I covered my mouth to stop the laugh frombelting from my chest. Shethinksdark magic is involved, but she’s talking to a Fates-forsakenkitten skullfull of dark magic?
Oh, my fucking Fates, she’s fucking adorable.
I humbly took back all of the shit I thought about her being an evil genius of a noble. Bram and Skel would eat their words if they knew, but I couldn’t talk to anyone about dark magic. Not without…
I flinched at the memory of the pain around my neck.
“Penny was scum, Pandora,” his disembodied voice hissed as more dark magic flooded from the skull and pooled in her hands. “There’s no doubt in my mind that she was.”
The dark magic didn’t try to infect her at all, and my head tilted as I watched on in complete fucking awe.
A surge of something primal and more powerful than any dark magic or shadow magic coursed through me. Magic that had been lurking at the edges of my mind roared to life. I teetered on the edge of madness, and my heart raced with a dangerous dose of exhilaration.
She really was trouble, but not in the way I had first expected.
My magic reserves gobbled up all of her worry, sadness, and pain. But I hungered formore. I wanted all of her negative feelings and pain—not just scraps.
I wanted it all.
“How do you know, though?” A frown settled on her face as she pulled the skull closer. “You seem sure. I know firsthand how evil Mother was, but dark magic seems a bit far-fetched. Right?”
“With what she did to you every day and on her last day, she was a type of evil that exceeded demonkind. Dark magic makes more sense than anything.”
“You’re right,” she rasped, wincing. “Do you think that means she was infected or that she wielded it?”
“Both,” he said.
She nodded solemnly. “I wonder how she ended up that way.”
I was sure that I had just found a soul as lost and as broken as mine. I wondered how good she would taste if I brought all of the pain of her past out once and for all.
With a final, lingering glance at Pandora and the kitten skull, I turned away, my mind ablaze with possibilities and an odd feeling within my chest. The shadows clung to me like a second skin, whispering promises of her pain.
20
BRAM
The night sky was filled with bright, blurry stars.
I sprawled across the rough sand underneath Occult Arch with a bottle of fae whiskey clutched in my hand. It promised a reprieve from my fucked up mind. Thank the Fates that Dex had connections to the fae market because supernatural liquor did little to quell the roaring shit bouncing around in my head.
My gaze was fuzzy with fatigue and alcohol as I ripped my attention from the sky and to the amber liquid that glowed beautifully in the moonlight. Fancy alcohol was a bitter reminder of the life I could have led if my parents weren’t pieces of shit—a life of nobility, of power. But that life was never mine to claim, not with the blood of a castaway coursing through my veins.
Thanks, Dad.
Growing up in the toxic household of the Hemlocks, where chaos and pain were the only two things I could count on, I grew accustomed to the bitter taste of disappointment and failure.
With every gulp of the liquid magic, my bleary eyes grew heavier. The tattoos that covered my skin—a pack of wolves on my chest, hawks on my right arm, a lone wolf on the other, and a skull on my neck—shifted under the night sky, etching tales of my chaotic bloodline.
The tablet tossed recklessly beside me buzzed for the fifth time in a row. The vibration against the grains was a nagging reminder of my parents’ demands, demands they’d been spouting since Slater had stormed into my shitshow of a life and fucked shit up again for me.
I reached up with numb fingers to adjust my septum piercing and sniffed. As much as I didn’t want to, I sucked it up and dropped my hand against the screen, pressing the stupid green button to stop it.
My father’s voice was laden with the same old contempt and bitterness he’d had for me since the moment I was born. My existence solidified his exile, after all. "You’re drunk, again.”
“Always,” I gloated, feeling the comforting burn down my throat.
“Have you even tried to talk to Slater?”
