“If you get any leads, you text meimmediately. Don’t get any ideas about doing anything alone again.” Romy’s gaze hardened, refusing to look anywhere but at me. “We’re a team, remember. Me and you.”
“A coven,” I corrected.
Romy turned away, visibly disgusted by the word I chose to use.
Me and Romy, and Arwyn. We had been a team. Until he’d betrayed us, concealed Romy in an illusion to keep her away from me. Not only that, but he’d forced her out of the competition at the last leg. Arwyn said he’d done it to keep her safe, but I felt as though it was to ensure he was always going to win.
“We don’t need him,” I repeated, laying a hand on my heart. “Me and you, always.”
Pain, violently sharp and hot, radiated through every inch of my body. It rippled outwards from my gut where the darkness lay in wait, until my entire being was alive with it.
Romy gasped, closing in on me before I doubled over and fell off the chair. Without her steady grasp, I would’ve been cramped on the floor in complete agony. Instead, her embrace was at least enough to keep me upright.
“What is it?” Romy spluttered, panic flared in her expression. “What’s wrong?”
My fist smacked into my gut as if that would remove the feeling from me. The ache was so overwhelming it took me a few tries to get my reply out. “It’s—Bahmet—he’s coming.”
Darkness crept in at the corners of my vision, until I blinked and realised the shadows had nothing to do with my eyes or consciousness. In fact, Romy noticed it too. She looked behind her, eyes glowing with power as our home became a void of darkness. It rose like a wave, cresting like a mountain atop us before crashing down. No matter the flame she conjured to keep it away, the dark swallowed all light.
Her touch was dragged away from me, her scream of my name fading into an abyss of nothingness.
The pain stopped as abruptly as it began. I was stood in a place in between light and dark, life and death. My breathing echoed in my ears as other sounds rose around me. The slithering of wet bodies against hard surfaces, the scratching of nails and the wailing of unholy creatures. And out from the shadows itself came a body, one I had memorised with my touch and my taste.
A body I craved and hated with equal measure.
“Hector,” the form exhaled as if my name was the weightiest word in the world.
Eyes as blue as the skies shone like beacons of light, guiding me forwards. I didn’t stop moving towards him, until I was face to face with the person I spent every waking hour searching for.
All that time wasted, because he’d found me first.
“Arwyn,” I growled, violence a keening song in my soul. “It’s really you?”
He didn’t need to confirm it. Even before the darkness parted away from his features, revealing the horrifying and debilitating truth of his presence, I knew it was him. We were, after all, connected in ways beyond understanding now.
“I needed to speak with you,” Arwyn started, but I was already charging through the void of dark, my fingers claws and teeth bared. There was barely a moment for him to register before our corporeal bodies clashed into one, and the battle began.
4
ARWYN
Itold myself, over and over, that I deserved any and all punishment Hector deemed worthy for me. So, as his fist drove into my face, and his nails clawed at my neck, ripping skin into ribbons, I allowed it.
I didn’t resist, even though his attack stung, and the warm rush of blood proved he’d really done a number on me. But I refused to fight back—I simply existed in my punishment and enjoyed the very real feeling of his touch once again.
A feeling I’d craved like a starved man.
In my seconds of release, I gave up hold on the dark void. It spat me out, but Hector was clinging to me like a feral cat, so he came with me.
Our bodies cracked against the floor. I took the brunt of the force, the wind driven from my lungs upon impact, making speaking impossible. A brief look around me and I knew I’d returned to my childhood bedroom.
Hector rolled off me. I knew if I had the energy, I would’ve clung to his body just to keep him on me.
“Where… are we?” he spat.
Hector’s voice,Goddess, it was enough to be my ruin. I didn’t deserve to hear it again, and yet I’d prayed to hear him for oversixty consecutive days. I longed for him to speak my name—Hell, I would’ve taken a string of curses and hateful announcements compared to the silence of being separated from him.
“My home,” I replied, tongue lathered with blood. My split lip, curtesy of his fist, was already healing. Bahmet was a monster, but the demon also didn’t wish for his vessel to be in disarray.
