I suppose that’s what death felt like.
Suffering and sickness and peanut butter sandwiches.
It felt like Stone had died.
Time. Such a selfish, immortal thing, moving whenever it wanted.
How it stopped. How it passed.
Cyrus lifted his hand to grab mine. “Adora?”
I pushed him aside to escape the room.
“Adora!” Cyrus called again, but I felt weak and sick, and I was afraid that if I stopped, I’d crumble to the ground again, and time would trap me here without ever escaping.
As I passed Stone, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his arms.
“Adora, I didn’t know,” he pushed out in a whisper. “I’m the same man.”
“You’re not a man,” I spat through a tight throat. “Not anymore.”
Stone’s face turned grave. All hope had forsaken him.
Julian came up behind him and grabbed his bicep.
“Let her go,” he said under his breath, silver eyes like slits as they crawled to me. “She cared for the man on Bone Island. Not the Heathen in Weeping Hollow.”
I yanked myself free from his fists. “Never lay your hands on me.”
The only thing more devastating than losing him was losing him all over again.
CHAPTER 43
STONE
Phoenix collapsedin the tunnels as soon as we left the chambers with a trapped laugh rolling out of his mouth.
The drugs Clarence had given him for the pain, and to keep him from killing Kane, turned him into an incapable sot. However, it helped him maintain his composure for as long as he could in front of the Order and Sacred Sea, sure that any weakness he displayed was a vulnerability. As far as the people in the chamber understood it, Phoenix had not succumbed to what they did to him, nor did they see he was on drugs to hide it.
“Did you see Kane’s face?” Beck muttered, swinging a look at Julian.
“Yeah, he looked like he was about to piss his pants.” Julian tossed Phoenix’s arm over his shoulder to support him. “For those ten minutes, you had me fooled, Nix.”
“For a second, you almost broke like Danvers,” Zephyr countered from a distance.
Phoenix winced, a throbbing wracking his head as he let out a painful groan.
A moment later, Zephyr turned and pressed his hand on Phoenix’s shoulder, trying to regain his attention by squeezing it. Phoenix’s spine stiffened, and he raised his chin to look Zephyr in the eyes.
“I hope this pain lingers,” Zephyr said. “I hope it stays to remind you of the death you escaped. This way, the next time you see her, you’ll think twice and not act upon impulse. Unless you’re willing to die twice for a girl who would rather watch your skull collapse than betray her coven.”
Weeping Hollow was decades of dust. Each second here uncovered more in another corner. The covens in this town had a centuries-old feud dating back to my ancestors, mainly over what caused most bloodshed: power, control, money. The feud had little to do with the curse. While Sacred Sea had not cursed us, they had been using it as a weapon to maintain fear of the Heathens in the town ever since.
I’d learned Adora’s family were founders of Sacred Sea. She was a girl who never seemed to care about power or money, but the Heathens had stolen a life from her, and that was enough for anyone.
It would be unbearable to live here and not desire to be next to her, to hear her name and pretend to feel nothing, to see her with him and not start a war. I’d much rather lie at the bottom of the sea. At least there, it was peaceful.
“Give your heart, in its entirety, to your coven,” Zephyr reminded him. “If your heart should be full of something, let it be full of what’s worthy. Leave it empty, and there’s room for sinister things to grow, fester, and break you.”
