We dance close, and I grab Blackfire to make him stop. “Let me just stay with her as she dies. Please.”
He growls. “This is a dangerous time for you to grow a heart, Hopeless. Be cold and leave her. She wouldn’t stop for you.”
“No one deserves to die alone, though, Blackfire,” I whisper back. Blackfire goes rigid, but he nods once and lets me go. I need only to kneel on the tiles to be near her head. Her arms are free, and she pushes at the rock brutally, like it hasn’t crushed half of her body already. She’s not going to survive this. Blood pours out of her mouth as she meets my eyes with her red ones.
The beautiful green gown, the exact same as mine, is ripped into shreds around her, and her blood mixes with the leaves. “I guess I sh-should have focused more on dance classes.”
“I’m so sorry.” I touch her shoulder. “But I’m not leaving you. What’s your name?”
“Imogen,” she coughs and chokes on her name. “I’m so-so-rry too.” I don’t register what she’s done. Not until I feel the pain. The world slows as my eyes drop down and see a red dagger pushed straight through the middle of my corset and into my ribs, just underneath my heart.
I gasp and cry out. “Bl-ack-fire.”
Blackfire’s roar is nothing but fury as he reaches for me. Imogen looks at him with a bloody smile, ignoring me, even though the sick bitch just stabbed me in her final moments. “Tell the alpha that I did what he asked, and I killed her. We were all told we had to kill the human, make sure she died before the end. Otherwise, our families would suffer, and I want my daughter to live. Tell my daughter I will love her always.”
“You failed and I won’t tell her shit!” Blackfire thunders, leaning around me, and he snaps her neck with one hand before he pulls me up to him. My legs feel like they’re weak as blood pours down my dress, and I can’t keep my eyes open, and I don’t even care about his brutality. I collapse in his arms, and he holds me to him like I’m precious and not his enemy. Like he doesn’t hate me at all. I must have lost too much blood, because this can’t be real. This can’t be.
“Don’t you dare die! I forbid it!” he growls, so careful not to touch the dagger that’s still embedded in my ribs. “I can’t pull it out. Not here. We are not close enough to Reed. You need to stay awake, and I will dance for the last part. You are not dying because you’re a stupid good person and sat with her in her last moments. Heroes always end up dead, you utter fool. Stop being good!”
“Aw, you think I’m a good person.” I groan in pain.
“That’s it. Argue with me; be sarcastic. Call me a dickhead, but don’t you dare close your eyes.” He grabs my hand, and he begins to dance us away. Faster this time, much faster, like he is dancing to fight away death itself. Blood pours down me;everything goes fuzzy. In the blurriness, I see those strings in the air. All the colours are so bright, but the dark one feels like it is shouting to me. I should grab it.
“When I was born…” His voice pulls me from the depths of darkness, from the string. He promised to tell me something no one else knows. “My parents had tried for nearly four hundred years to have a child. No children ever came to them. They loved each other dearly, and they were good people. Good and kind rulers. They would have liked you and been very ashamed of me. When my mother fell pregnant, the Crone Pack rejoiced. They were so happy that they threw parties every day of my mother’s pregnancy. The day I was born, things changed in an instant. The second I was delivered into the world, every fire in all the packs turned black. Not just in the Crone Pack, in Maiden and Mother too. Black fire poured out of the birthing chamber, killing the midwives, killing everybody other than my mother and father, who were left in the ashes of the room, my mother cradling me in her arms. Black fire danced around me like will-o’-the-wisps in the air that still stalk me even now, and they never leave me. I have learnt to control the wisps over time, even make them move for me. Now you know. That’s why they named me Blackfire. My fire isn’t warm. It can be if I force it, but it’s naturally not. It’s like ice, drifting cold across the skin, almost like death was with me from the second I was born. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, I will not let death take you from me, Hopeless.”
“Even you can’t stop death. I’m s-sure you’ll try, as stubborn as y-ou are,” I whisper, seeing the black wisps of fire moving from his body and dancing down my arms. My teeth chatter. I’m so cold. The wisps nestle into my hair, and this time, I don’t fear them. The wisps are Blackfire. “D-did you know your uncle told them to k-kill me?”
