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I pulled myself together with shaking hands, wincing with every movement. Nothing would ever fit right again. He’d made sure of that.

I stumbled through the trees, scratching my arms and legs on thorns and branches. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I couldn’t stay here, not with the memory clinging to my skin like a fever.

I tugged my clothes into place, wiped my face, tried not to look like something that’d just been hunted and fucked in the dark. Tried to be normal. Tried to be good.

Now time to find Brandon and hope he wouldn’t give me hell for disappearing.

Sorry, Brandon, I was only being hunted by my monster in a deer skull, then he fucked me in the woods once he caught me. No big deal.

Suddenly, a wave of nausea hit me. I leaned against a tree and curled over. I felt it coming up fast to the point of causing dizziness. I placed my hands on my knees and vomited all over the dirt.

Shit.

Chapter 39

Falling

Starla

Brandon wouldn’t be home until late tonight. The suffocation of his presence lessened, and I could finally fucking breathe. The kitchen clock ticked too loud, each second a hammer against my skull. I needed air. I needed space. I needed⁠—

Him.

The thought came unbidden, treacherous, wrong. I pressed my palms against my eyes until stars burst behind the lids. No. I couldn't think about Malakar. I shouldn't. But he was also Milo.With his gentle hands and his sad eyes and the way he'd held me when the world got too loud. The boy who'd shared his jacket in the rain, who'd traced constellations on my palm, who'd promised me the stars when we were too young to know that promises were just pretty lies wrapped in hope.

But Milo was gone. Wasn't he? Swallowed by the darkness until only Malakar remained, this fractured thing wearing his face like a mask he couldn't remove.

I moved to the living room, like I was walking on ice that might crack at any moment. The house felt different with Brandon gone. Lighter. Or maybe that was just the absence of his weight pressing down on everything, sucking the oxygen from the rooms.

The window overlooked the backyard, nothing but blackness and the occasional sway of tree branches in the wind. I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the sweater I'd thrown on. The darkness outside seemed alive, watching, waiting. I knew that feeling too well. It lived in my father's house. It had followed me to Brandon's. It was the only constant in my life, this hungry dark.

A shadow moved outside the window.

I froze. My heart became a trapped bird, battering against my ribs. It's just a branch. Just the wind. Just your mind playing tricks, Starla, because that's what it does, that's what it's always done.

But the shadow moved again, and then a face pressed against the glass.

My vision tunneled. I should run. I should scream. I should grab the phone and call the police and let them deal with the monster at my window. But my feet wouldn't move, and my voice wouldn't work, and some terrible, traitorous part of me—the part that had loved Milo, the part that recognized the loneliness in Malakar's eyes—whispered open the door.

He didn't knock. He didn't speak. He just watched me through the glass, his breath fogging the pane, his eyes two burning coals in the dark. God, those eyes. They were the same. They'd always been the same.

He's going to hurt you. He's going to take you again.

Or he could love you. Is that so terrible? Is that worse than what waits for you here?

I didn't know anymore. I didn't know anything except that my hand was reaching for the lock, my fingers were turning the deadbolt, and the door was swinging open to let the night in.

The cold hit me first. He stood on the threshold, just looking at me like I was a ghost he'd finally managed to summon.

“Starla,” he said.

He tilted his head, that familiar gesture, the one that used to make me laugh when we were kids and he didn't understand some joke I was telling. But there was nothing childlike in his expression now. Only hunger. Only need. Only the kind of devotion that bordered on worship and bled into obsession until you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

He stepped inside, and I let him. The door clicked shut behind him, and we stood in the dim light of the hallway, two broken things breathing the same poisoned air.

“You shouldn't be here.” My voice shook. I hated it. I hated that I couldn't sound strong, couldn't be the woman who'd survived her father and survived Brandon and survived him. “Brandon⁠—“

“Isn't here.” Malakar's lips curved. “I know. I watched him leave. I watch everything, Starla. I watch you sleep. I watch you cry. I watch you stand in windows and look for something you'll never find out there.”