Page 38 of Her Wicked Knights (Their Hallowed Queen #3)

Colton

I don't know what happened. One minute, Whit was prattling, and in the next, I was coming back from a blackout, naked, my jaw fucking throbbing, and Tripp staring at me like I kicked his puppy.

I don't ask for an explanation, and no one offers one.

Instead, we watch as Whit moves around the room, gathering things before directing us to sit in different spots.

We form a ring right there on the stage, cross-legged like a bunch of kids about to play duck-duck-goose.

Everything feels fuzzy, like I'm drunk, and it's the only reason I don't bother trying to leave; I don't think I'd make it to my car before passing out.

Tripp glares at me when Whit tells us to link hands, and I take Whit's other hand, letting Rev be the bridge between Whit and Tripp.

"Why the fuck are we holding hands?" I ask after a moment, when the warmth from Tripp's hand starts to get sweaty.

"I have to show you to make you see." Whit answers, though his voice sounds far away and my head feels weird. That doesn't make any sense, but I suppose most of what he says never does.

There's a weird sensation like the ground is moving, and then it feels like we're falling. Tripp grips my hand tighter, and I don't free myself from him when it lets up.

"Don't break the connection," Whit warns. "I can only hold this because I'm harnessing our collective power. If anyone breaks the connection, we could get lost."

Lost?

I don't know what he means, or where we are.

Everything is on fire, but I'm not burning. I don't feel the heat, but I can see the flames devouring buildings, hear the crackle as it eats at everything in its path. Screams rend the air, but I don't see people, at first.

"What is this?" Rev demands, and I glance across at him to see his eyes bright with worry.

"This is the night of retribution. The night of our collective deaths."

I blink, wondering if this is a vision of the future. But once I see past some of the smoke curling from the orange flames before me, I realize this place looks nothing like anything I know. It's all distinctly familiar, and yet I can't place my finger on where I've seen this place before.

Through the fire, I'm able to latch onto a few figures, more shadow than men, until they morph before me into... us.

Tripp, Rev, me.

But it's not us, at the same time it is.

It's like a fun-house mirror, where you know you're looking at your reflection, but it's so different that you find yourself looking over your shoulder.

We're talking, and I can't hear the words, but I can see the body language, even hidden in the ridiculous clothing they're wearing.

I watch Tripp take something, and a blade glints in the moonlight. Ashes fall around us, around them, and, I think, so does snow.

It feels like being in an alternate universe, watching Rev cringe away from alternate-Tripp.

And then Tripp drags the blade across his throat, a weird sound escaping his throat as he does.

He's still standing, swaying, when Rev takes the blade from him and I don't know what I expect him to do with it.

I don't expect him to drag it across his own throat, to spill his blood and stagger toward me— the other me— as Tripp's body crumbles to the ground.

Watching myself drag the blade across my own throat feels like being trapped inside my mind... I think I am trapped inside my mind. Something feels weird... scrambled.

When my own body crumbles to the ground, I feel that weird tugging again. I may be getting peeled out of my current body, because it feels like I'm being pulled into the air, like my soul is leaving the vessel down beneath me.

And through it all, I'm somehow just sitting here, crisscross legs and holding hands with my friends. But I can also see what lies below us...

Our bodies have somehow fallen into a circle of sorts... a lumpy circle, sure. But now that we're up here, I see what we couldn't from the ground. The fourth body.

There's no mistake who it is. I didn't see her kill herself, but she's certainly as dead as the rest of us, and as beautiful as ever.

Laid out between us with her body draped in cloth, she looks like a queen from ancient times.

.. the sort of beauty that launched wars and tempted the Gods.

We're not gods. Just men, desperate to be part of her court. Her pawns. Her knights.

I expect us to settle back in the church, but instead, we land somewhere different, and there we are again. Tripp, Rev, and I... but we're different again. The hair changes, the clothing is different, but it's still clearly us. And her.

She's soaked, clothes clinging to her body, droplets of water beading on her skin, which practically glows beneath the moon. Tripp's got her in his arms, and he's wet too, though only from the waist down.

When I tear my eyes from them to study where we are, I see we're at the bottom of the bridge. Headlights loom overhead, lighting up the fog when I look up at the steel bridge overhead. Did she crash?

There's only that one car as far as I can tell.

"What's going on?" Tripp asks, his voice piercing through the fog that's been pressing inside of my skull since I woke up on the ground of the church.

It lifts all at once, and the relief is immediate, like coming back into my own body.

Unfortunately, I'm still watching someone else wear my body just feet before me.

"These are your past lives." Whit explains. "I don't have control over what it shows us or when, so the order is all botched. But the last one was the first one... the original murder."

"And this one?" Rev asks.

No one answers. We just watch as Rev paces and Tripp clutches Marley, and I... pull out a gun.

Rev notices, but he doesn't bristle. He doesn't question it. He nods.

