my toes, grateful when they appear to still be working. Then, I shake out my hands and my legs. Finally, I’m able to peel open my crusted eyelids. Fuck, it feels as if they’ve been welded shut.
The first thing I see is dim, flickering candlelight illuminating gray walls with a greenish hue and a pitch-black ceiling that seems to go on and on forever, like an abyss.
The tunnels.
I’m back in the tunnels.
Where are my guys?
Panic unfurling in my gut, I jerk myself upright, only to immediately collapse onto my back.
What the fuck?
It suddenly feels as if I gained hundreds of pounds in a span of minutes. My body is leaden and unbearably heavy, and I can’t stop the panic from continually coursing through my veins.
Something soft touches the edge of my lips, and I automatically swat it away.
A feather.
A pure white feather.
“Auston,” I murmur drowsily, attempting to turn my head towards my Angel lover. “Auston?”
Why isn’t he answering me?
A scream gets lodged in my throat when I see his familiar shock of white hair next to me on the stone floor.
“Auston!” I cry, attempting to maneuver myself into an upright position. No matter what I do, no matter how much strength I apply, I fall right back down.
I tearfully stare at his beautiful face—his sunken cheekbones, his eyelashes fluttering against his face, his disheveled white hair. I can only breathe easier when I see the steady rise and fall of his chest.
Trembling, I swivel my head to the other side, horror consuming me at the sight of my other three lovers lying unconscious on the ground. Braxton’s face is serene in sleep, his usual grumpiness nowhere to be seen. His spindly, bat-like wings unfurl around him, but I can’t help but note that something’s different about him. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Karston lies beside his Demon brother, his head on Braxton’s chest. In any other circumstance, I would find their positioning too adorable for words. But instead, I can only muster alarm and dread as I try to figure out what the fuck is going on.
Near their feet, twitching slightly and muttering inarticulate words beneath his breath, is my sweet, sweet Preston.
“Don’t panic,” a familiar voice says, and I feel something wispy brush across my cheek. Caius’s shadowy form looms above me as I blink the tears away from my eyes.
“Caius, what’s happening?” I whimper, feeling uncharacteristically scared and frightened, like a forlorn child. All I want is for him to tell me everything will be okay. For him to comfort me and love me and promise me that my guys will wake up.
“You were stabbed.” His voice breaks on the final word, and I nearly drown in the intensity of his emotions. “By that fucking asshole Administer…or Abram, as you once knew him.”
Abram…
Another Fate.
“I should be dead.” With a sudden surge of desperation, I run my hands up and down my body, feeling where the wound should be. “How am I not dead?”
“I thought I lost you,” Caius whispers in a choked, nearly unrecognizable voice. “Fuck, Hadley, I thought I lost you. I thought I had watched you die again.”
“Caius…”
“I can’t lose you, Hadley,” he pleads, and I imagine that if he was really here, that if he was in his physical form, he would be crying. There’s so much raw emotion in his voice that my heart physically breaks for him. “I can’t.”
“You’re not going to lose me, Caius,” I promise, lifting my hands from my chest to caress where his face should be. My hand merely slides through the fog, though he shudders delicately, almost as if he felt my touch. “But what’s happening to me? Why can’t I get up? Why do I feel so weird? Caius, what’s going on?” I know that I’m close to a panic attack—my voice edging on hysteria—but I don’t know how to stop it. I’m this close to toppling over the edge of a steep cliff with nothing but jagged rocks at the bottom. I know they’ll pierce my skin and mangle my body, but I can’t find it within me to care.
“Hadley…”
“Caius, please. Tell me. Oh, God. What’s wrong with Karston, Auston, Preston, and Brax? Why aren’t they waking up? Why aren’t they…” My voice gradually trails off as I peer down at my hands. Or where my hands should be. Instead, I see nothing—no hands, no body, no legs.
“What the fuck?” I sob, trembling like a leaf blowing in the wind. My grip on my