Font Size:  

She sat beside me on the cold asphalt, her white dress covered in dirt, though she otherwise looked unharmed. Her pitch-black hair had fallen free of her braids, loose curls tumbling around her frail shoulders. Her light blue eyes fixated on something in the distance, something I couldn’t see, as she reached a hand out and placed it over mine.

“What happened to Maria…” She pushed out a heavy breath, her chest heaving. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was her time.”

“It wasn’t her fucking time,” I snapped vehemently. “We had a chance to survive. All of us. We just had to complete the nine circles—”

“And her demons caught up with her before she could,” Kelly interrupted evenly. She still didn’t glance in my direction, and somehow, I found that even more eerie than if she were staring directly at me.

Silence descended as, around us, the rest of the guys began to talk in murmured, stilted tones to one another. All of them except for Heath, who still stood on the outskirts, his expression unreadable.

From what I could see, the parking lot spread about forty feet in all directions, creating a perfect circle of sharp white lines that made up each individual parking space. The single streetlight provided sparse lighting, the shadows growing more pronounced and ominous the farther you got from it. I didn’t know where we were or what we had to do, but that familiar sensation of unease made a slow, cold pathway up my spine. I shivered.

“Cold?” Kelly finally glanced over at me, her expression utterly unreadable. It could’ve been hewn from stone with how expressive it was.

“Scared,” I answered honestly, releasing a bark of dry laughter. Scared was the understatement of the century. I was terrified, yes, but I was also angry and sad. Maria’s death rested heavily on my shoulders, a burden I knew I shouldn’t carry, yet did anyway. I hadn’t been close to her back at the academy, but that didn’t change the fact that she was my responsibility. She’d followed us here because she had overheard a conversation between Kelly and me. And now, she was dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Kelly gave my hand a soft, reassuring squeeze.

“It’s not your fault,” she repeated.

“It’s hard for me to believe that,” I replied. Instead of trying to convince me again, she simply nodded, ripping her gaze off of me to focus on something in the distance. No, not something. Someone. Multiple someones.

While Beau, Tanner, Aiden, and Kace talked in a semicircle a short distance away, their eyes constantly flickering in my direction as if to ensure I was okay, Kelly’s men did the same to her.

“What’s the deal with you and them anyway?” I asked, nodding towards Caleb and the others. I was desperate to change the subject, to get my mind off of the horrors I’d just witnessed.

Maria.

Dead.

Bile rushed up my throat, but I clamped my mouth shut before it could escape. My guilt was on the verge of slashing me to ribbons.

“They’re my harem,” Kelly said simply. When I glanced at her with a quirked eyebrow, demanding more, she sighed and relented. “I think…I think they were my harem before we arrived here,” she confessed. “I mean, I had dreams back at the academy of them. And me. And us.” A delicate blush materialized in her cheeks.

“You think they were your boyfriends before you arrived at…um…Purgatory?” God, that felt weird to say.

Purgatory.

Dead.

Maria.

Oh god.

I cut off my thoughts before they could escalate, before they could send me into a downward spiral where I regretted all of my life decisions and where they’d led me.

Maria.

Maria.

Maria.

“Yes.” Kelly’s soft, elfin voice effectively pulled me back to the present, back to the here and now. “But I don’t think they remember.” Sadness pulled at her features as she glanced wistfully in their direction. All four of them were staring at her intently, but when they made eye contact, they glanced away as if they weren’t. I would’ve smiled if my mood hadn’t been so dour, so…explosive.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
Articles you may like