I was almost there. But so was the desire to sleep.
I need you, but I want you just as much as I need you.
“Fuck needing, Izzie,” I whispered in the storm as I forced my legs another step, then another. “I just want you.”
Just don’t leave me, and I’ll be okay.
“I fucked up,” I admitted to her. “But I won’t again.”
Several feet in front of me, Izzie was protected within a barrier. Her red flesh was blistered. The power of the sins would destroy her the same way they had Delena. But my witch was proving her strength—no person should be able to hold so much power. Fury ripped through me as I realized why Harvest wanted Izzie.
Her death date changed within seconds, and as I felt that data store itself away inside my head. She was dying. Today.
Fear clamped ahold of me, and I fought my brain another three steps when that bone-deep dread smacked into me relentlessly, not liking the fight it was taking to bring my body into slumber. I’d never found a way to fight until now.
I wanted to tell her how much I had walked to get here to her when I should have been asleep already.
I fell to my knees. My essence flickered in and out around my bones, and I knew the only reason I was even in this form was because my body was protecting itself inside the vortex. I lost my vision first, but I hadn’t lost the will to crawl, and that was what I did. I crawled to her, arms stretched out, I knew to go straight since she was right in front of me.
I felt one of my hands breach through the barrier she was in first, then the other, followed by my head. Only I collapsed on my stomach. As much as I told myself not to, my body did so on its own. It couldn’t fight the curse anymore. I didn’t even know how I fought it this long.
The darkness that stole my vision wormed its way into my head.
I lied to myself, I knew that now. I still needed her.
“Izzie!” It took every ounce of strength I had left to raise my voice. “I need you to come the rest of the way.”
Then I fell into the darkness.
Thirty-Two
Isabella
The darkness hummed dimly, almost sadly. The same powerful energies that the shadow had stolen were now causing pain. Unimaginable misery. Enough that I couldn’t be nothing. Nothing had no hurts. Which meant I was someone.
Only I couldn’t scream out in discomfort. I couldn’t move. And the shadow didn’t have it in it to stir either. Inside me, it realized what I already knew. We were dying. The one it stole for, the one it sought out, had wanted this from the very beginning. Julius made its gloom and desolation to die here. For him.
But, that was already known too. And although, it should have been okay with what it already knew as the agony ripped through me, it was sad and angry, then I felt its regret. Regret in choosing its creator when… it was missing the bad one.
In my head, the blackness painted a picture of the bad one’s face and while imagining him; it grew sadder and filled with more regret.
Mydarkness was lonely, like me.
Only I didn’t know why I was lonely. Or why I was sad. And that ache in my chest? Well, it felt worse than my dying body.
The worse our situation grew, the sadder and angrier it got at Julius. I didn’t understand its change of heart, but I came to understand it didn’t want to die today, even though I was already halfway there. If I died, it did with me. It didn’t like that idea. Just as shocking, my darkness didn’t want me to die at all.
“Izzie!”
What?
The shadow stirred at the sound.
He came?...
If the gloomy blackness spoke that would have been its words..
“I need you to come the rest of the way.”
