Page 50 of Captured By the Cupid

“What the fuck have you done?!” he snarls, grips my hair in a sharp yank, and hauls me to my feet.

My eyes widen, pulse thrashing as he grips my throat like she did. No, harder, stronger. All breath is robbed from me, and my lungs shrivel.

“E-ero—”

It’s all I get out before she crouches and tries to attack me again. Brandishing his eyes like a weapon, Eros hurls me to the floor. I fall hard on my side while he grips her shoulders, wrestling with her insanity.

“Get out!” he yells.

Get out, get out, get out.

I don’t stop to protest. I don’t stop to look at him. With bruises marring my side and burning tears streaming down my cheeks, I stagger to my feet and clutch my side, stumbling down the passage to the bedroom.

I don’t stop.

Get out, get out, get out.

I can’t get out!

On some level, I’m aware of how I’m rushing through passages, into the gallery, and out to the commons of the castle.

But the other part of me is nowhere near here. It’s the limbo in my mind.

I’m trapped in that room. A prisoner of a cruel and emotionally manipulative prank. Gray dark walls coated in dust surround me. Windows boarded up. The scent of decay filling the room.

Get out, get out, get out.

Nightfall came.

Then…death.

“Aradia!”

I pause, my fingers poised on the handle of the main castle door, turning at the familiar voice at the end of the hall. The voice that followed the first music I heard here. The voice that has been so kind to me.

And from his chest arises a soft, unfamiliar mournful melody.

“Please…wait,” Crescendo pleads.

Tears blur my vision as I shake my head. I must get out.

He scrambles for me, but I’ve already opened the door and escaped.

I don’t stop running until I’ve passed through the courtyard with the woeful statues. I don’t stop until I’ve run clear to the gates of his castle. The inner ones. I have no idea how I will make it past the outer ones, which only the dragons can open.

A stroke of good luck—a sign must be in my favor since a smaller iron doorway is unlocked close to the main gates and their gatehouses with the great parapets and crossways. The guards don’t pay attention. They don’t notice me slipping through the small doorway.

Get out, get out, get out!

I don’t stop until I’ve plunged headlong into the spirits.

They feel so real, but they’re not. They swarm me with a multitude of confusing auras. A tapestry of thousands of shades of gray, black, and blue—like a host of bruises surrounding me, hemming me in. These spectral encampments surge with lost dreams and hopes, their desires and emotions and histories.

A fist closing over me. A closet door slamming. And an upper room with nothing but death.

As they claw at me, ripping the sheer fabric to shreds, and lashing my skin to cut me, to bleed me, to drink from my blood and consume my vitality.

I’m never getting out.

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