Blackfire holds me closer to him, and I see we are near the statue now. Good, because I’m not sure I can stay awake much longer. His tone is clipped. “No.”
I believe him. I shouldn’t, but I do. Reed shouts my name, and I look up, pausing. Pure terror must register on my face as he follows my gaze. Reed’s warning is too late. “B-lack-fire, l-oo-k ou-t!” A hundred rocks fall from the very top of the ceiling, and the last thing I see is Blackfire throwing me to the ground, covering my body with his before everything goes black.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It has been weeks since the Mother trial, and yet I still feel the dagger in my chest when I wake up. My monster hasn’t come to my dreams once, but I smell him sometimes. It’s odd moments, like when I come back to my room after a shower, or I’m alone in the living room and drifting off to sleep. I almost sense him there, and the smell of midnight air lingers. I’m sure I’m imagining it.
Reed sleeps in my room every night, his big white wolf curled up on the floor. Blackfire defended me from the falling rocks, and we both woke up back in the cabin, my injuries fully healed before Reed had to help me.
As much as I’m glad not to be dead, Imogen’s final words are bothering me. She had a daughter? Imogen can’t be much older than me, and that means her daughter must be young, and the Crone alpha threatened to kill a shifter child. I knew he wasa monster, but maybe underestimated his cruelty towards his own kind. They are his pack. Blackfire told me his parents were good alphas, and they wanted him, so how did his uncle become alpha? I wish I had learnt more about the pack royalty.
The reward for the trial is better entertainment in the cabin and slightly better food. There are board games piled into the cupboards now, painting equipment, a chess set and a bookcase stuffed full of books I’ve never read. There are a lot of smutty ones, which tells me even the goddesses like smut. Now, as much as they have tried to kill me a lot of times, I am still thankful for it as I curl up on the sofa, a blanket thrown over my legs. Tannith is hiding between the cushions as I read about a dragon who made himself human to be with the love of his life.
Elizabeth has a book too, on the other side of the sofa, under her own blanket. We do this daily now, and I love that she doesn’t try to fill the silence. Tannith never really liked to read books—not like me. I am glad that I found a friend who does. I’m lucky to have them both. Elizabeth’s head lifts just before the bell rings. “I really dislike that the goddesses gave him a bell to ring us down for dinner.”
I completely agree. Men shouldn’t be allowed bells. “I am hungry, though. I have to admit they are good at cooking.”
She laughs. “Anything is better than the night you tried to cook for us. No offence.”
I wince, remembering the black soup I made. It wasn’t meant to be black, but they ate it anyway. Well, Elizabeth and Ayan didn’t, saying it was disgusting. Which it was. After that fiasco, the men do the cooking, as Elizabeth refuses and they don’t trust me in the kitchen. If I knew the key to never cooking was cooking badly just once, I’d have done that to Tannith years ago. I sigh, closing my book. “Every time I get to the good part, aka the sex, I’m interrupted.”
Elizabeth pulls the book from my hands and holds it to her chest. “The last thing we need in this house is you getting turned on by a book. With how the heirs are with you…” She drifts off and my face burns. “I’m banning this book for the good of the cabin and the innocents in the middle. Aka Ayan, Tannith and me.”
“Wait!” I protest, chasing her as she literally runs off with my goddamn book. “I’ve changed my mind! We aren’t friends anymore!”
I can only hear her laughter as she runs too fast, and she is out the back door before I can catch her. Rolling my eyes, I go to the kitchen, which smells so good. The big dining room table is full of food on silver plates, with candles lit down the centre, and everything looks like it has no sugar in it. I’m officially having withdrawal symptoms from lack of cake or sugar. Or ice cream. Cake is the cure to all my problems and crazy feelings about the heirs. I need it. Or ice cream.
“Are you still hiding the ice cream from me?” I ask the smug bastard, who is sitting at the end of the table. Orion grins at me tauntingly. The ice-cream-stealing asshole makes sure to tease me with the pot and spoon at least twice a day, and disappears before I can get to him. Embarrassingly, I have chased him a few times, but he is too fast.
“It’s so sweet. It melts on my tongue,” he answers smoothly, licking his plush bottom lip.
