Page 43 of The Vampire’s Mercy (Blood Melody #1)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

PARIS

The darkness screamed with a thousand tortured voices.

Mine was the loudest.

Cold. So cold. Wrapped in a blanket of frozen thorns, trapped in the darkness. So lost. So broken.

Let me out!

Let me out!

Let me out!

I couldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. I—

I shot awake with a raging headache, the essence of flowers streaming into me, wrapping a bolstering blanket around me.

What the hell? Hadn’t I just been dead? Yeah, dead. The vampire prick had killed me after…after…

Oh, Aidan. No, no, no. Please tell me that hadn’t been real.

But I could still taste his blood.

I wanted to puke my organs up and scream at Heaven to make this better. I couldn’t be alive wearing this shame.

Wait. Alive? How the fuck was I alive?

Kernels of pain burned in my chest, triggering a dull throb spreading up my neck to pulse behind my eyes.

“Where am I?” I spoke with a raspy voice.

And where was the water?

I pushed myself to my knees, wincing from the hammering in my skull.

The darkness again? The same thing that’d happened before I’d woken up on the ice. Had it really just happened a second time?

Ugh. I rubbed at my throat, checking my neck. Not broken, a living heart pumping blood around my body. I stood up, making sure I still had my stakeblade. Yep, present. And the crystal dagger lingered off to the side.

Okay, so this wasn’t a replay of the Albion Nest thing. No finding a new dagger here in these gardens, a mound of earth beside me.

A grave? My grave?

What the hell was going on?

I swayed slightly, giving my brain a chance to catch up. Silvanus had killed me. I remembered it clearly, just like the rest of it. He’d picked me up and broken my neck. Lights out for me.

I’d died. I’d felt myself die in his hands. Last time I checked, I didn’t have the power to come back from death. Most didn’t.

So, why was I alive?

Ugh. Here we go. No clarity, more brain ache.

I jammed my hands into my pockets, rocking on my heels, thinking through a pounding head.

Failing to piece anything together again, I inspected my surroundings. Reveling in the immense wave of energy coming at me.

Encased inside a glass dome, the first hints of sunrise painting the sky beyond in oranges and purples.

Pretty.

A garden spread around me in a circle. Rich green grass rippled at my feet. Bushes and ferns and trees lined a curling stone path. Colorful flowers swayed in greeting, spread around me like an army of floral rainbows.

Wow. This garden was a buffet for an elf.

Ivy crawled up some of the dome, and in the middle of the garden were fruit trees. A whole variety of them from apples to plums to oranges.

Jasmine released its pleasant bouquet into the air, the scent intensifying in my presence.

Was jasmine the king’s favorite? I’d never asked him. Why would I? Who gave a fuck? He’d killed me. Fucked me, drunk from me, caused me to sin in the giddy heights of yum.

The man could plow. Hard. But there wasn’t anything good in that. He’d poisoned my soul, forever changed me in the eyes of Aidan. Shit, I could already feel the disappointment like a slug’s slime on my skin, never leaving, the memory always there.

Me against the wall, him inside me…

Yes…

No…

I gave my brain a slap to shut the hell up, clocking my outfit. Clean, no blood, no dirt.

“How am I alive?” I asked aloud, as if someone would answer.

At least it wasn’t the crop top.

I took a slow walk along the path, heading toward the part of the dome facing the ocean.

Obviously, I was still inside the palace, but not a thrall anymore. The space the bond occupied was empty, a dirty hole I’d never allowed to be filled again.

It wasn’t an empty feeling, but pure relief. Him killing me had set me free. However I’d come back, at least I’d never have to drink his blood again.

I’d rather die for real.

Stop thinking about him!

How couldn’t I think about him? Even temporarily dying hadn’t removed the lingering vibration of his tongue, the traces of his scent. I touched where he’d bitten me, feeling nothing there. But was there a scar? A physical branding as well as a mental one?

Scraping stone on my spine, his lips—

I pressed on with my walk in the garden, keeping low and vigilant, staying on constant alert while the pain in my head threatened to explode like a watermelon with a stick of dynamite up its arse.

Stop. Thinking. About. Him.

I arrived at a small pond, a bench beside it. Lily pads speckled the water, a frog sitting on the one closest to me.

Frogs were super cute, and this was one of those vibrant blue ones with black eyes indigenous to the Human Domain. It sat there, chilling, minding its own business.

“Must be nice,” I muttered.

Beyond the pond, I spotted a closed glass door leading to the outside.

Awesome. I made a beeline for it.

Hiss.

I froze, a row of holly bushes trembling happily to my right.

Hiss.

“Medusa?”

She slithered onto the path, her scales pulsating with emerald light.

“What—”

Within the blink of an eye, she went from a snake to a fully grown woman.

“What the fuck?”