Chapter 144

I kept falling and falling as if there was nothing but space beneath me, then I turned and realized that I wasn’t falling but flying up. Wind rushed over my face and I slammed into water. Bubbles drifted around me, but I could breathe even as I seemed to be surfacing.

Slowly, I started to hear voices.

“You’re sure?” Someone asked.

“She mentioned silver coming from the ground and that golden-furred idiot on the cliff,” another person said. “I am certain. What that means only time will tell… Perhaps the elixir was a bit too effective.”

What elixir? What were they talking about? Who were they? I could recognize them as… not a threat exactly but I didn’t know for certain what that meant.

“But… I thought you said it was a long stretch. Wasn’t her dad like the weakest kind of werewolf?”

I pushed against the darkness in my mind. They were definitely talking about me and they were right. Steven wasn’t of an awakened bloodline. There wasn’t anything special about him except for his cruelty.

“He is, but she is no longer a simple mutt. Damian performed the Blood Ritual on her.”

I tried to open my eyes, but they were too heavy. Everything in me just wanted to sleep. I smelled water and something savory like meat. I recognized the three voices, but I couldn’t place it.

What did that mean? The Blood Ritual? What was it supposed to achieve. I caught the scent of blood and I remembered, just a flash of another body on the altar. Someone turned to me.

“Well… is that something we have to worry about?”

“It will make him feel more powerful for a time, but she is recovering. Slowly, sure, but she is. We have a window of opportunity when he will be the most arrogant.”

“What does Raven have to say?”

“She’s on a binge,” someone scoffed. “She’s already annoyed with being interrupted. You know she’s still not completely sold on the whole sister thing.”

“To be fair, Hedwig gave her one task and she has fulfilled it.”

“Uncle Ian… do you really think…?”

“I think it is a path we have to explore. There is no threat in seeing it to the end. At worse, she dies. I already have what I wanted from Blue Moon, and my dearest sister shouldn’t have decided to die of despair in that hovel of a house if she meant for her second daughter to truly be my problem.”

I turned my head and groaned.

“She’s awake,” the man said. His voice sounded like it was getting closer. I heard footsteps, but I saw nothing. Where was I? “Do you plan to continue to wallow in your exhaustion or be useful sometime this century?”

Someone, Shiloh, I think, hissed. “Rae’ was right. You hate her.”

“I hate that I must deal with her existence in Hedwig’s place,” Ian said softly. “I have no care about her personally. She would have been less of a nuisance if she had simply used some common sense instead of her hormones to make decisions.”

I groaned again, trying to push myself up, but I saw nothing. I was surrounded by darkness like I was in a room with no windows. My stomach growled with hunger. I felt weak and unstable.

“Where… am I?” I asked. “Can’t… say that.”

The last thing I remembered was—

I went still. “Candido! Where’s Candido?”

Someone let out a low whistle, then Messiah said, “That is worse than Raven let on. You sure he didn’t curse her or something?”

“I suspect it’s only getting worse,” Ian said. “And likely not any more than simply fulfilling a need left by that pathetic waste of fur.”

“You are really not going to let Auntie H’ live this down?”

“Trust me, neither will our father… don’t even speak to me about Candida.” He huffed. “All that to say, managing her hormones is yet another element of dealing with her that irritates me.”

“We can tell.”

“Are you listening, Hedy?”

I struggled to get to my knees, trembling and swaying. It was so dark. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t make sense of up or down. I felt nauseous as the ground started to rock like I was on a boat.

My jaw trembled. Candido said he was going to take me on a cruise one day. I had been so excited about laying out on the ship in nothing but a bikini. I could almost feel the sunlight. We were going on that cruise. I wanted him to see me and crawl onto my lounger, on top of me. I wanted him to kiss me and have me and make me his queen.

I wanted everything he had to give and to get to the end of every dream that I’d shared with him. I deserved it. We were mates. No one else would take my place at his side. No one.

I was already twenty and this whole war was getting in the way of what should have been a happy birthday.

“Where is Candido? I want Candido.”

“Yes, yes. So, you keep saying. Honestly, no one else is as stupid as you are,” he said. “You need not say it over and over again. We recall easily what your priority is.”

“Are you really going to do this?” Shiloh asked. “What if she really does die?”

“Then, she and my sister can have a nice chat about their respectively terrible tastes in partners,” he scoffed. “I’ll even let Raven choose her engravings.”

“She’d enjoy that.”

“Died For Want of Cock.” Messiah snorted.

“Want of Daddy Cock,” Shiloh said. “Raven would be sure to add some nice flowers.”

“I’m not dying without Candido!” I yelled. “Where is he? If you hurt him, you’ll be sorry!”

“I’m more sorry that I didn’t leave you,” Ian said.

I thrust my hand out, searching for something that I could grab, some way closer to their voices, but they seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. The world tipped and moved, tumbling me over. I cracked my head on something. Then, the world shifted sharply and threw me through the air. I landed hard and groaned.

“I just don’t think this is right,” Shiloh said. “Sure, she’s annoying, but couldn’t this be going a bit too far? What if she doesn’t die and you just drive her crazy?”

“Look at her,” Ian said sharply. “Do you think there is another option?”

“You could just kill her.”

He scoffed. “Only as a last resort. Never kill something until you are absolutely sure that it has no value… Though she is proving to have little value, even a small gold coin can tip a scale.”

Messiah sighed. “So, she’s a gold coin? I didn’t think you thought so highly of her.”

“More like a fleck of copper, but it stands,” Ian said. “Besides, if Damian wants her, I want to make sure I can use that to my advantage. She’s at least useful bait.”

“Don’t talk about me like that!” I yelled, struggling to crawl in any direction and trying to feel my way to a wall. “What until Candido hears about this?”

“Can’t you shut her up?” Shiloh asked.

The floor moved beneath me, tumbling me over to one side and it kept rolling as if I was lying on a conveyor belt. It stopped suddenly and started going the other way. My stomach lurched.

Messiah laughed. “That’s a bit mean.”

“Your mother would be ashamed of you,” Ian said curtly as the ground stopped. I tried to crawl away from the spot, but the ground jerked up and threw me back. “At least when she pursued your father, she was the predator not a desperate hanger-on.”

“Where is Candido?” I asked, feeling dizzy and ill. “Candido? Candido!”

Shiloh sighed. “This is going to take a while.”

“So glad we have until the stars fall, then,” Ian quipped. “Though if that is enough time, I will simply leave her here to rot. Something will have a good snack… when was the last time we fed them something decent?”

“You can’t feed me to monsters! I’m your niece!”

Messiah laughed. “Well, we did feed them all those hybrids a few weeks ago. They seemed happy about that.”

Ian hummed. “We’ll need to treat them better. Let’s go hunt for Blue Moon operatives.”

“No!” I screamed, tumbling in the dark. “Leave the alone! You’re asking for it!”

I heard footsteps going away. I tried to follow them, but they seemed to be walking around me and, on the ceiling, fading into the distance. My stomach lurched again. I dry-heaved and curled up on my side, trying to stop my head from spinning.

“Stop!”

Then, a loud ringing sound filled the ear. My eardrums felt like they were going to burst. My head felt like it was being squeezed in a vice, and soon, I lost consciousness again.

“Candido, help me…”