jolting, I was surprised I didn’t fall flat on my face. Instead, I woke to sun streaming through an open nearby window and sat straight up on my bed.
My chest heaved, my breath coming in sharp, shallow rasps. How the hell had I gotten all the way to Dark Iron? And why didn’t I remember what had happened?
I’d been with Willa at the bar. She’d left, and I’d gone to walk home. It was just around the corner. Then two men had appeared. They’d attacked me. Held a dagger to my throat, which I’d melted and then…
Darkness. Pain.
But not anymore.
I reached up to touch the back of my head. My hair was matted and dried with what I could only assume was blood from the way I remembered my head slamming against brick. But I didn’t feel an open wound and my head didn’t throb like it should have.
My throat. Panic swept through me as I reached for my throat, but again, where I remembered injury, I found none.
What the fuck?
That question only resounded louder as I glanced down my body. I was still in the outfit I’d worn last night. Blood stained the front of my shirt from the top down my chest—likely from my throat and nose. Even more blood caked my jeans.
What happened?And how the hell had I gotten home after?
“Mrak?” I tried again, this time not as desperate. Worried, but angry. He’d promised to protect me and clearly he had. But this…
Andbeforethis, he’d disappeared. When I’d needed him the most since we’d burned Lazarus’s community, Mrak had been nowhere to be seen. Felt. Whatever.
The point was: He hadn’t been there for me. That pact we had made, the one he’d so often sworn by over the last year, had meant nothing in a moment of life and death. It was another reminder that no matter how sweet his caresses, no matter how much I enjoyed the sex, Mrak was ethereal. I was not. Could it ever really work between us? Was it possible to give all of yourself to someone you couldn’t fully interact with, much less see?
“You’re awake.”Mrak’s voice shifted quickly through the air around me, sounding like it had come from all sides, not just one.“I was able to heal your wounds, but you’ve been out for quite some time.”
He sounded so happy that I was awake, so sure of his abilities to heal me now, that fury burned within me. Where was the care for the violence that had given me those wounds?
“Where the fuck were you?” I spat, unable to keep the anger burning inside any longer. “You took over my body yesterday in my shop and then left me to nearly be killed. All over a stupid fucking sword.”
I lurched off the bed, not careful enough to test my footing first. I should have. The room spun, but I caught myself on the arm of the couch.
“Aisling, be careful.”
I swiped at the air in front of me. “Carefulis all I’ve ever been since Lazarus. Wherewereyou?”
Silence fell around us for a moment, both in the backroom apartment and out front of the workshop. Sunlight streamed in through the window, highlighting how little I owned. There was a small kitchenette with a few cooking items. A mostly empty fridge. A door off the kitchenette led to an unimpressive bathroom. The living space of this studio consisted of this couch with a pull-out bed and not much else.
