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“Go home,” I say, and it takes off into the night, its wings sparkling like stars.

Eli walks toward me with a light stone in hand, Milo at his heels, his cloak of darkness manifesting as chills down my back.

Sypher closes in from the opposite side and is first to speak as I rise, his light stone like a piece of a moon in his hands, casting his face into light and shadow.

“What did you do?” His words are frosty. Perhaps he was hoping the blitzer would leave me in shreds.

The fire crackles in my chest.

Sypher gazes into the sky. “You let her go. She was bound to that cage.”

“You weren’t supposed to let it get you,” Milo says, “and hurt you—only run and climb a tree, trigger fear.” He trudges away, a solacing hand on Sypher’s back.

“Climb a fucking tree? And then what? Get torn to bloody chunks?” I shout after them, then turn to Eli. “What in the holy son of a prick’s asshole were you thinking?”

His brows elevate. “What did you say?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Warm blood streams down my bare arms, shielding me from the cold of Eli’s stare. “Look what you did to me!”

“Down. Try it now.” He points to the ground.

“Youget on your fucking knees!” I yell.

“Later, greedy little one. I said down.”

My shoulders rise and fall with rage-filled breaths. I lower to my knees. My arms drip, painting the ground a beautiful red. I curl my hands into fists around the blood-soaked plants.

“Nothing. Look—” I say. “No magic. You’re all losing your damn minds.”Like me.I don’t know what’s real anymore. How could this place really exist? These people? That creature?

I’m gasping now, one lungful at a time, in and out, longer and harder. I’m not sure if the panic or the pain is worse. My hands squeeze tighter. I rip the sprouts from the ground and sit back on my heels, the blood-free roots breathing in the night air.

Eli sets down the light stone and kneels before me, my blood seeping into the knees of his jumpsuit. I lean away as he reaches for me. His hand swipes my arm, leaving smudges on my bloody armor. I stare up at him, pain igniting my nerves. Studying me with those cavernous eyes, he rubs his fingers together, a part of me slipping and sliding between them, finding every ridge and groove of his fingerprints.

“You understood the blitzer, its suffering,” Eli says, too quietly for comfort, an admiration in his wide eyes that I don’t want to accept.

I match his stillness except for my heaving breaths. He takes those wet fingers and touches them to my neck where the blitzer’s beak left welts and craters. I flinch, moving too quickly while lightheaded. The ground shifts and spins. His hand stays, his fingers gentle over my open wounds. He smears the blood tomy collarbone, a single finger trailing down. My throat closes. Pressure builds, confusion kindling a flame.

“It’s so…red.” His voice is stretched tight.

The fire erupts, destroying every wall inside and consuming me from within. I jump to my feet. He follows my off-kilter movement, and I shove him. It’s like hitting a wall. He doesn’t budge. My open cuts and claw wounds punish me for the sudden motion.

“Of course it’s red, jackass. It’s my damn blood, and you spilled it.” The words spurt from my mouth like a crimson fountain from a fatal wound.

His hands clamp around my wrists. The stone glows from the ground between us, the only light in all the darkness. I cry out, twisting my body and yanking my arms, but his grip is solid, even with the wet blood cooling at his touch. His fingers spread, and he slides his hands up the length of my arms, so tight that he milks my wounds for more.

I groan, and my knees bend at the mind-cracking pain. He holds me up, the gushing blood covering his hands. I tilt my head back—way back—to find him, to plead for him to stop, and I catch his eyes, more black than brown in the dim glow, and gleaming. And like the mirroring eyes of the blitzer, he looks back at me with the same horror, the same fury, the same uncertainty coursing through me.

But I’m all out of empathy. I reach for that buried part of me he brings out so easily, and I plant my knee between his legs, swift and mighty. His eyes blow up, wide and wild. His mouth parts, and he crumples to the ground with a groan louder than mine, bloody hands consoling his crotch.

And it’s so fucking beautiful.

Chapter

Seventeen

All of me is hurting this morning. My skin pulls tight under the layers of dried blood when I move.

I hate him. I hate him with every bone in my body, every remaining drop of blood, my entire soul. But I wonder if something’s there. Something that’s made people cast him away in the past, like everyone does to me. And if it’s possible to be so broken, one only knows how to break.