“Chloe asked for a ride and I said no.”
“She never came back to the party.” I’m not one hundred percent sure but I’m betting.
“She mentioned something about a supervising spirit and walked into the woods.” He tilts his head, full with discontent at the accusation. “I wouldn’t give Chloe a ride home. She’s bent on ruining what we have.” His serious brows pitch in the form of a V. “We can’t let her do that. We’re too good together.” Gage interlaces our fingers and presses a smoldering kiss to the back of my hand as the world begins to disintegrate.
The scenery changes and we’re standing in the woods. I can see the truck blanketed in a thin layer of fog about fifty feet away.
“I don’t remember you teleporting so much,” I say out of breath, slightly more than impressed by the aerial feat.
“I’ve grown stronger. I can do things now that I never could before. I’ve acquired an amazing amount of endurance—I can last much longer. I’m a lot better at things I thought I had already mastered.” His face widens with an expressed innocence, but his eyes shield a secret—a naughty side—as though what he were implying was purely sexual in nature.
“Like banging Chloe in the butterfly room?” It flew from my lips before I could filter it, but a part of me wanted to say it.
His head cinches back a notch as he buries a smile high in his cheek. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Not anymore. She ran away this morning to Demetri’s.”
He’s seducing me with his eyes, pulling me in with his full lips. They call to me with a voice all their own and plead his innocence.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he whispers. Gage drops to his knees. “Skyla.” My name comes in the form of the softest whisper. His sweet eyes speak a language all their own. They love me with an intimacy we’ve yet been privy to. “I would never betray you. Not even in my dreams would I desire anyone over you. Forgive me if I’ve ever remotely implied it.” His lips twist a smile that blooms from his heart.
Chloe keeps laying our love over the gallows and taunting us with the rope. She tried to convince me she lassoed it and hung it from the highest tree, and I bought the lie. I keep buying the lie. Chloe weaves her fiction and I sit before her like a spellbound child.
I get down on my knees to meet him, take in the soft spice of his cologne and inhale. Gage could provide the richest high just off his heavenly scent alone. How could I ever blame Chloe for trying so hard when I would dig a grave for any woman he chose over me? Loving Gage is a maddening wine and Chloe had swallowed him down full strength. Now there was nothing left for her to do than reel around like a drunkard and threaten to break the neck of the one he loves the most.
“What’s the matter with me?” I whisper.
Gage shakes his head. “You’ve been hurt. Chloe has an arsenal of smoke and mirrors—makes it hard to know which way is up. She’s evil. Don’t let your guard down for a moment. I didn’t touch Chloe—not last night, not ever. You have to believe me. I would never lie to you.”
My cheeks flush with heat as he washes over me with his gaze. I push in just enough to feel his breath over mine. Gage presses in with a feather soft kiss that breaks the membrane of Chloe’s deception. A warm rush of affection fills in the empty space that Chloe carved out with malice as Gage and I reconnect with a kiss that can save the world, win a war, mend a thousand broken hearts.
Gage pulls me in with an entire ocean of charitable kisses.
Skyla, he groans from within.
A vision appears—Gage and me in a courthouse. A judge is there in his dark robe, his hair clear as floss. He smiles down at the two of us and says, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
My hair is wild and frizzy with tiny droplets of water sprinkled over me like precipitous glitter. Gage inhales as he hears the words. His face blooms with wonder and delight.
“I love you,” I whisper before diving into a kiss that replicates the one we share now.
A smile springs to his face. You’re my wife, Skyla. I love you forever, he whispers before spinning his fingers into the back of my hair and kissing me once again.
It wasn’t the courthouse from last winter with the sarcastic judge who banished me to slave labor at Demetri’s—this was altogether different. This was yet to happen and there was nothing Chloe or Logan could do about it, and my heart breaks as it amplifies the fact any love I have with Gage—any life I plan on building with him, is suicide for Logan and me.
