Page 140 of Mate of a Monster

There’s nothing I can do now to bring him back to me, and I hate it. “We have to go,” I rasp, shoulders dropping.

“Go where?” Sinner frowns my way.

“She’s trapped herself away from us. We need to use it to our advantage and do what we came to do.”

“You mean leave him? With her?” Sinner asks, fatigue and worry pulling over his face as he stares at his baby brother.

“It’s all we can do right—”

“Haide, follow my voice.”

My head snaps, pulling me away from the display through the dark water.

“Creed?”

His voice cuts through the chaos like teeth snapping through a tendon, sharp enough that my whole body jerks with it.

“How can I hear you?” I panic, throat clenching tight. “How are you in my head, Creed?!”

I clench my eyes closed, focusing on whatever this is between us. I feel him.

“Creed?”

“You know how, little brat.”

No. One second I’m standing there and the next I’m in the air.

“Haide!” Sinner shouts. “Come down. Where are you going?”

“Do not go off by yourself, Luda, I swear to the fucking gods!” Zev screams, but I hardly hear the end of his sentence.

I don’t give my mind or magic direction, but something carries me where I need to go, like some outside force is pushing me with an urgency that has my muscles tensing. I’m lifted high only to drop me down on the other side of the stone wall we found ourselves forced up against.

My boots crunch against the ground. It shifts under my feet, black stone rising in half-formed steps and the thorned vines drawing back from my path like they’ve been waiting for my arrival. The cavern calls me with the same ancient certainty I felt when the soul stones first sang to my blood. I crash through the ravine with my breath ripping out of me in wet, broken pulls, but that’s not what freezes me to the spot.

It’s the scent of royal blood, rich and…fresh, but also wrong. It’s tinged with something darker and familiar.

“No,” I whisper once, then louder when the cavern mouth finally opens before me in a bloom of black vines and red petals, the soul stones throbbing like a living heartbeat in their pits. “No. No, no, no.”

I dash forward, faster than the vines can move out of the way, though they try, hissing in horror when they catch my arms, legs, and face as I fly past, but I don’t even feel it.

This space is beautiful in the cruelest way possible: black thorns and luminous blooms and thick veins all around the cavern like some dark god reached down and arranged it with loving hands. The flowers pulse faintly, each petal veined in gold-black light, their centers glowing soft and terrible. When I break through the last cluster, my lungs seize as I come to a stop. My heart lurches in my chest so hard my torso jerks, palm flying up to press at the spot, but it offers no relief.

Not four feet in front of me, at the center of the bloom, as if the island itself laid him there to be admired, is Creed.

The thorny vines curl around his body, wrapping him tightly but not piercing or cruel. Just holding, like it understands now that it’s too late. He isn’t a vicious threat they took out, but a fallen King who ventured where the gods deemed he wasn’t allowed.

I fall to my knees so hard the rock bruises through bone.

“Creed,” I croak, palms hovering above his pale body, my limbs shaking as I look him over.

There is no blood, no torn flesh, or even a hint of violence. That somehow makes it worse.

The Isles Kiss has wrapped him up in its black beauty and sucked the soul right out of him.

My hands shake when I reach for his face, because if he’s cold then this is real—and I am not ready for real. I touch his cheek anyway.

Cold.