Page 68 of Barons of Decay (Royals of Forsyth University #10)

A rianette

Red.

Everything around me is red.

Smoke twists through the beams. Flames crawl up the curtains and swallow the old wood shelves, devouring history, memory, blood. Everything burns.

I’d spent years in this house, locked in the walls, talking to the other children. Did they really not exist? Were they all a figment? Was it real?

Is this?

The heat tells me this is happening. That I set my uncle’s home on fire.

Except, he’s still here, standing in the doorway–his tie loose, sweat slicking his temples. “You crazy motherfucking bitch! What are you doing?” he screams, voice rising over the roar of the fire.

“Ending it all.” My hands shake, but not from fear. From fury. My fingernails are torn, knuckles bloodied. The knife from the bar still clutched in my fingers.

“I kept you alive when no one else wanted you,” he coughs. “I gave you a bed, a roof over your head, meals, your stupid, pointless, dance lessons… everything .”

“You gave me nothing!” I stalk toward him, barefoot on the warm wood, dress hanging in ribbons around my ankles. “You put a curse on me. One where I live in one circle of hell after the other. It’s over. All of it.”

The air tastes like the end of times and when I get close enough, he reaches for me. I swipe out, slicing the blade down his hand. He jerks back with a yelp. “You’re insane. Just like your mother. Just like every other woman in this family.”

“No,” I whisper, my voice hollow, echoing in the way madness does. “ You made me what I am.”

He lunges. I twist, stumble, and slam into the grandfather clock, sending it to the floor with a crash.

He grabs my wrist, but I bite him– hard –until he lets go.

The blade sinks in again, this time across his chest. A scream–his, not mine–cuts through the firestorm.

He falls against the burning shelves, face twisted in disbelief.

“You don’t get to walk away from this,” I tell him. “Not for what you did to me, or them.”

Not for the children he claims don’t exist. Or the arrangement to have me sold off to a monster. Not after what he did to my body. My mind. My soul.

He tries to crawl toward me. The fire eats the carpet between us. I back away, dragging myself toward the doorway, breath coming in ragged sobs. The walls are closing in on both of us, and all I want is to be alone. I want peace. A quiet mind.

I’m low on the ground, crawling away from the library when I see him.

At first, I think I’m hallucinating–smoke and memory blurring together. But then he sniffs, whines, nose to the ground. He finds me. His wet nose touches my cheek. A lick, followed by a warm sound, a real one, rumbles in his throat. He nuzzles closer.

I press my face into his fur. “Ares,” I whisper. My voice is barely there. “Go. Los .”

He whines again. Impatient. Angry. Then he’s gone, paws skidding on ash-slick floors.

My eyes flutter shut. Alone. Finally.

I lay there, wondering if any of this is real. If I’m back in the Hunt, or maybe by the river. I see something. Someone. Dark long hair, bright eyes, high voice. “ Run! Tell them I’m here!”

Hands grab at me. Hard and strong. I fight against them, kicking and lashing out. But this time, I don’t run. I can’t.

Blinking up, I see the mask, feel the heat, sense the fury.

Damon.

“Stop,” I beg. “Just leave. Leave me.”

But he doesn’t. He picks me up like I weigh nothing. I feel everything. The pain, the shame, the fucking loss of it all.

“Sorry, doll baby,” he growls against my temple, his voice choked. “Death isn’t coming for you today.”

And just like that, he carries me out of my funeral pyre.

Alive.

But not the same.

I remember this bed.

The exact slope of it under my spine. The itchy, paper-thin blanket that does nothing to fight off the sterile chill of the room.

The crooked hook of the IV stand looming beside me like some metal skeleton, clear fluid dripping in a steady beat.

I know the lights flickering overhead–too bright, glaring twenty-four seven, washing the color out of the world.

The smell hits next. Antiseptic laced with vinegar. Bleach and blood. Disinfectant and dread. I know this. My body remembers before my mind does, like everything about this place is trying to convince me that I’ve gone back to the day after the river.

Everything from the too-sweet voice of a nurse telling me it was a miracle I was found at all.

I can almost hear it. The low beep of monitors.

The whisper of technicians behind the curtain.

The sting in my skin, the ache in my lungs.

The boys had found me by the riverbed and pushed on my chest until they came alive again.

My lungs were full of silt, wrists raw, my neck bleeding from the dug out tracker.

Back then I'd slipped under so far I didn’t know what was real anymore.

It’s the pain that anchors me to the present.

Fresh. Real. Now.

