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Against the dense backdrop of night, the crackling flames of torches cast a misty glow over the marsh shore, then the sickening sounds of pain crack the calm illusion.
Kallum’s pain.
Darkly cloaked figures attack with brutal force from all around. Kallum is in the heart of the ambush. Adrenaline rushes the chambers of my heart at the sight of him, shirtless, feral, every defined muscle tensed, a dark god bathed in the light of the torches as he swings wildly at his attackers.
Panic fuels my shaky movements as I try to reach him. My mental fog is further cleared by the press of cool steel under my chin, and I’m suddenly made aware of the threat hovering from behind. There’s no verbal command, but the order not to move is clear.
The blade digs into my neck as my hair is snatched in a firm grip, and I’m forced to watch six skull-masked figures strike Kallum with torches. With each strike, fiery embers rain the open air as his enraged growl rips through the night.
He’s a force of fury and chaos.
Until his fierce gaze touches mine, and his fight stops.
They descend on him.
Two of the horned men wrench Kallum’s arms back and force him to his knees. He doesn’t break eye contact with me. His inked skin sheens with blood and sweat. Dark red stains his mouth. He turns his face to spit a trail of blood, giving me a better view of the fresh bruising.
I make Kallum weak.
The moment I’m in danger, he loses his own will.
His eyes anchor to mine before he drops his gaze to assess me, slowly wandering over my body in critical study—his black dress shirt that clothes me, my mud-caked jeans—and stopping when he reaches the blade held to my throat. Features hard, a muscle flexes along his jaw, flames of malice lit behind his clashing eyes.
“I’m all right,” I assure him. I swallow down the ache past the pressure of the blade.
The crackling pop of fire infuses the marshland as our attackers swipe their torches through the dark, their movements frantic but focused. One of them binds Kallum’s wrists with rope as I’m made to stand.
My chin is set free, then the sharp tip of the knife prods my back in warning. Forced to walk barefoot, we’re silently led into the woody marsh. Everything is wet and smells of earthy rain from the downpour.
I steal a backward glance at Kallum. He prowls behind me, a caged animal biding his time. His inked skin gleams in the torchlight, his dark hair unkempt, his eyes just as wild. Rough wounds lick his skin. His seething fury is thick and heady like the smoke in the air, an intoxicating pheromone to rouse the beast.
My body identifies the scrapes and bruises from the wreck and my sliced palm, but most of my pain stems from the brutal physicality that is Kallum and I together. My body is a tapestry of marks, a fusion of pleasure and pain from Kallum’s desire.
Wrestling with my devil.
We verge deeper into the marsh away from the reservoir, and Kallum’s kept at a distance so he can see the threat aimed on me. While Kallum is chaos incarnate, he won’t risk any attempt that endangers me.
Pale moonlight slants across dripping moss from the sickly marsh trees in eerie beauty, overlaying the dense reeds in splashes of tweed and slate green, the same vibrant color as the green I see when I look into Kallum’s eyes.
A fire blazes in the center of a clearing where rocks with white markings have been stacked around the perimeter to form a circle. A giant black willow tree rises up from behind the flames, its thick roots clawing out of the muddy earth. The bone-white skulls of stags hang from its willowy branches. Runes and alchemical glyphs chalk the bark.
The sizzling roar of the fire dampens all other sounds of the marsh, the crickets a distant chirp. The fine hairs along my nape lift away as I glimpse the others dotted around the clearing, their cloaked bodies tucked into the darkness of the marsh, the spines of antlers rising above the thin reeds.
But that’s not the most unnerving part of this scene.
Between the tree of bones and the fire, a tan parchment covers the ground. A sketchedouroborosrings the sheet. Other symbols have been drawn both within and outside of the tail-devouring snake. And in the center, the body of the man Kallum killed, his broken neck evident.
The body has been stripped of clothes. His eyes crudely removed, the bloody sockets exposed. His ears are shorn off. His torso sliced open and his stomach disemboweled, his organs harvested. Glass jars border the parchment, the contents gruesomely unmistakable.
On reflex, I touch my stomach, only comforted once I feel Kallum beside me. “I made you leave him alive,” I say, referring to our other attacker on the ridge. “He’s how they found us.”
“Actually, nothing happens in my fields that I don’t know about.”
Her distinct, melodic voice travels over the crackling flames.
Dressed in her headdress of antler bone and ivy, Devyn emerges from around the tree. She’s once again adorned in her sheer, flowing skirt and armbands, but she’s also donning one other item: a corset made from a human rib cage. The bones are woven with twine, showcasing her expert technique in all its macabre glory.
I’m gripped by the otherworldly sight of her as she finds my gaze past the fiery sparks licking into the night, and for a fraction of a second, I glimpse a touch of softness before her features adopt the hardened mask of a priestess.
