“Julian!” I shouted, jumping to my feet to run to him. Then his arm snapped up, and suddenly, a force shoved me backward and pinned me to a tree, knocking the air from my lungs. My body froze against the tree, all oxygen stuck somewhere inside me and not coming out.
My eyes ping-ponged back and forth between Carrie and Julian. I swallowed and managed to whisper, “Julian, what are you doing?”
He stepped beside Carrie, and I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t put the pieces together.
“Julian,” I cried, feeling the heaviness weighing upon my chest, his power pressing in on me from one side, the tree from the other. It felt like I was wedged between two brick walls!
My gaze darted from Carrie to Julian, my chest suffocating with pressure. I tried to push through it, fight against his power, but he was too strong. “Julian, she can’t control you!”
Julian tilted his head. His gaze was nothing more than cold current beneath long black lashes. My heart shuddered.
“Kill her,” Carrie ordered, and Julian’s eyes froze on me, unblinking as he drew closer and closer and closer …
The toe of his boots met mine, and I tried to shake my head, to move, to stop him, but then he gripped my throat. And it felt like a noose around my neck, my heart. She had complete control of him. Carrie Driscoll was controlling him. It had all happened so fast, but I understood.
She had been controlling him this entire time!
“Kill me,” I told him, lifting my chin and looking him in the eyes. His hand tightened, and it felt like my windpipe was crushing, cutting off all air supply. Then he raised me higher, and my back grated against the tree, the bark cutting into my flesh!
My feet dangled. The adrenaline rushed in my pulse, causing it to pound against Julian’s fingers desperately. Time ticked by, counting down the seconds as my body locked in this death trap, paralyzed. There was no sound here, only my heartbeatthumping!inside my ears. My vision grew hazy, only two silver bullets aiming at me.
And I didn’t know how long we were frozen there, in our suspended time. I didn’t know, but I watched the change flicker in Julian’s eyes.
Two silver irises bounced between mine, confused.
His brows snapped together, and his grip loosened.
I gasped for oxygen as the tips of my toes found ground again. Something was changing inside Julian, but I grabbed his wrist to keep him here, to keep his hand on my neck, so as not to not sever our connection. I didn’t know if it would work, but I had to try!
“They’re all liars,” I whispered. “But we’re not. This isn’t a lie. This is real. We—” I pushed my hand through whatever magical force he had against me, grabbed the back of his neck, pulled his forehead to mine. Looked into his eyes. “Weare real.”
Julian
Do not fall in love with the moon, they said.
I fell in love anyway, and they would all laugh. They could not see her beauty. No one would believe me if I said the moon breathed life into me, that it was here, inside her, where I found myself again. They wouldn’t be able to understand. And no one could ever love her as deeply as I did. No one else was made for it, and those who were like me weren’t brave enough. No ordinary being was created to fall in love with the moon, only that of the aberrant. The strange. They said you couldn’t know the moon, touch it, kiss it, make love to it. You could only watch from the dark trenches of the earth, admire it from afar.
Yet, still, I fell in love with the moon. And she, too, fell in love with me.
My thumb stroked Fallon’s delicate neck, feeling the frantic tapping of her pulse as reality set in.
The guilt climbed up my spine and squeezed my ribcage. My chest heaved, my blood turning black and having no place to go anymore. Because Fallon was here, refusing to let go of me.
She was like a whisper who almost slipped through my fingers. My head shook, realizing what had almost happened. What could’ve happened. What had been happening to me.
“Kill her!” Carrie ordered behind me. I flinched. Confused but not. My thoughts plummeted as it made sense. She’d found a way to become the master of my shadow-blood, and the rage coiled inside me! She had been manipulating me this entire time, killing all these people! And for what?
I pulled away from Fallon, my hands shaking. It was Carrie, and I couldn’t understand it.
“Why?!” I shouted, and I didn’t recognize my own voice. Fallon’s face fell, and she reached out for me, but I turned to face Carrie. “WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?” The burning filled my chest, which made it harder to breathe, to think. “Why did you use me? How?” The scream built up, so heavy and painful.
Carrie held up a hand, taking a step back. “This is your fault, Blackwell. I’m fixing your mistakes. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you and thefreak.”
“Fallon!” I screamed, “HER NAME IS FUCKING FALLON!” I charged forward when I felt someone yanking my coat from behind. I didn’t stop until I had Carrie Driscoll in my hands.
I heard Fallon’s sweet voice, the cry as the girl—my girl—pushed me from behind, begging for me to let go. But I couldn’t stop. Something had taken over me at that moment. My darkness. One controlled by no one, only a passionate, wild thing coming from inside me.
A scream ripped through my throat, and the winds it caused carried Fallon a few yards away.
