I’m hers.
She’s mine.
Those breathtakingly intelligent eyes carry haunting secrets that tantalize me from the start. Without a word spoken between us, I feel it—that there is something in the fabric of her being that is precisely what my own soul is comprised of.
That’s not all I feel. I’ve removed the walls I put up so long ago, and now every emotion I experience in her presence is fresh. Exhilarating. Even when she attempts to reject us, it’s thrillingly unexpected.
Observing her becomes an addiction. I watch her micro-expressions day by day, enjoying the smallest of insights into mydark darling’s beautiful mind. I become obsession personified, relishing every moment I have with my keeper before my curse catches up with me.
There’s no escape.
Discovering what happiness feels like is incomparable.
That’s how it always starts.
But then, the agony begins. Every night, I witness the nightmares that plague her as permanent psychological scars. The screaming. The experiments. Theconditioning.
The time she trusted a boy who took what he wanted from her before trying to take her life.
I never tell her what I’ve seen of her past in the memories that torment her nights. How could I? My keeper survived things I wish I could make her forget. I’ll never remind her of them by breathing a word about it ever again.
There’s no escape.
In this purgatory, numbing myself is my only defense. Yet even that is becoming useless.
Our quintet grows closer. We learn about her blood oath and her purpose. She says she knows how to survive it all in the end.
It’s a lie. I know that just as she knows that my minutes are ticking away with my curse, bringing me closer to the Beyond.
But I don’t fear my curse, or death.
I fear being without her. I fear existing as that numbnothingnessthat I was before finding a soul as broken as mine. I fear losing what precious time I have left with her.
And that’s precisely what happens in this cycle I live on repeat.
Every breath between us in this endless cycle is something I would die to have back. Every smile and argument and whisper and kiss?—
Until the moment I see her lifeless on a barren battlefield. Gone.
I was going to ask her to be my muse.
Dulling every emotion isn’t working anymore, because even the numbness hurts. The cycle starts over as I’m forced to relive it all, along with my bitter past.
Again. And again. And again.
11
MAVEN
I can barely seethrough the excessive amount of winter gear Everett bundled me in as we leave his old professor’s apartment at dawn. Waking up was surprisingly difficult for me since I slept like the dead after resurrecting, but I get the sneaking feeling my nerve-wracked elemental didn’t sleep at all.
“We have to catch her early, before she goes to the makeshift temples in Halfton. She goes almost every day,” Everett explains, holding my hand through the fuzzy gloves I’m wearing.
Every time we approach another hallway, he pauses to peek around corners to ensure no Reformists under his command are hanging around these hallways. I only got the barest glimpse of Everbound in the darkness of the night, but in the cold morning light, I can really appreciate how much more desolate this gothic castle has become.
Everett’s uncontrolled power has transformed Everbound Castle. It was always a gothic behemoth, but now its windows are frosted over, hallways are glazed with shimmering displays of ice, and even the shadows of this eerie stone maze seem chilled.
As we descend a staircase and turn down another hall, I realize we’ll pass Everbound’s eastern library. An idea strikes me.
