Sweat burst out across my forehead, freezing instantly. I needed to keep moving. I couldn’t let that darkness touch me.
But I was trapped. My back hit a wall. And what should have been me screaming out in pain from hitting wounds from a beating, I just gasped out from the sudden shock of a cold wall.What the hell was happening?
“Don’t come any closer!” My voice cracked and broke over each word. I covered my hands over my throat and tried swallowing past the sharp ache that wedged there.
It continued to engulf me. Blocking out the ceiling and walls from view, closer and closer it came until I was inside the darkness, its arctic breaths sending shivers right through me.
“You’ve come home,” a voice said, deep and gravelly, each word a scrape of stone against stone, gritty and raw.
An unbearable cold squeezed at my shoulders, setting my teeth into an uncontrollable chatter. My bones shivered next, the iciness so deep inside me I could just about feel my blood solidifying right in my veins. “Wh-wh-who are y-you?” I said, struggling to move my numb lips.
I closed my eyes tightly, suddenly exhausted, as the bitter swell of freezing wind filled my entire body.
“Erebus,” the voice murmured, rolling waves of darkness over my skin, like frozen hands caressing me. They slid over my back, where my flesh should have been torn to ribbons, slow and gentle. They skimmed up my throat, easing its soreness, and trailed up over my face and hair, clearing my foggy mind.
And then, like the flick of a light switch, it was gone and I was alone.
Along the walls where the torches hung from raven-clawed sconces, flickers of glowing white flames burst to life. One after the other, as if someone had walked about the room and lit each one.
“Nope,” I said to myself, raking my mess of hair out of my face, “that’s not creepy at all.”
The ridiculous ensemble Rose had dressed me in hung in torn strips from my body. I hurried to rip the rest of the sticky material off and rushed to the dressing table.Had I lost all feeling in my back? How was there no pain?There was too much blood covering the bed sheets not to be worried, it looked like a crime scene.
I stood before my reflection, hair wild around my terrified face, and slanted my shoulders forward to get a view of my back. For a moment I was too scared to look, to see my own flesh raw and bleeding, but when I saw my back there was not even one tiny scar. Not one speck of a flaw to show I had just lived through the beating of my life. It was as if it never happened.
“How in the actual hell is this possible?” My words came out as a garbled sob, and my hands covered my mouth in disbelief. Even in my wildest nightmares, they didn’t feel half as real as what I suffered through. It had to be real. My body still trembled from the violence, stomach still sour from the torture I endured, and my mind still fresh with its memory.
Tears slipped down my cheeks, and I buried my face in my hands, unable to hold in the emotions, and let myself cry.
A soft, wintry breeze tingled along the back of my neck like a gentle feathery touch. It trailed slowly down the middle of my back, along my spine, and buried itself under my skin, slipping between vertebrae and bone.
Pressure, muted and cool, kissed upon my cheeks—like the touch of a lover—cupping my face and a light breath of air to wipe my tears away. I squeezed my eyes tight and gasped out another strangled sob, focusing on the sensation.
“Mathias?” I whimpered, hoarsely.
A whisper answered me back, inaudible and strained, as if spoken from a thousand miles away. I couldn’t make out the words, and my hands fisted in frustration as my eyes flew open. No one was there, just the dark room and the shadows of hinted things. Murmurs and touch.Was Mathias here with me? Or was it something else touching my face?I growled out an angry cry.
The room grew brisker, unbearably so. The sort of cold that made everything a bit muddled and numb, fuzzy around the edges. My throat felt like I gargled with broken glass, the sharp pain and dryness making me gag on my own breaths.
Suddenly in the darkness before me, the air seemed to ripple. It stirred into a glistening mist of soot and shadow, and pulsed with an iciness so intense it burned at my cheeks and the tip of my nose.
Fear rolled through my stomach as the outline of a figure formed out of the nothingness.What if it was the king? What if it wasn’t Mathias? What if it was that deep darkness that just tried to practically devour me?Nausea coiled up my insides and lumped at the bottom of my esophagus, burning like coal in the back of my mouth.
Then suddenly he was there, Mathias, like a dark silhouette against the room, half corporeal, half wraith. Blue eyes glowed in the misty apparition, sending a flood of warmth and relief to my cheeks. “How badly are you hurt?” he murmured, his broad frame hovering over me, mist pulling down his shadowy features into a grimace.
I shook my head, unable to speak. I wasn’t hurt at all. I didn’t know if what happened was real? How could it have been real if there were no marks on me? I swallowed the sharp lump in my throat and quickly turned my back to show him. “It’s gone.” My words cracked and trembled as I looked over my shoulder at him. “There’s nothing there.”
Mathias leaned back, his eyes darting wildly over my back. His face paled, bone-white, and seemed to radiate a spectral haze. “But…but they beat you,” he whispered. His eyes shot back up to mine as I turned back around and covered myself. “I…Iwatchedthem hurt you,” he said, as his brows drew together.
I swallowed and nodded, breathlessly. “I don’t know.” I swallowed again, choking on each word. “Was it real? It felt so real.” I began shaking, queasiness bubbling up again, remembering the pain and torment.
“Itwasreal,” he said, eyes wide and angry. “I watched you bleed, they held me down to watch you bleed.” His jaw ticked and his form became more solidified, full of flesh and rage. “I watched you bleed,” his voice broke, “I watched them drag you out. Blood covered the floor.Your blood.”
“I felt it. I felt all of it.” My words came out a throaty whisper, the truth of them weighing heavily on my chest. “But there’s nothing there,” I said, frantically. “You’re seeing what I’m seeing, right? There’s not one scratch on my back!” I spun around wildly, catching glimpses of my back and its lack of bruises and cuts in the mirror.
“It’s only going to get worse.” His words tore a sob from me that I couldn’t stop. “I don’t know how to help you. You…you gave him your soul willingly.”
“It’s hanging around his neck, isn’t it?” The flickering light—in the crystal charm that hung on the chain—that had to be my soul. “It was singing,” I whispered. “It was singing to me.” My fingertips touched my collarbone and chest, for the first time feeling its emptiness.
