Page 1 of Consume Me (Immortal Vices and Virtues: All Hallows’ Eve #4)

Kendall

M y boots don’t make a sound as I make my way through the Crossroads, but my tired muscles burn with every step.

The shovel I balance on my shoulder has only grown heavier with every mile I’ve walked, but if this works, all the labor and exhaustion will be worth it.

Even so, the tightness in my chest doesn’t ease.

Neither will the coil of dread in my stomach.

Hope and nerves have been fighting for dominance all night.

In this moment, it’s an even tie between them.

Underneath the cover of a moonless sky, my thoughts of hope remind me of my mother.

She was always the optimist. Maybe it was her nymph heritage and her connection to nature that made her so upbeat.

So willing to see life everywhere she looked.

Or maybe it was my father’s dark fae blood that gave him such a stormy outlook.

The way he saw death everywhere he looked.

Either way, I take after my mother. Always quick to smile. To see the bright side .

Or I used to. Before.

Back when I could afford to be hopeful.

That sunny version of me feels so far gone.

Like my parents.

Now, I barely remember their faces, though maybe that’s from guilt. Even my father, a notorious assassin in the Crossroads before he died, probably wouldn’t have a very high opinion of the things I’ve done these last few months. The people I’ve killed. How hardened I’ve become from doing it.

Not me , I remind myself.

The daggers.

It’s not like I have a choice once they order me to kill for them.

I’ve tried to resist. To stop them. To free myself.

So far, every attempt has failed. But I can’t give up.

To do that would mean accepting my fate as a prisoner to this darkness—and that is something I refuse to do.

I allowed the daggers to claim me all those months ago in order to save my sister from the same fate.

So, I can’t bring myself to regret what I’ve done.

Still, with every passing day, my hope of escaping them grows dimmer.

Tired beyond words, I use my key and let myself into Spells, Secrets, and Sorcery, the shop where I work—and now live.

Natalia, my boss and mentor, is a powerful witch and a hardass of a teacher, but she’s been instrumental in helping me develop my fae gifts.

She’s also been a good friend, considering she’s been letting me crash in the studio apartment on the second floor for over a year now.

The moment I enter, the charms and wards she’s placed along the doorframe glow faintly, recognizing me, allowing me to pass.

If I weren’t coded into the spell work, I’d be dead before I crossed the threshold.

How the daggers don’t see Natalia as a threat is still mystifying to me, but I’m not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth.

At the top of the stairs, the door to the second-story apartment opens with a soft creak, and I slip inside.

Small. Quiet. Safe.

Or it will be. If this works.

I prop the shovel by the door and toe off my boots.

Dirt shakes loose from around their soles, leaving a bit of a mess on the floor.

My jeans are soaked through at the knees from where I knelt, digging through loose, damp earth to the hard clay beneath the surface.

My back aches as I think of it. Even with my fae abilities, it’ll take hours for the soreness to fade.

Worth it.

It has to be worth it.

I head for the bathroom, already imagining the sting of hot water hitting deliciously against my skin. But halfway there, I stop cold.

There is a distinct hum beneath the silence.

No.

Not possible.

I drag my gaze toward the bed.

There, in the center of my pillow, surrounded by a small pile of dirt, lie the daggers.

My breath catches in my throat. The kernel of hope I nurtured all the way home blinks out—eclipsed by a cold, curdled dread that pools low in my stomach .

“No,” I whisper.

I left them buried. Deep. Far from town. I’d sealed the earth with spell-laced salt courtesy of Natalia’s personal supply, spoken words in a language I didn’t even understand, cut my palm as a blood ward.

They shouldn’t be here.

Yet, here they are.

Taunting me.

I take a step back. Then another. My heel hits the wall. I slide down it until I’m sitting on the cold floor, legs folded, arms wrapped tight around myself like that will stop the shaking.

The daggers don’t move.

But they whisper, same as always, their incessant chatter ringing out inside my head. A private torture known only by me.

“You left us,” they murmur, soft and sweet, like a lover. “You tried to run. To abandon us. But you’re ours, Kendall. Ours forever.”

I press the heels of my hands into my eyes until stars explode behind my lids.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I say out loud. Not that I need to. They can read my thoughts just as easily. “I don’t want to belong to you.”

“Want has nothing to do with it, mortal. You wielded us at the moment of transfer, and now your hands are ours to command.”

They sound amused. Darkly, disgustingly amused.

I want to scream. To throw them into the sea, the sun, the void.

But tonight proved once and for all that doing any of that won’t matter.

They’ll come back. They always come back.

Even here, above Spells, with Natalia’s protections woven into every beam and floorboard, they found a way in. And worse, they made it look easy.

No one else has ever breached Natalia’s security.

But the daggers aren’t like anyone or anything I’ve ever known.

The past eighteen months of my life have proven that.

Fighting tears, I jolt a little as my phone dings with a text.

I pull it free from where it’s wedged into my pocket and check the screen.

Tori. Again. I sigh, my hopelessness digging itself even deeper into my chest. My older sister has always been my lifeline and protector.

She would be furious if she knew what had happened to me that day I took those daggers from her hands.

The way they bound themselves to me as my master.

She’d be even more upset if she knew what they’d made me do.

The people I’ve killed. The darkness I’ve courted.

The way I’ve all but lost myself to their will.

I told her once that my gift of death sight had only ever shown a long life for myself.

A death in old age. But that’s a lie. I’ve seen my own death.

It’s a vision that haunts me day and night.

The only things standing between me and it are these damned daggers.

Even so, sometimes I can’t help but wonder if the ends justify the means.

But Tori… she’s newly mated and married. For the first time since our parents died, she’s happy. I won’t take that happiness from her. Nor will I endanger anyone else I care about by involving them in my fucked-up situation .

Before the last thought is finished, I can feel the familiar buzz between my temples.

“Shit, not now,” I groan.

But there’s no stopping the visions, and within seconds, I’m swept away in a sea of images.

Possible futures for all sorts of creatures flash by so quickly that I barely have time to grab hold of one before it has slipped away and I’m on to the next.

Their sheer speed is dizzying. Not to mention the horror of having no way to slow or stop them.

My dark fae gift is sight. Specifically, death sight.

But this…

This isn’t me. This is the daggers. They’ve been using me to channel these visions for months now.

It’s getting worse.

By the time the last vision fades, the room tilts as it spins, and I get on all fours, trying to breathe instead of vomit on my rug.

None of the images I saw were of people I know. But that doesn’t make their fates any less horrific. Or less real.

What good is seeing future visions of death with no way to stop it? Or worse, being the cause of it when death finally finds the poor souls I saw?

When I’m fairly sure I won’t be sick, I sit again. Heavily this time.

My loneliness echoes in the silence around me, and not for the first time, I feel the devastation of being so completely and utterly alone in the world.

Eventually, I drag myself up off the floor and walk past the bed into the bathroom. The daggers remain silent on my pillow, but I don’t touch them. Nor do I bother cleaning up the dirt they scattered over my pillow. Not yet. I’ll deal with it later.

For now, I focus on not losing myself to the emptiness.