“It’s all right, Sharachi,” said a calm, casual voice. “We’ve got you.”
Got me?I lifted my head again and peered at the male still beside me. His violet horns looked longer than normal, or were they shooting stars bursting out of his hair?
I waggled my finger at him and slurred, “For now, buddy. Believe me when I say I’m here by choice. I could have escaped nights ago if I wanted to.” In the dark recesses of my mind, some part of me knew I wasn’t behaving normally, but right then, I didn’t care. Nothing that I’d worried about in the past mattered anymore.Goddess, maybe I should have taken that drug back on the island.
“Do you think we let her take too much?” Darian’s silky voice was faint, and another giggle jumped out of me.
“It was only the standard dose. The drug affects everyone differently.”
“The standard dose for a monster. She’s a human.”
“Well, I don’t know how much they used to take when we were human. Besides, we want her to change, don’t we?”
“We also want her alive.” A shadow dropped down before me, and Darian’s face came into view, slightly blurred but still distinguishable. “Raine lovely, how are you feeling?”
“Never been better,” I said, my eyes struggling to focus on him.
“Listen to my voice. Try to search inside yourself. Do you feel anything unusual?”
“What‘re you doin’?” I could hear Asher’s voice this time.
Unusual?I thought of the warmth that was heating in my belly at the idea of Darian crouched before me and Asher at my side. Was that unusual? “Nope, nothing,” I said.
“Why don’t you close your eyes again and picture yourself? What does that image look like?”
There was a beat of silence as I did as he suggested and tried to picture myself. But I wasn’t alone in the image. Instead, a naked Kade walked into view, followed by a butt-naked Darian. They were both standing there in all their glory, sporting huge erections. My mouth burst open, and I snorted as laughter poured out of me.
“You need to focus, Raine,” Darian said. “Listen to the sound of my voice.”
Uh-huh. His voice.In my head, my image of Darian was the one who was speaking, but I cleared my throat exaggeratedly and tried to banish him from my mind.
“Picture yourself in a room,” came Darian’s voice.
“What kind of room?” I asked as I kept my eyes shut.
There was a long sigh. “Whatever comes to mind.”
I did as he said and let my mind wander, thinking of a room. At first, I thought of the room we were in. A cavern with finely crafted furniture, blue fire crackling in the fireplace, and splashes of red and brown from the tapestries hanging on the walls and the carpet beneath our feet. I even thought of the massive weapons shelf near the front door. But then, as if my mind had a will of its own, the setting changed, and I found myself in my wooden cottage from back on the island, the rich carpets and furniture replaced with dull wooden walls.
I was in the main room of the cottage, a small, round table with three chairs sat to my left, and on my right, there was a tiny kitchen with a few battered iron pots hanging from the wall. Strangely, the front door to the cottage was nowhere to be seen, but the shutters on the windows at the front of the cottage were open, and warm island air filtered into the room, ruffling my hair. I could almost smell the coconuts and scent of the sea, and for the briefest moment, a sense of contentedness and familiarity went through me. My lips tipped upward into a soft smile.
“Now imagine there is a door to that room. All you have to do is walk over and open the door so you can step through.” Darian’s voice came to me as if booming from above now.
All right, just open a door. Sounds simple enough.
I focused on the front of the cottage, where a door would have been if it was my real home from back on the island. Concentrating hard, I imagined a door appearing in the middle of the wooden slats at the front between the two windows. The shifting and banging of wood sounded in my ears, and then a door appeared, just as I remembered it.Easy.But when I stepped toward the door, more banging and shifting sounded around me, and I whirled to find two more doors had also materialized—one on my left side and another behind me.
“Which door do I go through?” I asked, hardly able to hear my voice over the steady pounding of blood in my ears.
“What?” Darian asked, but it was difficult to hear him over my thudding pulse.
“Which door?” I repeated, but this time, there was no answer. A shadow moved in my peripheral vision, and I whipped my head to the side as a ghostly image of my father appeared. He was sitting at the small table, his shoulders hunched, torn clothing hanging loose on his thin frame, and lines crossing his gaunt face.
“Father?” I moved closer to him as all the happiness drained from me, and a familiar ache bloomed in my chest instead, but even when I was right beside him, he seemed not to notice me. Staring straight ahead, his gaze remained fixed on the wooden cup before him as if he thought if he stared at it for long enough, it would make his troubles disappear. It was the same expression I’d seen on his face countless times during the years after Cara had been taken.
We’d both grieved in different ways in the wake of her absence, and my father’s method had involved him trying to drown out the world with copious amounts of coconut wine.
“Just try pickin’ one,” Asher’s voice finally sounded through the windows of the cottage, cutting through the thudding in my ears, but I kept staring at my father. At the image that had become burned into my mind.
