scream as she wails for her fallen lover.
But I can’t focus on that. I can’t focus on any of that as pain, so much fucking pain, runs rampant inside of me. I throw my head back and scream as the walls begin to shake and the hanging lights explode, one by one. The floor moves underneath me as my power cascades through my veins, alive and breathing and desperate for release. Someone curses, and I feel more than see a hand touch my shoulder.
And then darkness is quick to consume me.
Chapter 54
“Can you fix her?” The voice is distorted, muffled almost, as if I’m hearing it while buried beneath layers of sand. My throat feels unbearably dry, almost like it’s filled with hundreds of cotton balls. I try to open my mouth, try to speak, but I’m unable to work my muscles.
What’s happening?
Where am I?
“I can,” a tired, forlorn voice replies. Nana. But why does she sound so…dead inside?
I try to grasp at the missing memories, but they continually trickle through my fingers like the sand I’m buried in. Time seems to stand still for a brief moment. Is that where I am? In life’s hourglass? Is that where all the sand came from?
“How?” a cold, forbidding voice demands.
“I can stitch up her doll,” Nana says calmly. “And then, I’m going to remove the spell tying her to it and destroy it…as well as the four other dolls my granddaughter created.”
There’s a pause, and I feel rather than see a hand brush at my hair. Another body leans over mine and plants a chaste kiss to my forehead.
“Will she be okay?” That anxious voice…Karsyn.
“This is going to hurt like a bitch,” Nana admits, utterly impassive. “Hold her down.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Cassian rumbles, and I feel his large hands grab both of my wrists, keeping me restrained. Another set grasps both of my legs. Somebody sticks a foreign object in my mouth. A belt.
And then, the pain begins.
Agony is alive inside of me. I don’t know how it’s even possible. It’s a tangible entity, roaming just underneath my skin and overtaking everything it comes into contact with. I scream around the belt in my mouth, my back arching off the bed, as a soothing voice whispers reassurances in my ears. I wordlessly plead with them to end this torment and suffering, but like when Emmett had control of my doll, I can’t say one word.
Are they trying to kill me?
Do they hate me?
The pain travels to my arm, and I hear a bone snap. Or maybe it doesn’t snap. Maybe it’s melding back together again. I honestly can’t tell; the pain is too overwhelming.
Bright spots dance across my vision as I jerk and shake and cry.
And then, nothing.
...
This time when I wake up, there’s no pain. My body instead feels numb, as if it’s been doped up with painkillers. I move my neck from side to side, before bringing my fingers to the freshly dressed wound I expect to find there.
But instead of a bandage, I feel nothing but a slightly raised and jagged line.
“Your grandmother healed you,” someone announces softly.
I sit upright in bed, head spinning at the suddenness of my movement, to see that I’m on a mattress someone pulled into the living room. Karsyn and Cassian sleep on either side of me, both of their arms sprawled lazily over my stomach, one on top of the other. When I tilt my head back, I see Elias on the sofa, his legs draped over the arm.
But it wasn’t any of them who spoke.
Lucas sits in the lone armchair, watching me as intensely as I watch him. His red hair is tousled, almost as if he has run his hand through it a dozen times in the last who knows how long, and he’s shirtless, the pale planes of his chest on display. He isn’t as muscular as the other three, but his stomach is toned and reveals a hint of abs.
“What…” I clear my throat to dislodge the sudden ball of yarn present there. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” His expression doesn’t change as he raises a dark red brow. With his face cast in shadows, he looks like some sort of demon sent to drag my soul straight to hell.
“I remember…”
Emmett. The altar. The knife piercing my skin.
And then Gabriel’s head rolling through the blood, landing directly in front of my feet.
Nana, Polo, Christian, and the Devils arriving.
The fight.
The gunshot.
Emmett’s fallen body.
The pain.
Oh, the pain.
I begin to cry wordlessly,