I want to smile at her adamant promise, but everything’s just so heavy, so dark, so quiet.
The warning bells get quieter, too, and I know that’s a bad sign.
Bad. So bad.
“Forgive me, Elle. Okay? Say it, please.”
She chokes on another sob, this one keening and born from deep inside her soul. I get it. I feel it, too. “There’s nothing to forgive. Nothing. There never was. I love you, Hunter. I do. I love you. I promise.”
“It was always you,” I rasp.
She shakes me, but I can’t look at her. Not yet.
Nap first. Love her later.
Love her always.
Ella starts to scream, but I barely hear the jumbled mess of words spilling from her lips.
In the darkness, I see her. I see her smile, her eyes playful as she holds out her hand. I see her wrap her fingers around mine and grin up at me. I see her lips move with the words, the promise we’ve made to each other again and again since we were kids. A promise born in the darkness.
“You fall, I fall—” I whisper as Ella starts to pull me back into the black abyss. I’ll go anywhere she wants me to. Anywhere.
I think I hear a scream. I think I feel my body being moved. Think I feel my soul fracture along with hers, but I ignore it because I’ve got my girl in my arms, and she’s smiling at me like she means it.
She always meant it.
Chapter 6
Everything is muddled aroundme and I can’t make sense of my world, my life, my mind. I don’t know what’s real. Can’t tell the difference between soul-wrenching nightmares and long-forgotten dreams.
My mother. My family. My only family.
Skylar Moreau.
They’re gone.
Princess of the Bay.
He died in my arms.
Daniel and Evelyn were there. They killed my men. They took them from me, and then they tookme.
Blood. So much blood. So many bodies scattered on the ground.
Dead.
The parking lot was chaotic. There were people running everywhere.
Dead.
My mother.
Dead.
I remember.
Dead.
