Page 32 of Chaos Carnival (Cirque de Sanguine #2)

Chapter 31: Priestess of None

Tess

Nothing.

Then... something.

A spark of awareness pierced the void, a fragile glimmer of existence. It was faint, like the first star at twilight, but it was enough. I existed. Somehow.

But I was without form. Without sensation.

No eyes to see. No ears to hear. No skin to feel. Just... consciousness, untethered, adrift in an endless, infinite expanse.

Panic ignited, blooming like frost on glass.

Where am I?

What happened to me?

The questions echoed through a mind that wasn’t even sure it was real anymore. The thought sent me spiraling. I tried to scream, to claw at the emptiness, but there was no voice, no hands, no lungs to breathe.

I floated, helpless, a fragment of awareness in the void.

Then the memories came, rushing back in jagged flashes:

Addie.

Her warm laugh over morning coffee, her frantic baking when the world felt too much. She’d worry about me, wouldn’t she? Of course she would.

Would she still sit at the kitchen table, sketching tattoo designs while waiting for me to come home? Or would my absence consume her, leave her with that hollowness I’d never wanted for her?

My chest ached at the thought—except I didn’t have a chest anymore. Just the ghost of an emotion, lingering like hunger.

My clients.

Hadn’t I promised to ink a piece for Liz next week? A phoenix design she’d been waiting years to get? Would they know I was gone? Or would they think I’d simply abandoned them?

My life was unraveling, piece by piece, but the strands that mattered most glowed brighter, more vivid.

Maverick.

The mate bond flared, sharp and piercing even in this shapeless nothingness. If I’d had a heart, it would have twisted in my chest at the thought of him. He’d claimed me without asking, turned my world upside down, forced me into a life I hadn’t chosen.

But he’d also loved me. Fiercely. Entirely.

Even when I couldn’t hold myself together, when the webs had threatened to pull me apart, he’d been my anchor. My steady flame in the dark.

Not like Ivan.

Ivan, who’d whispered lies in my ears and carved chains into my soul. Who’d broken me down until I’d thought there was nothing left but his control.

Ivan, whose fear had tasted bitter and sharp when the chords devoured him in the end.

At least he was gone now.

But Maverick wasn’t gone. He was... here?

Somewhere.

I stilled, reaching out with a sense I didn’t fully understand. And then I felt them—four points of light glowing against the infinite obscurity.

Stone.

Lux.

Maverick.

Addie.

They pulsed, brilliant and unwavering, though one outshone the others. Maverick’s presence flared like a sun, the mate bond blazing between us. It was all I had left to cling to, a thread tethering me to what little was real.

The panic ebbed, fading into a strange calm as I turned my focus inward. In this formless state, the patterns began to emerge.

Threads.

Everywhere.

Flowing and weaving through existence itself, forming the fabric of time and the universe. They shimmered and shifted, more vivid than I’d ever seen before—because I’d become one with them.

The ribbons carried echoes: of life, of death, of everything in between. If I’d had lungs, I might have gasped at their beauty, their complexity. I’d always known they were there, whispering in the corners, but now they enveloped me, as intimate as my own thoughts.

The knowledge hit like a tidal wave.

Past, present, and future crashed through me in a dizzying rush. I saw everything—every choice, every consequence, every path that could be taken. The sheer weight of it should have crushed me, but without physical form, I simply expanded to contain it all.

I watched civilizations rise and fall across a thousand worlds. Stars were born and died in the span of a thought. Witnessed the first spark of life emerge from primordial seas, and the last light fade from the universe's dying embers.

The chords showed me Ivan's path—how a lonely boy's pain had spiraled into something monstrous, corrupting everything he touched. The moment his soul cracked, letting the wraithshade in. All the futures where he might have chosen differently.

Addie's timeline splintered into countless possibilities—some where she healed, others where the trauma of what Ivan did haunted her forever. Some where she became stronger for surviving it, others where she never recovered at all.

And Maverick... oh, Maverick. Every lifetime we'd shared, every death that had torn us apart, every rebirth that had drawn us back. The mate bond wasn't just about passion or possession—it was a cosmic force, weaving our souls together across eternity.

The knowledge should have driven me mad. Maybe it had. But in this formless state, sanity seemed like such a small, limiting thing. I was beyond such mortal concerns now.

I'd become part of the substance of reality itself, a consciousness woven into the lines that bound existence together. Every possibility, every potential future, lay open before me like pages in an infinite book. I could see them all, understand them all, exist in all of them simultaneously.

But even as I marveled, doubt crept in. The threads had been too strong, too hungry. They’d pulled me apart like mist under sunlight, leaving me scattered and raw.

But Maverick was still there. I could feel him. His energy sparked brighter, hotter, as if calling me back.

I latched onto the bond, letting its warmth envelop me. For a moment, I felt almost whole again, as though I might piece myself back together.

Focusing on the strands, I willed them to respond. They shifted under my attention, dancing in intricate, flowing patterns. My thoughts strained against the vastness, but I gathered them, pulling them tighter, trying to weave myself into something that could speak.

A word. Just one word.

“Maverick?”

The sound rippled through the ribbons, a whisper that echoed in every direction. For a moment, the void seemed to tremble, and his presence surged in response, blazing with raw emotion—hope, relief, fear.

“Tess?” His voice was faint, and I felt it more than heard it, vibrating through the bond.

The streams shivered around me, but holding myself together was exhausting. The effort of speaking was like dragging a mountain across a desert and my consciousness frayed again, dispersing into the vast, endless nothing.

“No!” His energy surged, desperate, reaching to the void. “Tess, stay with me!”

But I was slipping, scattering like sand on solar winds.

“I’ll find you,” I whispered, unsure if he could hear me.

The last thing I felt before dissolving was the warmth of his desperate reach, a light in the dark, and then even awareness faded once more.