But what about what Logan said? What about this spiritual covenant my mother shoved down his throat? He did mention he found Gage’s newfound visions-on-command technique a bit fishy.
I pull back and take Gage in with all his inordinate beauty. My heart races at the sight of him as I pant a vaporous storm around us.
“That was amazing.” How could I ever not believe him? This is Gage.
“I wanted you to see that.” He wraps his warm arms around my waist. I wasn’t even aware I was cold until he touched me. “I brought you here because I know you fear this place.” He doesn’t waver his stare. “I don’t want you to fear it. I don’t want you to fear anything. I want to take all of your fears and break them, make them bend until they please you.” He hops to his feet and brings me with him. “Come here.” He leads me through a thicket and stops abruptly. “Close your eyes. I have a surprise for you.”
I hesitate before securing my lids and let him lead me another few feet. It’s vulnerable like this—as if each step were the last before a sheer unknowable drop that only Gage could spare me from.
“Open,” he instructs.
I blink several times, adjusting to Gage and his tender smile, his ebony glory set off by that pale, snowy skin.
“I don’t get it.” I look around, maybe he’s transported us to some forest in France, or—then I see it. Behind him, carved lovingly in the trunk of an enormous Sugar Pine, are the words Gage + Skyla—the word Forever etched just below. It’s perfectly written, masterfully engraved. This was no chicken scratch chiseled in haste with the sharp end of a rock. This was indelible artistry at its finest—the craftsmanship from a lover’s soul.
“Gage,” I whisper, reaching forward and pressing my fingers into his handiwork. I feel the pulse and rhythm as the bark bumps under my fingers.
A giant heart enwreathes our names. It bursts to life against the corrugated backdrop like flames from a fire. Butterflies are delicately carved along the inside edge of the heart and I bounce my fingers over each one amazed at the artistry. “Thank you.” I take him in. Gage turned the ashes of fear into beauty, traded my mourning over the death of our relationship into the oil of gladness.
Gage pulls me into a sweet tender kiss that taste like the future—our future. I run my hand under his shirt and feel the rock hard flesh rippling over his stomach. It brings back memories of that dream I had in the tunnels with his body searing over mine.
A manic flap of wings, the scream of a bird in flight, tears through the sky overhead.
Nevermore lands on my shoulder and lets out series of irritated chirps.
“You’ve got lousy timing,” Gage says, reprimanding his old friend.
I reach up and scratch at the underbelly of Nev’s chest.
“What’s going on?” My heart lurches unnaturally. The adrenaline in me rises— already I think I know.
Master Logan is preparing to be bound.
Shit! I pant staring up at Gage, too stupefied to speak.
It’s best you travel alone or risk putting an additional soul in peril, Nev twitches from me to Gage.
“I have to go,” I say, turning to run.
Gage grabs me by the hand and reels me in.
“Let me help you.” His voice reverberates through the forest like a gunshot.
“I’ll see you at the faction meeting.” I snatch my wrist back and burst through the woods like a missile on fire.
I would have asked him to teleport me to Devil’s Peak, to come with me to he
lp Logan if Nev hadn’t pointed out the obvious. Ezrina is out for blood—and any able body she can drag down into her misery will do. It just so happens that Logan is already there, and I’m about to join him.
I run until my legs ache, until Devil’s Peak races toward me like a blur. It’s replete with cars in every dull color of the rainbow. I see Nat and Em, Chloe and Michelle sitting on the hood of a familiar sedan. Michelle hops off, just as I pick up speed.
Ellis waves his arms to get my attention—he’s laughing until he realizes where I’m headed. The unnatural clip in which I’m moving leaves his jaw slack.
“Skyla!” His voice resonates wide as the island.
“It’s coming.” I breathe as the edge of the cliff advances.
The wind knifes through me. The mist baptizes me like a rite of passage as I leap with unbridled passion from the last bit of solid ground and begin to free-fall in a bed of withering fog—the rocky shore waits with its razor-like teeth below.
