“Look at me,” I command, my voice soft.
Her eyes flutter open. They’re dark, deep, and full of a terror so profound it makes my stomach tighten with desire.
“Don’t think for a second that this is over,” I murmur, my mouth close to her ear. I can smell the clean, simple scent of her shampoo. “This was a good start. I know where you live. I know where you work, and now I know you’ll come when you’re called. I’ll see you soon.”
I pull back and watch her. I’ve given her no instructions, but I’ve left her with a terrifying promise.
She doesn’t need to be told twice. She turns and practically runs, her footsteps quick on the wet pavement, disappearing into the darkness of the street.
I watch until she’s completely gone.
I should feel victorious. I should feel powerful, and I do. But underneath it all, a new, unfamiliar feeling is stirring. A gnawing, obsessive need.
Tonight wasn’t enough. It was just an appetizer, and I am starving.
Nine
Aria
Thedreamalwaysstartswith the lights.
They’re strobing yellow and white on my face, a hypnotic rhythm from the streetlights passing overhead. We’re flying down a deserted city street in Jade’s beat-up convertible. The top is down, and the cool night air is a wild thing in my hair, whipping it across my face as I laugh. Jade is laughing too, a loud, fearless sound that’s more beautiful than the music blasting from the speakers. Her hand leaves the steering wheelto grab mine, her fingers squeezing tight. Her skin is warm against the chill of the night.
“Best night ever?” she yells over the wind and the music.
“Best night ever!” I yell back, squeezing her hand. The world is a blur of neon and shadow, a tunnel of light and darkness, and we are invincible. We are nineteen. We are immortal. The feeling is so pure, so real, I can taste it on my tongue—like electricity and cheap cherry lip gloss.
Then the world shrieks.
It’s not a human sound. It’s a chord of screaming metal and shattering glass. A supernova of white light explodes behind my eyelids, and the world lurches sideways with impossible, bone-breaking violence. The streetlights are gone. The music is gone. Jade’s hand is ripped from mine.
I’m floating in a thick, suffocating darkness. There is silence, a profound, ringing silence that is somehow louder than the scream that just tore the world apart.
The smell hits me first, gasoline, sharp and nauseating. And underneath it, something else, something hot and coppery.
My eyes flutter open. I’m still in the passenger seat, but the seat is tilted, pressing me against the door. The windshield is a spiderweb of fractured glass. The world outside is a chaotic mess of twisted metal, lit by the flickering of a dying headlight.
“Jade?” I whisper. The word is a dry, broken thing.
I turn my head.
And the dream becomes a nightmare.
She is there, only a foot away from me, but she is gone. Her head is tilted at an angle that necks are not meant to go. Her eyes, the same bright blue that had been laughing seconds ago, are open and staring up at the dark, starless sky. They see nothing. They are just glass. A thin line of blood, impossibly dark in the gloom, trickles from the corner of her perfect mouth.
Her favorite song is still playing, a distorted echo from her phone, which has landed on the crumpled dashboard. “We can be heroes, just for one day…”
My mind can’t make sense of it; The lights. The song. The blood. The silence. I reach for her hand, the one that was holding mine. It’s limp and so, so cold.
“Jade,” I say again, louder this time, my voice cracking. “Jade, wake up. This isn’t funny.”
She doesn’t move. The song keeps playing. The blood keeps trickling, and I am helpless. I can’t move, I can’t scream. I can only watch as the life, the energy, the laughter drains out of the world, leaving only this cold, silent, broken thing beside me.
Then a new voice whispers in the suffocating quiet, his voice, not hers.
This is what you wanted.
I gasp, and the scene shifts. I’m looking in the shattered rearview mirror, but it’s not my own terrified face I see. It’s his. Cassian’s green eyes stare back at me, impossibly bright in the darkness.
