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I dart between trees, dodging branches and leaping over roots, powered by Milo’s elixir. It’s my only chance of escaping Eli before my rib pain returns and my energy wanes. I’ll find Kelter on my own. If he’s still alive. I ignore the doubt weighing down my steps and look over my shoulder to see how far behind me Eli is, but he’s nowhere. Goosebumps creep over me. What made me think I could outrun him? I spin around, frantic, pick a new direction and run.

Every sharpened sense has me snapping my head left and right. The thud of boots. The stretch of a shadow. The crack of twigs. The whiff of cloves. Where the fuck is he?

Maybe it’s all in my head, and I managed to lose him. Passing trunk after trunk, I convince myself each one hides Eli, pressed flat to the other side, waiting for me with cuffs. I can see him—dangling the metal before my eyes. I can hear the click, the steel locking into place, and feel the pressure on my wrist bones. No no no, he likes it too much to let him win.

Anger is my only option. I can’t linger on the memories, can’t let him pull me in. I search for him again, nearly smacking straight into a tree as I look behind me. I push off the trunk and run on, my calves burning, cold air stinging my flushed cheeks. I shove my hair from my eyes.Find Kelter. Stop the Centress. Go home.

I aim for dense patches, the darker the better, running freely, my heartbeat wild. I don’t need him. Or his ear tugging. Or smirks. Or protection. Or—

I scream. The canteen flies, and I’m thrown to the ground, arms bent behind my back, cheek pressed to the dirt. Sticks stab me, and a body sits on my ass, smashing my hips into pebbles and bark.

“Got you,” Eli says.

His deep, haunting voice does obscene things to me. Heat swells between my legs, and my smashed nipples harden beneath me, my breasts aching. “Get the fuck off me.”

“Want to play again?” he asks, lifting the hair from my face piece by piece as I struggle beneath him.

I resist relaxing at his touch. “It’s not a fucking game. I need to find Kelt.”

“It is. You run. I chase—and catch.” He pulls on my restrained arms then folds himself over me, hot breath on my face. “And you’re my prize, little Never. I get to take you home.”

Fuck. I want to run only to be caught in his arms again. “I don’t have a home here.”

“You do,” he says, stroking the shell of my ear. “With me.”

I almost roll over and angry-kiss his damn face, but I’m trapped, and I must have some remaining self-control because I don’t even try. I turn my head away from his touch, nose in dirt, and remind myself why this man deserved to be cuffed and left in the woods. “All the more reason to run.”

He rotates my head back to the side and lets his full weight fall along the length of me, squashing my twisted arms into my back. My lungs flatten, my body immobile.

His lips find the pulse on my neck, and he whispers into my skin, “Just because you’re not behind bars doesn’t mean you’re not mine.” He bites my neck, a sharp pinch, and flicks his tongue over the captured skin. I release an airy squeal as his teeth freeme. “I don’t need cuffs and chains to keep you. Youwantto be caught. Your noisy little heart says it all. It talks to mine.”

I know I should hate him, but the way he has all the control, the way he thinks our hearts talk, the way he craves me…and declares mehis—it will end me. Because how can I run from someone who feeds the dark spots on my soul and lures out the fight in me that I let lie dormant? Someone who reconstructs my heart and makes all the wrong feel right?

“You’re fucking heavy,” I force out through broken breaths.

He shifts his hips to nestle his cock snugly between my ass cheeks, as if it belonged there. “What happened to the carriage?” he asks.

Desire drains from me. “Why would I tell you?” My brain may still be numb from Milo’s elixir, but it’s not stupid. I don’t want to relive that. If I did, I’d have to admit Cam was at the falls, and if I do that, then I have to admit to myself that she’s not there anymore. That she’s not anywhere at all.

Because I killed her.

Chapter

Forty-Three

Milo’s elixir wears off, and the weakness and pain creep back in as we trek through the endless expanse of dark browns and greens of the ancient woods. I don’t bother trying to run again. He has the water, and I can’t seem to leave his side. By the time the cloud-blocked sun sets, I can hardly feel my legs, and my head hurts from the thoughts I’ve flung around all day. Even this far out, it’s too risky to have a fire and lead someone straight to us, so we let the darkness fall.

I sit against a tree, rough bark scratching my back and Eli a foot away. The cold night air invades my body, a distraction from my rib—but nothing pulls me away from the deeper pain, the guilt gnawing at me, breaking off frostbitten parts of my soul and shattering them.

Hours pass before Eli’s lightness edges in with an encompassing warmth. Even with all the anger I’ve packed inside me and stoked so consistently while brooding all day, I’m tempted to crawl into his arms—maybe another attempt to escape myself. But they’re cold, and whoever it was he kissed and touched so thoroughly, she’s lying in the grass at the falls. Dead.

His feet tap the hardened ground, the beat to the song of the swaying branches and the gossiping leaves playing over and over until sleep takes me.

I wake up to find Eli’s eyes on me, watching me sleep, my back to a tree. He sits in his usual position next to me, pack at his side. Dew finds every surface of the gray morning, occasional cold drops making their way down from the leaves to my head and shoulders where immaterial fingers brush down my chilled back. His darkness is out this morning.

Perfect.

“You didn’t tell me what happened,” he says.