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It’s Ellie again, but I’m not sure what she doesn’t want me to do.
All I want is to listen.
All I want is to taste.
When I sink my teeth into Ellie’s neck, the screaming I hadn’t been paying attention to ceases.
The blood is not sweet as I expect, but bitter, and when I come up for air and glance at my friend, her eyes are wide open, but she no longer sees.
“Ellie?” I ask, and I feel a bit drunk, her warm blood still coating my chin.
My friend doesn’t answer, and now I’m the one screaming.
CHAPTER41
BLAISE
“Blaise. Fates, Blaise, please wake up. Please…”
The voice is familiar, like a song I would have heard often in childhood, but whose words have been lost to time, to the holes in my memory.
It asks me again, begs me to wake. I’m not sure I want to.
It isn’t blissful in sleep. Here there are fires and monsters, and the monsters are me.
But at least in dreams I can tell myself it isn’t real.
That I am not a monster.
That Nox is not burning.
That I would never hurt Ellie.
So I try to return, to swim through the fog toward the nightmares that offer me solace, but that voice—that strange familiar voice—hooks into my consciousness and pulls me back.
When my eyes flutter open and a dark silhouette blocks the intensity of the lantern light, I do not feel entirely awake.
Rather, I don’t feel thatallof myself is awake.
It’s almost as if I left part of me behind in sleep, and I should dive back under to retrieve it.
Like I can’t face wakefulness without it.
“Blaise…”
My name on this strange voice is a tether, and I now know whose shape stands above me, even if my vision has not yet honed into view.
“Nox.” My voice cracks with disuse, but even then it doesn’t sound like me. Doesn’t feel the way my voice has always felt in my throat.
It’s weightier, deeper.
I have to blink several more times before Nox comes into focus, and when it’s clear I recognize him, his throat makes a strangled sound. He rests his forehead on his folded hands, his elbows pressed into the stone counter upon which I lie.
Everything hurts.
No. Everything burns.
I groan as the intensity of the pain settles in. It’s as if the blood in my veins has turned to sand, to gravel.
