no,” I sobbed, pressing my forehead to his. Tears streamed down my cheeks, splashing upon his white shirt. Blood seeped from his chest, pooling and growing with each second.
He didn’t stir.
Those beautiful blue-gray eyes didn’t open.
And when I reached inside me, the bond between us…it wasn’t there.
My soul, hollow. Empty.
I screamed, but only a wisp of air escaped my lips.
I clung to him, clutching his lifeless body against my chest.
Pain ebbed from my soul as if it had been ripped from my body by force.
Fire so hot it seared and writhed and cracked.
The weight of Alek’s body lessened in my arms, and I snapped my eyes open. Slowly, he dissolved into ash, slipping through my fingers like grains of sand.
Hissing erupted around me as the others disintegrated, leaving me kneeling in piles of dusted bodies.
My body shook, my hands trembling.
“You need to look, Seer,” a masculine voice echoed from directly behind me.
I whirled around. Landed on my feet before I’d even blinked.
The fog curled away from the man, one I’d seen seconds ago on the floor. I glanced over my shoulder, my mind jolting as the room was now empty. No chairs. No blood. No dusted bodies.
“Look!” he screamed, and I snapped my attention back to him. He was tall, devastatingly beautiful, and a darkness caressed the edges of his skin as if the night itself adorned him. He tilted his head, a predator’s gaze as he waved an arm between us. “If you don’t open your eyes, this will all come to pass.”
I jolted back a step, the bodies that had disintegrated before my eyes appeared in a pile between us. Even his.
He gazed down at the horrid pile and sucked his teeth.
“Tragic,” he cooed, staring at his own corpse. “That our destinies lay with your past.”
“What do you mean? What do you want?” My mind spun, questions and pain and blistering doubt.
“I want you to wake up!” he screamed, charging toward me with the speed of a shooting star.
A surge of lightning struck me, my body going rigid with the pain. My knees cracked against the floor, and I convulsed against the onslaught of the white-hot blaze.
I reached for Alek’s lifeless hand, wanting to touch him even in death.
The man’s laughter, dark and cold, filled the room, swallowed my agonized screams—
The floor disappeared.
I free fell, swinging my arms to try and stop my fall.
But the pit of black was endless, the room disappearing. The man, the bodies. All of it. Gone.
Empty.
Like my soul.
Nothing but the black.
Nothing but the fall.
The pain coursed through my blood like acid.
I gnashed my teeth as I toppled over and over, the pain ratcheting, searing my skull. The very marrow in my bones groaned in protest, screaming, gnawing, threatening to crack against the pressure.
I fell for so long I begged for the end.
A quick snap of my neck on whatever bottom laid at the end of this pit.
Anything to stop the pain. Stop the splintering of my heart, my soul.
“Alek,” I sobbed, spinning head over feet as I fell and fell and fell—
“Lyric,” Alek’s voice called to me from the dark.
A cool, soothing tingle washed over my body like the first rain after a fire.
My mind pulsed behind the darkness of my closed lids, but I felt something soft beneath me.
Not a hard marble floor covered in blood and ash.
No taunting echoes of a man I’d never seen before.
Nothing but the sweet, comforting silence, and the smell of—
Acid licked up my throat, and I hissed as I bolted straight up, my eyes snapping open.
“Lyric,” Alek breathed my name, and instantly I was on my feet.
In our room.
I tilted my head, feeling like I’d missed something. Lost something. But what?
I swallowed hard. My throat was raw, aching like I’d screamed all night.
The nightmare? Had I truly screamed in my sleep?
“How are you feeling?” Alek asked, his eyes wide as he stepped toward me, hands raised as if I were pointing one of his glocks at him.
“I had a bad dream,” I said, nearly in tears as the images of his lifeless body rose up in my mind.
That quickly, I had my arms around his neck. Barely a thought, and I’d crushed my body to his. “You were dead,” I gasped into his shoulder. His arms snaked around me, holding me to him, gently, carefully.
“I’m here. I’m fine,” he said, smoothing the back of my hair.
I turned my head, nuzzling his neck. “God, you smell good,” I moaned against his skin. His intoxicating scent of dark