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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Twenty-Two
Purgatory
Vague shapes in the darkness. Hands gently pressing. Alexia couldn't connect the moments. One instant a person perched on her right, the next someone stood on her left. The same person? A musty smell touched her nose and she struggled not to choke on the sweet vapor. Frightening sleep overcame all else.
***
Alexia's right temple burned. A pang flared in her shoulder. Her ribs throbbed. Her knee. So many other dull aches. She bit down and wished for the oblivion she'd just left behind.
Her eyes fluttered open. Darkness.
Where was she? Why hadn't Father come? Where did Sarah go?
Padding cushioned her back, yielding and flat. She slid a hand across the coarse material, halting when her chest seized with pain.
She fought to focus—not to panic. Steadying her breathing, she took shallow gasps, muscles loosening slowly. She recalled a legend, an old house, running with Sarah, a boy on a horse, bringers of death, falling.
She tried to sit. Light flashed behind her eyes, blinding her to all but the pain. She lay back down, struggling to calm, settling several moments later into tortured stillness.
Rustling from across the room drew her attention.
"Are you awake?"
She tensed. "Bellezza." The effort to speak shot a spate of torment down her side.
Fractures of thought flitted through her brain: the girl's primal malignance, mention of a "banshee child," a scream that could literally stop her heart.
No. These things were not possible!
But neither were red-eyed wraiths, dreaming the future, or a man so magnificent her very heart begged to gaze upon him.
"Is that you, Alexia?" Bellezza hawed. "I thought I knew that smell."
Smell?
"Why have they brought you here?" the child asked darkly.
Alexia blinked into the pitch, using as little air as possible, fighting the tears. "Brought me where? Where are we?"
"Purgatory."
"Purgatory?"
The girl laughed humorlessly. "Not quite Hell, but it's close."
"Who brought me here? What happened to me?"
"Don't ask me, inmate." Bellezza's head must have turned. "Ask him."
Dim light spilled over them—an opening door somewhere behind her.
