Page 3 of Hellebore

I pull out slowly, ten more hours. Ten more hours of night sky, diesel fumes, and her face flickering every time I blink. My sweet girl.

The highway opens up ahead and I press the gas.

“Soon my love. Soon we will be together like destiny intended.”

Chapter Two

DRYSTAN

The rain hammers steadily against the roof of the car, a relentless rhythm that settles into my bones like an uneasy peace. The town greets me with bruised skies hanging low overhead and thunder rolling deep and endless through the streets, mirroring the storm that builds inside my chest as I draw closer to her.

I miss the way sunlight used to catch in her hair, turning it into molten gold and flushing her cheeks with life beneath open summer skies. The ache of that memory presses sharp under my ribs, but the sun has abandoned this day entirely. It does not matter. She is here in this city, and so am I, pulled back into her orbit by the same unbreakable chain that has bound me for so long.

The dashboard clock glows a faint 5:47 p.m. She finishes her shift soon. I do not need to check the schedule I have memorized down to the minute; my body knows her rhythms better than my own heartbeat, every pulse tuned to the moment she will appear. I turn the wheel, and the car glides smoothly toward Lucky Clove Cakes, tires hissing over the flooded asphalt as water sprays up along the sides. Streetlights stutter on early, their weak glow bleeding into the downpour like fading embers. The wipers slash back and forth across the windshield in furious arcs, never quite clearing the sheets of rain. Everything outside smears together—buildings, trees, the red smear of brake lights ahead—distorted through the glass.

The bakery sits tucked away on a narrow side street, forgotten by the brighter veins of the city. Its washed-out white walls weep long streaks of gray from years of neglect, and the steel doors gleam dully beneath a single overhead bulb that flickers in the wind. A wide window faces the street, veiled by those brown-and-yellow checkered curtains that have seen better days.

I ease the car to the curb across the street and kill the engine. Silence crashes in around me, heavier than the rain still drumming against the windshield and roof. The tinted glass turns the world outside into my private stage. Life continues out there in the downpour, oblivious. In here, I remain nothing but a shadow, watching, breath fogging the edges of the glass in shallow, ragged bursts through the leather-scented air.

The doors finally push open and I straighten in my seat as two women step out into the rain. The older one turns to lock the heavy steel door with a metallic click that carries faintly across the street. Beside her stands the second figure, slight and swallowed up in black, her dark hair catching the faint lamplight in damp strands.

My pulse lurches violently.

They talk for a moment, heads bent close against the weather, but I do not see her. My honey-haired girl should be here—she worked today. She always does. Did something happen? The question claws up my throat as the older woman pulls the other into a quick, tight hug, then disappears down the sidewalk, her black umbrella snapping open overhead like a shroud.

And then the remaining woman turns toward the street.

My heart stops.

Then it slams forward so hard I taste copper on my tongue.

Briar?

No.

No.

No.

Fuck, no.

My palms slam against the steering wheel—once, twice, three times—the leather groaning under the force as pain shoots up my arms. What the fuck happened to her? That hair—my hair—the golden ponytail that used to swing across campus like a beacon, the one I kept perfect and untouched in my mind for years, now butchered into this stark darkness. Her black clothes hang on her frame, too loose over the hollowed lines of her body. The soft light that once lived beneath her skin, the glow that drew strangers’ eyes wherever she went, has been carved away entirely, leaving only cold and shadow in its place.

My beautiful girl.

My fingers shake against the steering wheel, knuckles drained bone-white, veins standing out stark as the urge surges through me like a living thing. I can already picture myself ripping the car door off its hinges, crossing the rain-slick street in three savage strides, fisting that unfamiliar black hair and yanking her head back until her throat arches exposed and vulnerable. I would force those wide blue eyes to lock onto mine at last, really see me, while I press my mouth to the frantic pulse hammering beneath her jaw and drink in every drop—the shock, the confusion, the precise moment fear floods in and she finally understands she has never been alone. Then I would scoop her up, carry her limp and trembling body back to the car, lock the doors with a final click that seals the world outside forever, and drive until the roads give out, until cities rot behind us in the rearview, until nothing remains but the sound of her voice breaking on my name again and again while the rain continues its endless hammering.

How dare she change. How dare she ruin the only thing I kept perfect and untouched inside that cage all those years. The light that once lived in those blue eyes, the soft pink flush that rose so easily to her cheeks, the innocence that had always been mine to guard. This dark ghost standing in her place feels like a personal betrayal, the kind that sinks its teeth deep and twists. It pisses me off so thoroughly that my vision tunnels black at the edges, the storm inside me roaring louder than the one battering the car.

She pulls her hood up against the cold, hunching her shoulders as she starts down the sidewalk. Every step she takes away from me rips something fresh and raw inside my ribs. The rain blurs her outline until she becomes little more than a shadow turning the corner, swallowed by the gray streets and the downpour.

How does someone made of sunlight turn into this?

I was always the darkness. Always the damaged one. That is why I kept my distance, watching from the edges where I belonged. I needed her light. Needed it to drag me out of the pit I was born into, to remind me there was still something worth starving for in this world.

So what the fuck am I supposed to do now?

The mansion looms ahead through the thinning trees, a dark silhouette cutting against the bruised sky. Hellebore Mansion.