“No, you’re not.”
“What am I then?”
“My Drayven,” she blurts, as if it’s obvious what that means. “Anyways, she was probably searching for something greater. A higher purpose, a destiny beyond the bounds of earth and flesh.” Her voice takes on a dreamy quality, distant yet full of longing. “What if that’s what I’m meant for, Dray? To ascend, to become a star myself? To light the way for others, even if it means leaving this world behind?”
An icy fist clenches around my heart. “Don’t say such things. You belong here, with m?—”
Before I finish, a blinding light sears my vision. I cry out, shielding my eyes, reaching desperately for her. My fingers graze her wrist, just like in our Shadow Stalker game. I catch her hand, but she slips from me. “Flori! No!”
I blink away spots dancing across my sight. The breath leaves my body in a rush of horror. Flori is rising, lifted by an unseen force, her form growing brighter and more translucent with each passing second. The starlight is consuming her,burning away her mortal shell to reveal the shining essence within.
“FLORI!” I bellow, launching myself upright, arms outstretched. But my fingers close on empty air. She’s drifting away, becoming indistinguishable from the stars.
“No, no, please, no,” I rasp, my voice breaking on a sob. “Don’t leave me. Don’t go where I can’t follow. Flori, please…”
But she’s gone, leaving me alone, grasping hopelessly at the light of a star I’ll never touch.
“FLORI!”
Searing pain rips through my stomach, jolting me awake. I gasp and open my eyes as the remnants of my dream shatters for reality. The starlit clearing is gone, replaced by the damp confines of a temple covered with foliage, flickering with torchlight.
Disoriented, I struggle to sit up, only to collapse with a groan. Agony lances through my midsection. My hand comes away slick with blood, but the wound is closed when I look down to check the damage. Maybe weeks old. Puckered and scarred.
I clutch my head and try to remember. Fragments come back to me. I found Flori in the courtyard, saved her from that scum but then—my cock jerks, arousing at the memory of losing control and feasting between her thighs.
She refused to back down. Pushed my face into her sweet cunt, demanding more. Then after, she slipped her hand inside my pants and—I groan and rub my hardening erection. She brought me to climax. Fuck.
Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined a reality with her hands on me like that. But… what happened next?
A flicker of blue catches my eye. My heart stops. My lungs seize. She’s beside me, face down.
Still.
“Flori, what are you doing?” I ask, voice hoarse.
No answer.
I roll her onto her back. The white scraps they dressed her in are stained and torn. Shock barrels through me at the blood smeared over her stomach. My blood? I swipe her skin and find a swollen, puckered gash. It looks two days old, fragile, and ready to split open.
She gave her blood to me—to heal me. But at a cost to herself.
Is she breathing?
I lower my face to hers. A warm, shallow plume brushes my lips. Relief drops my shoulders and I lower my face into my palm. It’s then that I realize my mask is gone. My skin is bare, exposed. Vulnerable.
She knows.
Clear and undeniable memories flash through my mind.
Flori and I, innocent children, chasing each other through snowy streets. Her defiant smirk as she evades my capture. The night we spent hiding from adults. The night we met—her frail voice hopeless and down a well. The weight of her small hand in mine after I beckoned for my stolen apple, the affection in her eyes. The rose growing from her womb’s first blood.
I always knew she was special. There’s something unseen in the air around her that magnetizes me, that makes anyone she crosses paths feel the same.
She’s too good. Too pure. Too clever and determined.
And I’m hopelessly in love with her. But I destroyed any future for us when I put on that cursed mask and became the Huntsman.
Shame and self-loathing swarm over me. I don’t deserve her sacrifice. I don’t deserve her.