A choir of screams goes off overhead. The very distinct sound of Ellis shouting Fuck explodes from above.
The jagged rocks spin in turn with the ocean, blue and brown, ocean and sky. It all comes together in one tornado of color as the ground fast approaches.
I hope this works.
The rocks come in close, so close, and I let out a short-lived scream.
Chapter 61
Anything for You
The ground melts, slippery as oil. It vacuums me in, suctioning me through a dimensional chute as if it were hungry for me the entire time. It slithers over my body, wet and organic until it gives birth to me on the bottom of a sterile white floor.
It takes me three tries to stand, still dizzy and out of breath from the extreme form of punishment I inflicted upon myself to get here.
“Logan?” I shout, staggering down the hall. “Ezrina?” Really, it should be Marshall I should call out for, although his foray into reason might distract the effort to save Logan. He could care less if Logan loses his life to the underworld forever.
A series of doorways lay blank, affording nothing inside of value. I make a beeline for Ezrina’s chop shop. I’ve walked these halls, memorized their intricacies when I was holed up down here just before Christmas. The Transfer is where the Counts play God by resurrecting whomever they please, but apparently not whenever they want. Emerson is victim to a blood shortage, which doesn’t surprise me. The Counts are greedy as hell. Rationing is a foreign policy they don’t employ. They simply light drive into the future and take what they believe is rightfully theirs—namely me.
A double entry sits at the end of the long, desolate hall and I sprint over with only the sound of my heels slapping against the floor and my grunting to comfort me.
I burst into the room, sliding and skidding to find Ezrina staining the back of the lab like a blotch in this heavily bleached environment.
“Where is he?” I peck my eyes over every corner of the medicinal clutter. A set of long metal beds are laid out in the center of the room, ripe for the cadaver Ezrina might desire to pluck apart at her leisure. A row of glass vials hang from pegs along the wall, filled with filaments in reds and blues. Ezrina hovers near a stainless counter with smoke rising from a small hole that houses a cryogenics freezer just beneath.
“Here to save?” Ezrina leaves off the most important part of the sentence—the word, him.
“Just like you wanted Heathcliff, I want Logan.” No use pretending that Ezrina doesn’t have a heart anymore. I may as well go for the gold and needle her for mercy. “He needs to be out in the world, not locked up in some cage serving time so you can have the occasional outburst of lust. Please, Ezrina, do the right thing.” I stop short of adding, “for a change.” It’s not her fault she’s doing time down here, bound to the Counts every whim—it’s my mother’s.
Ezrina takes in a wheezing breath and examines me with her haggard features, a stark contrast to the clean, porcelain beauty she possessed in Logan’s dream, her once reality.
“You have a war I would have given everything to fight.” Her misshapen eyes bulge in my direction. “I slaughtered many to achieve what the Decision Council placed before you on a silver platter.” She takes a bold step toward me. Her putrid stench lights up my senses. “You have love that abides to death with not one—but three suitors.” She wags a crooked finger.
“And you have a trial at the end of the faction war. If my mother—”
“If your mother what? Deems she made an error?” Ezrina’s eyes pulsate in anger. “Your mother has created a farce by alluding to the fairness of another trial. My life and my husband’s life,” she hisses, “are much further doomed than before.”
“You wanted this trial!” I’m aghast at her sudden turnaround. I shake my head at the thought. This isn’t the time to point out what could very well be Ezrina’s own misstep. Instead, I go with it. “I’m going to be there for you during your trial. I promise.” That’s one covenant I’m not afraid to make. Ezrina and I share the same altruistic vision when it comes to Celestra—or at least she once did.
“Be gone, child,” she gravels before returning to her work.
“So, what? You’re just going to keep Logan hostage down here because your hormones happen to be on fire?”
“I keep nothing he hasn’t already given me—my time in the tunnels in exchange for a dreamscape.”
“Yeah, too bad my mother put the kibosh on that little exchange.” Although, it’s probably a good thing—Ezrina was more than a loose cannon down there. “I can see you’re still vying for some time with Heathcliff despite my mother’s warning.”
