Page 39 of Evermore (The Never Sky #3)

Paesha

“ Y ou reek of madness,” Alastor said, as if he were accusing me of something within my control. His fingers dug into my jaw as he forced my face up. “Show me what lives in that broken mind of yours so I can bend it.”

But I couldn’t take my eyes off Winter as she circled behind him, her white gown stained crimson, dragging across the stone floor.

Snow followed her, dissolving before it touched the ground.

She was beautiful in the way only dying things could be, haunting and untouchable, caught between one world and the next.

“He loved me too, you know.” Winter’s voice was like ice cracking. “Or he said he did. Over and over until the words lost all meaning.”

“Words mean nothing,” I whispered, watching as she traced her fingers along Alastor’s shoulders. He couldn’t feel her touch, couldn’t see the way her presence made the air shimmer with frost.

“Oh? And what words have meaning to you, Huntress?” Alastor asked, misunderstanding. His Remnants coiled tighter around my wrists, burning against the binding marks.

Winter laughed. “Tell him how it feels to be bound. To be caged. To be his .”

“I’m not his,” I snarled, straining against the ropes. “I’ll never be his.”

Alastor’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, Huntress. My patience wears thin.”

“I think it’s time,” Winter whispered as Alastor’s Remnants surged forward. They struck like vipers, sinking icy fangs into my flesh. The world dissolved into shadows and snow.

The night air bit my exposed skin as I ran through the garden, moonlight turning the frost covered roses to silver and diamond. My red dress whispered against the dormant plants, catching on thorns that drew blood like tiny kisses.

“Winter!” His voice carried on the wind, playful and warm despite the cold. “You can’t hide from me forever.”

I pressed my back against a marble statue as my heart thundered in my chest with equal parts excitement and fear.

This was dangerous. We both knew it. A common soldier and a noblewoman, a love forbidden by birth and station.

But I couldn’t forget the day he’d found me on that lonely road, my horse gone lame, the way he’d walked beside me for miles just to see me home safely.

There were men that would’ve taken advantage and then there were men like him. Those with honor. Care. Respect.

“Found you.” His breath was warm against my neck as strong arms wrapped around my waist from behind. Even in full gear, he moved like a shadow, silent and graceful.

“Thorne,” I breathed, melting into his embrace. “We shouldn’t…”

“Shouldn’t what?” He turned me to face him, and even in the darkness, his hazel eyes burned. “Shouldn’t love? Shouldn’t live? Shouldn’t take what fate offers?”

“My father ? —”

“Doesn’t matter.” He caught my face between his callused palms, his touch gentle despite the strength I knew he possessed. “Nothing matters but this. But us.”

When he kissed me, I tasted freedom on his lips. Tasted the promise of a life where titles and stations meant nothing compared to the way his heart beat in time with mine. And gods, I wanted him. I wanted it to be so fucking easy with him. But I knew it couldn’t be.

The memory shattered like ice, leaving me gasping in my chair. Winter stood before me now, her dead eyes boring into mine. “He made the same promises to me that he made to you. The same pretty lies.”

“Stop,” I pleaded, though I wasn’t sure if I was begging her or the Remnants or my own fractured mind.

“You’re fighting it,” Alastor said, his voice distant and distorted. “Let the power take you. Let it show me what I need to see. I need to understand them if I’m to do anything with them. This is power you shouldn’t have.”

Winter’s bloody fingers traced the air near my cheek. “Yes, let us show you how this story ends. How all our stories end.”

The shadows struck again, and I screamed as they dragged me under.

Snow fell thick and fast, obscuring the world beyond our stolen moments in the abandoned hunting lodge. The fire cast dancing shadows across bare skin as he traced patterns on my back with fingers roughened by years of wielding a sword.

The vision paused. Frozen in time. My heart was consumed by the way she loved him.

The depth was more than Winter’s memory.

There was a tiny sliver of my own pain here too.

Even when I fought to pull away, I still stared into his hazel eyes and remembered when I wanted only him. When I’d considered never leaving him.

Winter’s voice curled around my—her ear. Do you wish to see it, Huntress? Do you wish to remember what he feels like?

I wanted to say no. To back away slowly and find a way to never return. But I was weak with curiosity, and I needed to feel something, anything but the numbness of resignation.

Use your words, Huntress , a new voice said. Though feminine, this one was smokier, sultry even.

