Alexia's nightmares become reality: a dead baron, red-eyed wraiths, and forbidden love with a man hunted by these creatures. After an attack close to home, Alexia realizes she cannot keep one foot in her old life and one in this new world. To protec...
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Seventeen
Pain
Alexia tossed and roused all night, fighting images of a man with blue eyes. A man riding a gray stallion. A man who probably wrote her aunt love letters with a quill dipped in Bellezza's blood.
Eventually she drifted off.
Walking easily through the trees. Sunset. Darkness. Water—her face in the ripples. Running. White light! Breathlessness. A crystal droplet hitting the ground, exploding to reveal a flower-like gem. Pressure on her back. Him reaching for her...
She roused, morning light streaming through the curtains.
Her mind was toying with her...or he would come. An abundance of her dreams had come true, so why not this one? And if he was there, would he explain how the murder he'd committed had disappeared from everyone's memory? Explain what Bellezza had meant by "another of our kind"?
Her stomach knotted like a fisherman's net.
He might kill her. It may be that the only reason he'd not yet performed the deed was because Father stood guard.
But Sarah wasn't giving her answers.
Alexia bided her time until early afternoon when Sarah was detained by her unpleasant relatives, and Father was occupied shooting targets. Alexia crossed the yard as though headed for the gardens, and hurried toward the trees. She stopped at the leafy cover.
She took a deep breath. Go or stay? Find him, or remain and wonder?
She remembered the way her soul opened to him, the light that flooded in at his presence. Longing overwhelmed the sane voice at the back of her head. Cautiously, she darted forward over moss-blanketed stones, patches of light illuminating the leafed fingers of grayed bark far above her head.
A rifle fired.
She flinched but kept walking. Father and she were on bad terms. Several men had approached her during the funeral—rich men, smart men, even a married man. Father encouraged her flirtation, but she did not find any of them agreeable, and she was too young to be entertaining their interest.
The trees thickened. Alexia progressed steadily on, never thinking to halt or terminate her hunt, fueled by the discomfort of yesterday's memories. The sky disappeared behind a leafy awning as the afternoon waned. Stray beams of light broke about her, deepening in hue. Her stomach rumbled. How long had she been moving? An hour? Two? Three?
Sunset.
She stopped. This felt familiar, too familiar.
She shook it off. Father had certainly gone mad with worry by now and planned to quarantine her to the house with a constant nanny-watch. She would not find her blue-eyed enigma.
Turning back, she stepped into a puddle. Her reflection rippled.
Last night came back in a rush, hazy images of half-perception, rushing glades, panting as she moved in fear.
Something thrashed in the clearing and pulled her head up. A deer perhaps?
"Hello?" she called shakily.
Nothing.
The last streak of sunlight disappeared. Gnarled branches reached toward her. Odd shadows played over the swaying leaves, shifting in a demonic chorus. She inhaled a hint of fleshy decay and grimaced. The breeze ceased. Hairs on the back of her neck stood up, a chill tickling down her spine like the lurid touch of a devil spawn.
Alexia shook the impression away and focused. Her imagination was getting the best of her, personifying her deepest fears.
Still...
"Is someone there?" she breathed, little more than a whisper.
Wheezing gurgles met her ears. She spun.
Nothing.
What kind of creature made noise like that? Had she imagined it as well?
She swallowed. The thump of her heart echoed into her ears. "Hello?"
A snigger rippled in a circle about her. She twisted to follow it, catching snatches of something—something moving, fast.
A growl.
She dashed headlong the way she'd come.
Movement erupted behind her.
Her skirts caught on the underbrush. They snagged and tore, twigs scratching her legs. She ran harder, one arm before her face to fend off the branches. They raked across her sleeve. She gasped as they cut into her flesh.
Alexia's feet thudded the ground in rhythm, echoed by another distant set—faster ones.
Chest heaving, she sucked in air, but could not draw enough. Invisible fingers squeezed at her airways. Her lungs pulsed like she was being dragged under a great watery swell. The whoosh of leaves turned her head as an upright silhouette crashed through her periphery. Blackness blinked at the corners of her vision. Her muscles burned.
She would faint before she could outrun her pursuer!
She gulped in air. Perspiration chilled her skin. The rasp of her own breathing filled her ears.
"Help!" she screeched. Father would find her. He'd track her. "Father! Anyone!" But she'd gone miles. Even if he'd begun looking, she'd wandered too far.
A bough slapped her across the face. White light flashed. She blinked it away, uncertain whether her legs were still under her.
She couldn't outrun this thing. No one would hear her, but she screamed anyway. "Help me!" It was an empty plea.
Weight pummeled into her back. She flew forward as the ground rushed up. Her head smacked a rock and the wind jarred painfully from her lungs. A cry tore from her throat as warm liquid slid down her cheek.
Sight blinked out and back. Pounding echoed through her ears, growing louder. Pressure crushed down through her spine, like a boulder digging into her back. Pain. Piercing, searing, tearing the flesh. A scream—hers?
Blackness.
She tried to lift her arms. They remained pressed into the spongy moss, but she wouldn't give in!
"Please." It sounded meager. She forced her eyes open as fire tore through her vertebrae, another shriek wrenching free. Tears wet her lashes.
Stop.
A headache tensed through her skull. The air around her stilled. It hung stagnant as she blinked and watched one crystalline drop fall tediously to the ground. It flattened against the dirt and expanded into a beautiful ring of translucent fingers.
She tried to suck in a breath, but the air refused to move. The creature tearing at her back had frozen. Her brain burned. "Please."
It was too much. She let go. The searing in her head dimmed and claws burrowed into her muscles.
Before she died, she wanted to see the sky—one last vision of the stars to light her spirit's way. She turned her head.
A face. Handsome, luminescent. And fierce blue eyes...