"Do it."

There's no need to ask what. I don't hesitate.

.. I also look away as I point the gun at the back of Tripp's head.

He's not focused on anything other than her.

I'm not sure he ever feels anything as the bullet tears through his skull, and it must get lodged somewhere in there because I don't see it come out.

He just collapses, and then I point the gun at rev.

"It's okay." He assures me, and I must believe him because I pull the trigger. We're at close enough range that it's impossible to miss. It also doesn't prolong the suffering; Rev falls instantly.

It all happens so fast I can barely process that I just watched me kill my own friends, and then the barrel's against my own temple.

I don't even get a chance to brace myself before I hear myself pull the trigger, and it feels like a part of my soul is leaving my body again as I collapse onto the ground alongside my friends.

The swirling starts again, and I'm going to be sick. But I shove it down, and just before I close my eyes, I see it... the image of our bodies, arranged in the same formation as before.

"I can't." I hear Tripp's words just a moment before I feel his hand drop mine.

Whit yells, but his voice is swallowed in a storm of staggered sounds. Sounds like screams and cries and car alarms and sirens and car horns and music and laughter and...

It builds into a cacophony that feels like it will crush us from the outside in, until I can no longer take it.

I break free of Whit's grip and slam my hands over my ears, but it doesn't lessen the chaos because everything around us is swirling now.

It's like how I'd imagine being stuck inside a tornado, colors and figures and shapes flying fast through the orbit, images and memories and whole lives colliding in the vortex, until suddenly I'm slammed against the ground.

All the breath leaves my body as I make impact with the stone steps of the church, but I don't feel it for long, because Rev's foot kicks me in the back of the skull as he falls to the ground. Lucky for him, I cushion his landing.

I grip my head, trying to stop the spinning.

I don't see Whit or Tripp as they land, but I hear the distinctive thud of bodies on the floor, and then the whirling sound finally ceases.

When I finally manage to look up to find them, the tornado is gone, Tripp is before me rubbing his shoulder, which seems to have taken the brunt of his fall, and Whit looks pissed.

"What part of don't break the connection did you not understand? We could have ended up lost in the void of the past, and then what would have happened?"

That seems like a rhetorical question since this is all his dog and pony show. Or at least, it was.

He called it the past.

I thought maybe we were witnessing alternate realities— universes like our own, which feel distinct in their own ways.

The idea of a multi-verse seems somehow more convincing than witchcraft, or time travel, or whatever the fuck we just did.

It seems infinitely more likely than the idea of reincarnation, of our souls coming back together in multiple lives, particularly since we were the same in each life.

But one thing stands out about everything we just witnessed.

Whit wasn't present for either of the events.

"Where were you?" I demand, struggling to my feet and rounding on him. "Each time she died, where were you?"

Whit's eyes sharpen on me, like he's surprised I'm bothering to ask.

"You claimed our souls are bound. And maybe I can see the four of us... Tripp, Rev, and I. And Marley... what did you call her? The anchor? If we're bound to one another, where were you?"

"In every lifetime, I die first." Whit says, his voice surprisingly calm. "It's my death that serves as the catalyst for everything else. I die, and then Marley, and then all of you."

The air is heavy with the silence as we all try to wrap our head around what he just told us, what we believe to be possible, and what the fuck we just went through.

It feels like a bad trip, like I drank a bottle of my dad's scotch and then decided to take some acid, too, just for fun.

I've never done the latter, but I can't imagine I'd enjoy it, particularly after today.

"What the fuck does this mean?" Rev asks, puncturing the silence. "We're cursed or something?"

"You can't believe this?" I laugh, because it's absurd.

And even though a large part of me knows what I just witnessed was real, my brain is having a hard time getting on board with the reality of something I've always considered fantasy.

Magic, time travel, spells and curses. It's always been shit that people make up because real life is boring, because we want our lives to mean something and to believe that the world isn't just a hellscape.

"Yeah." Rev snaps. "Considering I've seen it and felt it, I know what's real."

I don't argue. There's no point, because even I know that he's right. I know that it's real.

It's all real. Everything we've felt for her, built on lifetimes of this same love.

It doesn't feel real, and yet, it does.

Because there's nothing I've ever understood more than the fact that Marley Lavigne is fucking magic. I'd die a thousand times to be alone with her for a single night.

"So, what does this mean?"

It's Tripp who asks, his eyes on Whit, who seems to have mellowed now.

He sighs, chuckling ever so slightly. "Well, it looks like we can't kill Marley Lavigne. If the anchor dies, we all do."

I should feel relieved by that, but there's too many implications.

"So, the question is," Whit muses, "then who do we kill?"

Tripp's gaze collides with mine. It's ruthless, cold and savage. It's so unlike him that my heart falters for a minute. But he doesn't have to say what he's thinking. And neither do I.

Because Rev does it for us.

"Audrey Graves."