“It is my only reprieve, my best reality. Don’t you see? I have no other. And when Logan perishes—and he will—I’ll be alone again.”
“Until you can find someone else desperate enough to fool.”
“Covenant.” Her eyes bulge. “He tried to break it. He must be bound.”
He didn’t try to break it. My mother personally freed him. Although, something tells me, Ezrina isn’t in a reasoning state of mind.
My eyes swell with tears at the thought of living life, my senior year, college, the expanse of the unknowable future without Logan, all because he didn’t want me to feel an ounce of pain. Doesn’t he know I would walk through fire for him? “You can’t have Logan.” Think. Think. “Not yet, anyway—I need him to fight the war.” Then another, far more potent idea comes to mind. “The Counts are going to take me permanently if I don’t win this war—or sooner. They’re an impatient band of bastards.”
“You won’t win.” She busies herself with a vast array of beakers strewn out over the counter.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I bet her defeatist attitude was responsible for landing her here as much as it was my mother. “But when I do win—and I will—I’m sure there’s something you would like from me”—I come in for the kill—“something I could give you—something I could trade you to have Logan back.”
Ezrina enlivens, as if the thought of a Celestra victory made her blood run warm for the first time in centuries. But she doesn’t respond. Instead, she resumes the search for something in the overhead compartment.
“You can use his dreams at night when he sleeps.” I backpedal a moment. “You don’t need to keep him prisoner here.” Obviously, my mother doesn’t want him trapped in the Counts’ playground. That’s why she set him free. Doesn’t Ezrina know she’s acting in direct defiance to my mother when what she really needs is to be plotting to get on her good side?
“Logan is mine.” Ezrina rattles an empty bottle before tossing it in a bin.
“I’ll give you anything.” There. I’ve bargained away my life for Logan’s, the way he did for me, without hesitating.
Ezrina turns to face me fully.
“Anything?”
“In exchange for his return to Paragon.”
“Very well.” Ezrina takes a dramatic step forward. “I will take everything, but first, you must find something to appea
se the Counts so they won’t take you forever.” A slight smile interrupts her constant grimace.
“I’m ‘dating’ Ellis Harrison, and with your help, I’ll bring back Emerson Kragger.”
“Not enough.” She gags and averts her eyes as if I’ve missed the point entirely. “Not nearly enough.”
“I need Emerson or Arson will throw away the key.”
“No.” Her lips cut into a line. “I won’t help.”
“I’ll talk to Demetri and see what I can do,” I whisper—doubtful that I will. It feels like defeat. Like I’ve thrown in the towel before putting the full effort on the warfront. Although getting Logan home will be enough for now. “Is that good?”
“Better,” she confirms. “Once your mother announces my punishment, and that of my lover, we’ll meet again. I will find you. You cannot hide. The world isn’t big enough. There is not a crevasse in the universe that can shelter you from my blade.” Ezrina bows into me. “That’s how I will repay you for the misery you’ve instated. I’ll comfort myself in your cries for mercy before I take my full revenge.”
Lovely.
“So you’ll let Logan go?” I nod.
“Immediately.”
“Tell me, Ezrina. Tell me in plain words what I’m agreeing to.”
Ezrina stiffens with a grimace. “I will live out my days as Skyla Laurel Messenger, and Heathcliff as Logan Oliver. Young love will prosper, and in a way,” she says, caressing the side of my cheek with her hand, coarse as sandpaper, “you will, too. Isn’t that wonderful, Skyla? You and Logan, your flesh will live out its days as one. It’s a beautiful thing, and in the end, a part of you will have great love.”
Gage and his beautiful face blink before me. Marshall and all of his warnings, his mile long list of why I should greatly consider before entering into a covenant, stretch before me, wide as the sea.
“Bring him to me,” I say it sharp with a newfound venom.
“Logan, now. Your body forever.” She echoes with unwarranted glee.