A shock tears through my throat as I try to breathe in too fast, like dragging sandpaper down the inside of my windpipe.

It burns, raw and scraped from smoke and screaming.

My ribs ache with every shallow breath and the edges of my skin feel tight and swollen, like I’ve been scorched from the inside out.

This isn’t the river.

This time, I lit the match myself.

There’s a sound beside me. Rhythmic. Steady. Mechanical. Someone breathing, but not naturally. A soft hiss and release. I turn my head, the movement slow and heavy like swimming through glue.

Damon.

He’s right there, in the bed next to mine.

Slumped in half-conscious sleep, his face slack and pale.

His piercings are gone, like they had been at the fight, and for some reason it makes him look younger.

The oxygen tubes plug up his nose, tape pulls at his cheeks, and his lips are cracked like desert earth.

The muscles in his jaw twitch. If it weren’t for the soft beep of the heart monitor behind him, I’d think he was gone.

That I’d taken him with me when the fire came.

That I killed him, too.

A sick pulse of guilt curls through my stomach.

Movement on the other side of the glass draws my attention, and I see a man pacing.

Tall and with a dark coat over his broad shoulders.

The sharp lines cutting across his silhouette like armor.

A Shadow? No. No. Not one of the King’s men.

This man’s expression is unreadable–cold, remote.

I know him . Even from here, I know that set of his jaw. That stiff, calculated posture.

Agent Knight.

He’s from before. From the last time. After the river.

The man who asked questions I didn’t want to answer.

Didn’t know how to answer. The one who came with a notepad and quiet suspicion.

A shiny belt buckle that looks like the devil.

He was calm then, and calm now. Like all of this is normal for him.

But it’s the words I hear next that pull me tighter into the present.

“No,” snaps Hunter, stepping into view. “Absolutely not.”

He looks wrecked. His pale skin is streaked with soot, ash clinging to the edges of his jaw and threading into his tattoos. He’s still wearing the same white T-shirt from this morning, from when he…

I swallow, remembering the look in his pale eyes as he watched. Participated.

The shirt is now torn and singed in places, revealing a burn on his forearm. He’s furious, but he’s holding it in like a grenade with the pin halfway pulled.

“She doesn’t answer to you,” he growls.

Agent Knight doesn’t so much as blink, but his voice raises just enough for me to hear. “Mr. Sorrin, she’s a key witness–”

“She’s nothing to you, Agent,” Hunter spits. “She’s mine. She’s the King’s. And no one speaks to her until he gives his approval.”

That word– mine –hits like a cuff. Hunter’s voice is pure authority, razor-edged and absolute. Like he’s daring anyone to question it. But I do. I question it. Am I still theirs? After everything I’ve done?

Agent Knight's mouth tightens, but his tone stays flat. “A man is dead. His house burned to the ground. And the same woman is tied between that and a half-dozen other mysteries in this town.” His gaze cuts toward me through the glass, and I sink back into the pillow hoping to get swallowed up. “This makes twice that I’ve found her in that hospital bed. I don’t believe in coincidences,” he says. “Not in this city.”

Quietly thinking, Hunter squares his shoulders before stepping toward Knight.

“I don’t give a shit what you believe in or not.

She’s not the key to anything. She’s a victim.

So why don’t you go figure out who wanted that house burned down with Owen Hexley in it.

Figure out who would target the Baroness twice .

Once you do, I’ll be happy to listen, until then, you need to leave. ”

There’s a beat of silence so thick it’s almost physical. Then I hear a muttered curse followed by a door slamming somewhere down the hall. Knight is gone. Which means now we’re alone.

Hunter throws the door open and storms inside, his rage vibrating off him in waves. I smell the smoke on him, the sweat. His hair is a mess, like he’s been tearing his hands through it for hours. His eyes flick to Damon–still unconscious–then land back on me.

“Ares,” I croak. My voice is wrecked. “Did he–?”

“He found you,” Hunter says, tight and bitter. “Led us right into the house. Just like you hoped, right?”

“No,” I say, forcing the word past the shards in my throat. “I told him to go. Los. ”

That word–his word. The command that means leave.

“He did his job,” he says softly, “making sure that you were safe, making sure that we got to you.”

“Is he okay?” I know the answer before I ask it, but I ask anyway, because I need to know for sure.

“No, he’s not fucking okay. He’s at the emergency animal hospital.” His voice cracks. “He spent too much time in the house looking for you and inhaled a lot of smoke. They don’t know if he’ll make it.”