His fingers twitch as he raises his hands and peels away my glamour, unveiling me. “I want to be your memory. Your present. Your future,” he says, the words echoing and overlapping a thousand times over in an instant, but I can hear every individual word.
My eyes narrow and hands curl into fists at my sides. “And ifIdon’t want that? What if all I want is to go home?”
Fingers curve around my shoulders, long, cold, and elegant. “There is no home.Alti pres,Saya Claymore.”
Words that should sound foreign to me break and thicken in my mind.Forgive me.
Without another word, I drop to my knees in worship of a creature who is not a god. I do not want this life, but I accept it.
And I will break it from the inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SEPULCHRE
They saydeath is like falling into a dream. Serene. Even rotting and sinking into the earth to help something grow might feel otherworldly.
But what about rebirth?
I inhale, and a constricting ache settles in my throat, tightening as I exhale. I take another breath, and it sets my chest ablaze. After the third breath, my muscles start to ease, and I cough up dirt.
I am in a box. And it’s not a particularly wide box, granting me only a few inches of wiggle room on all sides, and about a foot from my face to the top. In the confined space, panic twists within me as I remember the times I was sent to the confession room.
The room itself was already small and cramped, and I’d be confined within a small dark box inside it. Once, I sat in the box while the elder tried to compel me to confess that I had looked at a man in a way that I shouldn’t.
So, I confessed that I like to imagine looking at myBlessed’ssevered head in my hands.
I liked those thoughts.
Saya, stop. You need to get the fuck out of here!
With a shake of my head, I press my palms to the wood above me and push. Soil trickles through cracks as the box groans and splits like the fractured old bark of an oak tree.
“Shit.” I lower my hands and stay still until the creaking of the wood ceases, and I’m no closer to escape. I sigh and close my eyes, collecting my thoughts. I will rot down here if I do nothing. It doesn’t seem like this wood is meant to last. Was that intentional? Did the nightwalker leave me in here to break through?
It had to be the nightwalker. Who else would it be? Jax?
Anger burns at the thought of Jax. He left Cole to die. Love and hate walk a fine line—a reminder that the bridge we built was merely a parapet above a storm-tossed sea. What we had was a lie. Every time I expressed how much Cole meant to me, Jax didn’t really care. The promises he made were simply pretences to keep me happy.
To keep me under his control.
To keep me.
With an outraged yell, I slam my fist into the wood, splintering the panelling and burying my fist in the earth above. As I pull my arm out, soft, damp soil spills onto my stomach and starts to fill the box.
“Fuck!” I press my hands against the hole, and dirt still slips through the cracks and sprinkles across my chest. “I can’t do this!”
I screw my eyes shut, desperately trying to come upwith a solution to beingfucking buried alive, when I hear something. It’s a long-forgotten sound, but there it is.
Music.
Someone is waiting for me.
“Don’t make me wait long.”
I open my eyes and clench my jaw. My fingers curl around the edge of a broken panel, and I pull, snapping it apart. More dirt bursts free, enveloping my body until only my head is uncovered. My hands frantically sink into the mulch above, reminding me of the times I played in the garden with my feet sinking into the soil. It’s fresh, loose soil, soft and nurtured by gentle hands, yet now it threatens to suffocate me.
Dirt coats my face, and with a final breath, I use my hands to scoop and push the soil down, crawling upward. Panic overwhelms me amidst the unexpected cacophony of sound as insects and other scurrying creatures move through the earth.
