I scream Jamie’s name and the darkness swallows that, too.
Despair billows through me—that I’ll be swimming through the silent horror eternally—but as quickly as it arrived, the unnatural shadows abate. A fresh breath shoots through my chest, but it’s savagely suffocated when a sickening thud sounds beside me. I feel it beneath my ribs: the sound of finality and mutilation.
I twist, my scream of horror buried deep in my throat, as I take in the unnatural stillness of Jamie’s body, the horribly bloated flesh of his once handsome face. The rotted skin sloughing from his bones sends bile surging up my throat, but it’s his eyes—clouded, unseeing, nearly concave like he’s been dead for weeks—that finally unearths my scream.
Chapter three
The shadows curl over me, and the world disappears once more. There is no noise, no light—nothing but the horrific image of Jamie burned into my mind, his youthful face bloating and rotted. My hands are bound behind my back and a gag is shoved into my mouth, and I don’t know whether it’s physical, or made of the darkness itself. All I know is it keeps my screams trapped indefinitely in my throat.
There is no more room for fear as hot anger radiates through me, burning away every other emotion. I thrash against my bindings, gnash my teeth against the intrusion in my mouth, even as I’m lifted and carried away from the beach.
I no longer feel the cold of my skin, only the fury burning at each one of my nerve endings. Adrenaline pumps through my veins, the weary ache of my muscles giving way to desperate energy. I buck wildly, but whatever has a hold on me is solid. Inescapable.
Time in the blinding darkness inches along, and no matter how I try to level my breathing, to save my strength for whateverawaits when it relents, a sense of hopelessness creeps along the edges of my thoughts. What if itneverrelents? What if this truly is the plague, and I’m trapped in this horrifying oblivion forever?
I don’t know if I’ve been confined for hours or minutes when the pressure on my wrists loosens like the bindings have been sliced through, and the gag is pulled from my mouth. I scramble upward as the inky black tendrils of night recede like threads wound in a spool. I blink as my surroundings slowly filter into view, revealed inch by inch as the shadows withdraw.
There’s no sign of the beach or the lushly colored plants of the forest beyond the teal bloom still tucked behind my ear. Instead, I’m now standing in the middle of a cavernous room. It takes me a protracted moment to discern the sinister shadows have all gathered atop a dais at the far end of the chamber, as the surrounding decor is nearly as dark.
The engraved pillars lining the center of the room. The highly polished floor. The ceiling stories above me. All immaculately detailed, and entirely devoid of color.
The only light comes from lanterns hung on paneled walls, and the starlight shining through the floor to ceiling windows lining the entirety of the wall behind the dais.
Something rustles beside me, and I whip around to find a man, dressed in an extremely ostentatious manner, watching me with a crooked smile.
“What have you done to Jamie?!” I snarl. I’ve no weapon and am dressed in little more than a rag at this point, but I’ve trained for years to be able to not only defend myself, but to be the predator. The man is huge and armed with a sword sheathed at his hip, so I use what I have: the element of surprise.
I lunge at his legs. His eyes widen in bewilderment, and he topples over with a yelp as my body collides with his kneecaps.
“He was innocent!” I shriek, lashing out with a hard right hook to the man’s jaw as we both go sprawling to the floor.
“Miss, you’ve got the—"
More instinct than strategy, I hit him again, this time with a powerful blow to his windpipe that effectively cuts off his pleas. His brown eyes water and bulge as he chokes, and though he outweighs me by at least a hundred and fifty pounds, he makes no move to counter.
He makes no move to defend himself at all, even as I straddle his muscled waist and land two more hits to his nose. He swears as blood spurts from his nostrils, speckling his ridiculously ruffled shirt and my pathetic nightgown.
With a feral snarl, I get my hands around his throat. I should have attacked from the back, should have planned for how much larger his neck is than my hands, but still, the man makes no move to stop me. Rather than bucking me off, his eyes flick to where the shadows have gathered atop the dais with something close to annoyance.
“If you would be so kind as to cease your assault of my staff, it would be most appreciated,” a lazy voice drawls from behind the tendrils of darkness. Or perhaps, the voiceisthe darkness.
I freeze, glaring up at the where the deviant power writhes in ribbons of ebony, as the voice continues, “Sam, being polite does not extend to allowing yourself to be strangled by a feral woman in the middle of my throne room. I don’t imagine Marina would appreciate ending her day by scrubbing your blood off the marble.”
I glance uncertainly at the man beneath me, Sam, who gives me an oddly apologetic smile for someone I attempted to strangle only a moment before. Then, with a soft, “Excuse me, miss,” he wraps large hands around my waist and lifts me off of him in one smooth movement, setting me gently on the cold floor. Rising to his feet with a subtle wince, he dusts off his pants, before shooting me a bafflingly friendly wink.
At his full height, Sam towers at least a foot above my 5’4 frame and is at least twice my width. He could have easily ended my attack with one powerful blow which begs the question: Why hadn’t he?
“Apologies, Sir,” Sam says to the voice behind the shadows. To me, he extends a hand and helps me to my feet. Then, he steps a measurable distance away and clasps his hands behind his back, like the entire encounter has been unbearably awkward.
“It is the woman who should apologize,” the voice replies silkily. My anger, which had been momentarily replaced by confusion, rushes back to the surface of my skin.
I stalk toward the dark end of the room furiously, the cold of the black stone floor seeping into my bare feet. “Like hell I’ll apologize! You’ve murdered my friend, and I swear to god, I’ll slit your throat for it.”
It isn’t a threat; it’s a promise. I’ve done far worse to those who’ve hurt me and possess no reservations about doing it again. Morals are a luxury, meant only for those who’ve never had to claw; to bleed; to survive.
The voice laughs, a deep sound that slides between my ribs. “Your friend, was he?” Another laugh, but there’s no humor in it. It’s darkly edged—dangerous. “Some company you keep.”
I prowl forward, wishing I’d managed to grab Sam’s sword while I had him at my mercy. Instead, I stop just short of the raised dais to face down whatever lurks behind the shadows with nothing more than a flimsy, wet nightgown and an exotic flower.
