50. Pandora

Everything was closing in on me, the walls of Reform Hall pressing against me as I navigated the echoing hallways—needing a way out. My black hair, the curtain I often hid behind, swayed behind me with each step.

As I turned a corner, my heart lurched. Voidfire was there with the shadow demon girl who had cut me at Odyssey Bluff when Dreadful tossed Nebula in the lake.

Her eyes locked onto mine with malice. “You got Dreadful’s hand cut off, and she was kicked out of nobility because of you!”

“That was because of her,” I seethed, anger welling up inside me. “Actions have consequences. Has your soul healed from today yet?”

Her brown eyes narrowed into slits. “Shadeberry?”

The familiar shadow demon with brown hair and gray eyes smiled at me before a shadow tendril unfurled, striking me with the ferocity of a whip that caught me squarely in the throat.

Pain exploded in a white-hot burst, and I stumbled back, clutching my neck. The impact was enough to steal my breath, silencing my voice before I could fully form a protest.

Voidfire towered over me, her words dripping with venom. “You think you”re so special, Pandora Gravesend? You”re nothing. You should’ve never been able to kick Dreadful down so far!”

I tried to respond, but the pain in my larynx was overwhelming, a fierce reminder of the scars that marred my body, hidden beneath layers of clothing and wraps. My instinct to freeze kicked in again.

Nightwind stepped in, coming out of nowhere. He gently but firmly pulled Voidfire away, his voice a soothing balm in the charged atmosphere. “Voidfire, that”s enough,” he commanded, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Do you want her to suck out the rest of our souls?”

My brows furrowed. Hadn’t he just helped her cause issues in Serpentine Stadium today? Why would he stop her? Was he scared of me now?

“She wouldn’t,” Voidfire huffed but backed down under Nightwind”s gaze, her anger retreating like the tide.

“Do you want to take that chance?” Nightwind turned to me, his eyes soft with apology and a flicker of fear. “I’m sorry, Gravesend. We won”t bother you again,” he assured me, but the promise felt hollow against the throbbing in my throat.

I nodded, unable to voice anything as the familiar licking of magic healed my throat from the shadow tendril’s blow. The fear of being chained up again clawed at the edges of my mind.

“Stop,” I croaked at Voidfire. Her fear magic was funneling in on me.

I needed escape, needed air.

“Voidfire, what the fuck?” Nightwind pushed her back, and the magic released me.

I took that moment to slip away and run because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from devouring their souls.

I ran out of the building and off campus, my feet sinking in the sand with each pound of my flats against the soft grains, and I didn’t stop running until I made it to Odyssey Bluff.

This place would be my sanctuary, and those noble demons who had attacked me here wouldn’t take it away from me. The wind tousled my hair, and I felt it cascade over my skin, the sensation a reminder that I was here, I was alive, and I was free.

I lowered myself down to the sand next to the lake and wrapped my arms around my knees. The pain in my throat was just a steady memory now, each beat a reminder of the moments I had survived, of the abuse I had escaped. I breathed in the scent of the lake, and my fingers traced the scars on my thigh over the dressing.

I sat thereuntil the sun disappeared, and the full moon cast a spectral glow over the water, illuminating the colored rocks that lay tranquil at the bottom of the lake.

I’d survived my entire upbringing in pain, isolation, and despair. When would my pain and suffering be enough for the Fates?

The cold desert air wrapped around me like a frigid blanket, but it did nothing to quell the heat of my past scars, both physical and emotional.

A rustling in the darkness around me set my heart racing.

Panic, a familiar feeling as of late, clawed at my throat as shadows began to wither around me. Memories of my mother”s scorching, dripping shadow tendrils slicing into my flesh flooded back with the force of a tidal wave. The past was a chain I could never seem to break, and tonight, it tightened its grip tighter than it ever had before.

I jumped to my feet and ran, desperation making me faster than I ever thought was possible as I ascended the creaky, rickety bridge. It creaked and moaned under my weight, but I kept racing up it.

Shadow tendrils, dripping black like those that had once bound and tortured me daily, wrapped around my thigh, slicing to the bone with an imagined pain that was all too real.

Adrenaline pumped my legs faster. My throat burned as I tried to scream, a whisper of a yell the only sound I could make, the damage to my vocal cords a cruel reminder of the way Mother had stuffed her sharp tendrils down my throat.

Blood soaked me, warm and sticky, pouring out and down my leg, but as I reached the top of the bridge, I realized that I wasn’t bleeding. There was no blood at all. It was an illusion.

Had Voidfire followed me out here?

I ran faster. My foot turned beneath me on the uneven sand, and a sharp pain shot up my leg, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.

Escape was all that mattered.

“Pandora! Fucking stop! It’s just us!” Dex’s voice pierced the night. “Her pain is off. Her emotions, they’re all sour…”

Fear had its claws deep in my heart, and I couldn’t trust the voice that claimed to be Dex. The shadows had been too real, too much like those that my mother had wielded when I was trapped in her cellar, leaving my back, thigh, and stomach scarred and my voice a raspy whisper.

Shadows reached for me, but terror gripped me as I ran faster.

I had to get away.

There was a fear demon after me, that much was obvious. They were messing with me. But I wasn’t afraid of them, was I?

“Pandora Gravesend, stop fucking running!” Hemlock barked, but his words were like barbs squeezing in on my heart.

I froze, almost falling off the edge of the cliff. Looking down, my stomach twisted. It was a long drop to the water below.

I spun around quickly, my breaths coming in sharp, ragged pulls. The cold night air seared my lungs, and my heart pounded with fear. My wide eyes scanned the area, taking in Hemlock and Skel.

“Move away from the fucking cliff, princess!” Skel shouted, his voice as raw and rough as mine. The grip on his pipe was so tight his fingers were white.

“Don’t make a scene, brat. Come on,” Hemlock coaxed me as if I were a wild animal, hands up with his palms facing me.

“Pandora, you need to walk away from the cliff, now. Your emotions are killing me,” Dex whined, stepping out of the shadows between the other two.

“Why did you chase me like that?” I sobbed, choking on a breath. “I know you don’t like me, and that’s fine. I really don’t fucking like you guys now. But why would you do this? Can’t you see what you just did?”

“What did we do? Scare a fucking noble?” Hemlock snorted, but I could see the recognition in his bleary red eyes. He knew what he did to me. He knew he crossed a line.

A trembling smile pulled at my lips as I stared at the three of them.

They didn’t have a clue.

Hot tears fell from my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. “Just scared me? A noble?” A watery laugh escaped me. “You didn’t just scare a noble, Bram Hemlock. You traumatized a demon who was only deemed a noble five fucking months ago!”

He blinked in shock, his dark brows furrowing together. “What are you talking about? You’re Death’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I choked out. “But I was my mother’s daughter first. I was shackled in a dark cellar for my entire fucking life since I turned a year old. I was sliced into by her shadow tendrils daily because I couldn’t feed on the pain she gave me. Because she thought I was a shadow demon! I did, too, until she sliced my throat open to kill me, and my powers activated. I devoured her soul, and then Daryl found me because of my powers. He took me in. I’m still healing! