Page 20
Gemma ignited a match and lit the lamp on her nightstand. Caz, Finn, and Ezra sat up from their floor beds. I looked down to see a trembling hand—my hand—resting on my abdomen. And then sharp, radiating pain like the hammering of thick, jagged nails across my lower back.
I whimpered out a broken sob, feeling only the ache in my stomach and the hot tears streaming down my cheeks.
Gavin was immediately moving. He fastened one calloused hand around the back of my neck, the other on my shoulder. Panicked and fearful, he assessed me head to toe. But I retreated from his touch, feeling dirty. Feeling… too broken to be held. He searched my face for answers, but I had none.
I shrunk away from his touch and his hands remained frozen, empty, airborne, as if he still held me there.
I made a break for the door, desperate for crisp, fresh air.
“Ary!”
“What are you doing? ”
Their frantic calls followed me into the dimly lit hallway, and a foreboding sense of panic crept up my spine. Not from my friends, no. Rather, the hollow horror of some distant memory nipped at my ankles like a devil’s hounds.
His strong, swift footsteps were behind me. I ran faster.
Down the rickety stairs, through the heavy back door, and into a circle of dead, leafless trees behind the tavern.
“Aryella.”
That deep, rich timbre tried to anchor my feet to the ground, my mind to my body. Tried . This time, something else was tugging in my chest. Something that needed me even more than I needed him.
My trembling breath became mist before my face. The same rippling ache from before pulsed through me.
“Leave me be. I just… I just need to be alone.”
“You’re not going into the woods alone.” The crunching of gravel as he moved closer. “It’s the middle of the night.”
My head spun. I looked down, focusing on a spot between my feet in a meek attempt to level myself. On the snow beneath me, there was a round, dark spot about the size of my thumb. Reddish in color by the looks of it, illuminated just enough by pale moonlight. Another spot appeared, then a third.
It was coming out of me .
Frantically, my trembling fingers searched for the source until stopping between my thighs where there was a sticky wetness seeping through my underwear.
I gasped at my hand, now damp with blood, trembling.
The icy wind was quick to dry it, leaving behind an unsettling pattern of dried crimson.
As if ink had spilled and seeped beneath my skin, marking me permanently.
A horrible symphony of sound would have forced me to my knees had I not stumbled over to an oak tree for support.
There was ringing in my ears, a wailing infant, a woman weeping, and the panicked voice of a man.
“No,” I breathed, closing my eyes, clutching my stomach. “No, no, no—”
And then I lurched forward without warning, upheaving the contents of my dinner into a puddle at my feet, visible only in the moonlight.
It took me a moment to realize he was there.
That Gavin had come to my side so fast, he saved my hair from the putrid wrath of my vomit.
I whimpered and let him support my weight.
But the pain in my belly worsened—right around that old curved scar on my lower abdomen—and the sadness carved deeper into me, so deep that I thought it would crawl through my spine and out of my back.
I wept, utterly empty, like something precious had been taken from me, torn out of me, the blood with it, leaving me hollow.
Gavin draped his coat around my shoulders but kept his palm beneath, consoling me with smooth, circular strokes on my back.
Just like my last nightmare, he was all that centered me.
All that kept me from crumbling into the snow and digging through to the core of Nyrida’s earth just to retrieve whatever it was I had lost.
“Smyth, what is it?” Gemma’s demanding voice came from behind us.
When she went unanswered, she mumbled under her breath and trudged toward me through the thick, wet snow.
She stopped and surveyed me, head to toe.
When she saw the blood on the snow between my feet and the crimson stain of my hand, she gave a heavy sigh.
“Oh Ary, you’re alright.” Gemma squeezed my shoulders.
“It’s just your cycle. You’ve always had it terribly. ”
I winced. Cramping, sure. But not like this.
“I don’t think—”
My blood curdled when I heard that scream again—this time, a mere echo, but it was there.
“Did you hear that?” I gripped Gemma’s forearms. “The screaming? ”
“Screaming?” Gemma looked around, then at me.
“There was no screaming.” A sharp tug in my stomach begged me not to forget the pain.
“You’re exhausted and cold. Come on.” Gemma wrapped her arm around me and turned us toward the tavern.
“Let’s get you changed into something of mine.
We can wash your nightgown in the morning. ”
Consumed by shame, I was unable to look at any of them in the eyes and hid my dried, bloody hand in the folds of my nightgown as we passed by.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20 (Reading here)
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
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- Page 39
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- Page 57
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- Page 72
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- Page 74
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- Page 76
- Page 77