I couldn’t turn to see who’d spoken, locked in Winter’s body. My mouth didn’t even move as I said into my mind, I wish to stay.

The feminine chuckle that answered was a sound I would never forget as the memory continued.

Thorne’s fingers slid around to my throat, over my breasts and down my abdomen, inching lower, leaving trails of fire across my skin despite the winter chill.

His touch was painstakingly slow, as if he were memorizing every curve of my body.

The roughness of his hands only heightened the sensation, a delicious contrast to the smoothness of my own.

My breath quickened as his fingers dipped lower, teasing the sensitive skin of my inner thighs. I arched into his touch, a soft moan escaping my lips as he found the spot he’d been aiming for.

The memory was hers, but the way I wanted him was not.

For pleasure. For an escape. I wanted to use him.

Use him and break him. I could feel my own heart beating outside of Winter’s.

I could feel those fingers between my legs.

I could feel the press of his lips to my shoulder.

And I was fucking weak. I didn’t need him, but fuck if I didn’t want him.

Say you want more , that strange smoky voice said into my mind. Tell us you want to feel what it means to be loved by him.

I didn’t. It wasn’t his love I was interested in.

Maybe his dick, but I wasn’t even in my own body.

My own mind. This was a fucked up version of psychosis and there was no part of me that should have wanted a godsdamn thing from Reverius Hawthorne Noctus, god of complete bullshit.

Despite the tiny bit of whore in me begging to say yes, I didn’t. I don’t want this .

Pity , the voice sang as the vision skipped ahead. It’s one of our favorites .

“Tell me again,” I whispered, pressing closer to the heat of Thorne’s body, satiated, sore, and more in love than I’d been before.

“Tell you what, my love?”

“That this is real. That we’ll find a way.”

He propped himself up on an elbow, his expression serious in the firelight. “We’ll run. Far from here, where no one knows our names or cares about bloodlines and birthrights. Where I can love you in the sunlight instead of shadows.”

“Promise?”

“I swear on everything I am. Everything I’ll ever be.”

I believed him. Gods help me, I believed every word from a man I thought was nothing more than a common soldier with uncommon honor.

The vision wavered, reality bleeding through like water seeping under a door. I could feel the chair beneath me, the ropes binding my wrists, Alastor’s presence heavy in the air. But Winter’s memory pulled me back under, determined to show me the end.

The blade burned cold in my gut, colder than the snow beneath my knees. Thorne held me as I fell, but everything had changed. Gone was my gentle soldier. In his place stood something ancient and terrible, power radiating from him in waves that made the air tremble.

“Why?” I gasped, blood staining the white dress crimson. The dress I’d worn to run away with him, to start our new life.

“Because some stories are written in stone,” he said softly, his hazel eyes now burning with an inhuman light. “Some fates cannot be changed.”

“You promised…” The words tasted like copper and betrayal. “You were only a soldier…”

“It wasn’t me.”

He pressed his hand harder against my side, trying to stanch the flow of blood, but it poured through his fingers.

His face twisted with grief, with terror, and his voice—so low, so broken— was barely more than a whisper.

“Please,” he begged, his lips brushing against my forehead as his tears fell, warm and wet against my skin. “Please don’t leave me. Not like this.”

His words were thick with despair, and my heart twisted painfully in my chest. I wanted to stay.

I wanted to promise him I wouldn’t leave, to reach up and wipe the tears from his beautiful face, to tell him everything would be okay, but I couldn’t move.

My body was a weight I could no longer control.

The cold had claimed me. All I could do was look up at him as my vision blurred and his face grew dim.

“Please, please…” Thorne’s voice broke, shattering like fragile glass. His fingers trembled as he held me, as if the sheer force of his will could keep my soul tethered here, keep me alive a little longer. “Don’t you fucking die. That’s not how this was supposed to go. We need more time.”

His forehead pressed against mine. Shaking like the world was crumbling around him. He kissed my hair, my cheeks, my forehead. Each touch was frantic. His tears fell faster now, splashing hot onto my skin. I was so cold, I barely felt them anymore.

“I’ll fix this,” he sobbed. “I’ll fix you. Just… stay with me. Please, just stay.”

Only then did I understand I’d never known him at all.

As the cold took everything, as my heart stuttered and stopped, as the snow covered us in a blanket of pristine white, my last thought was of that day on the road.

How easily I’d believed a god could be something as simple as a soldier with kind eyes.