“Cassie?”
Aliz’s voice is tinged with thirst.
The humid air clings to my neck, and I run.
I tear a branch from a hedge and fashion a makeshift cross. My hands tremble as I race deeper and deeper into the shadows.
I trip on a fallen branch, and I bite my tongue to keep myself from screaming. Just two hedges away I hear Aliz’s ragged, desperate breathing. My vision blurs, and I keep running, each step faster than the beating of my heart, until the narrow passages open.
Between four crumbling statues is a rosebush. Each statue holds a moon, each moon in a different phase. The first quarter is gilded in gold. The roses are in full bloom, their petals like fresh blood. Their too-strong scent burns my nostrils.
And just as I become transfixed by the roses, I see her.
Our eyes meet. “Don’t move,” Aliz whispers. Her eyes flash a horrible crimson. She’s trying to compel me. I feel her will wrestling with mine. For a second, I think it worked, because I don’t move. But then she steps forward, and something snaps insideme.
I run. Past the statues and the rosebush, back into the hedges.Why is she doing this?She promised. And I believed her. I should have killed her when I had the chance. My lungs are empty, but I keep running. I take another turn, and crash into a dead end.
Then a hand reaches through the hedge, grabbing my upper arm. Before I can scream, she pulls me through the branches, their sharp edges cutting my skin. My cross falls, and Aliz pulls me tight against her chest.
And as soon as I feel her skin against mine, every ache, every wound, vanishes. My mind clears, leaving nothing but her.
“Aliz,” I whisper. She presses her lips to my temple, tightening her grip around me. I cling to her, trying to get even closer. I don’t know why I was running from her in the first place.
“You’re okay now,” she whispers, lips to my ear. One hand is on my waist, the other on my shoulder. My tears dry against my cheeks. “It’s over, Cassie.” She’s close but not close enough.
Cold bites under my skin, and I kiss her collarbone, her neck. Aliz’s breath hitches, and she runs her fingers through my hair. I’ve wanted her since the moment she first saw me, since I first heard her voice. “Can I bite you?” she asks. She tilts my chin up, and her eyes are an awful, terrifying crimson.
My lips tremble, and a single, deadly syllable slips through, so quiet the night almost swallows it whole.
She descends on me, burying her fangs into the crook of my neck. Pleasure burns through my veins, and I dig my nails into her shoulder blades, unable to breathe as her tongue runs over the wound.
It’s only when she bites a second time, when she swallows enough to weaken my knees, that I remember what’s flowing through my veins. Aliz makes a strangled sound, gripping me, pulling at my hair as though that will somehow open her rapidly closing airways. “Aliz—” I gasp, reaching for her as she falls, my blood spilling from her mouth. Her teeth are stained red, and she chokes on the floor.
Nocth told me to stop taking garlic. Penny did, too. I didn’t listen. “I’m sorry,” I cry, on my knees. I wrap my fingers tight around a wooden stake, the one I was too scared to bury in her chest when I last had the chance. With the same mechanical force I’ve used a thousand times before, I slam it right through her rib cage.
I sob as I wait for her to turn to smoke and dust. But instead, Aliz continues to choke, clawing at the ground. The crow from the maze’s entrance descends on her, picking at her eyes. And as I fight with the bird, the mark on my neck starts to burn once again. Each thorned line stabs me, growing inwards, wrapping around my rotten heart.
Someone is shakingmy shoulders, and when I wake, she’s leaning over me, eyes wide with worry. “Cassie,” she says, and I draw in a breath, reality slowly falling back into place. “It’s all right.”
“What—”
“You were dreaming,” Aliz says, and this time, when her hand leaves my shoulder, lifting from the lines of the mark, that torturous pain doesn’t sear through me. Just a dull itch. I force myself to take even breaths, blinking my tears away.
“You’re all right?” I ask, and my voice feels like sandpaper against my throat.
“Yes,” she says, and she sits next to me, breathing out. It was a dream. My throat dries as guilt creeps up my neck, so visceral I want to throw up. The sight of Aliz’s asphyxiated features is already engraved into the back of my mind.
I let her bite me. Even after the dean’s warnings about the garlic in my blood. Somehow when the tears start, I can’t stop them. She places a careful hand on my head. And against my better judgment, with her hand still in my hair, and my eyes burning, I wrap my arms around her. She’s alive. It was just a dream. “I’m sorry,” I mumble.
“No.” She hugs me back, her arms surprisingly warm. “Please don’t say that.” She smells faintly of mint and honey, another girl’sperfume. “I tried to wake you when I got in, but I couldn’t—you weren’t waking. What happened? Did I—”
“You died,” I say, and she stiffens.
“So thatwasmy name that you were saying,” she says. I stop breathing. I was saying her name?Fuck.“How did I die?”
“You bit me.”
She pulls back, horrified. “I’m sorry,” she says, as though it was her fault that the Aliz I dreamt of sank her fangs into my skin. “I won’t do it. I promise.” She rests her hands on my shoulders. “Even with a stake to my heart.”
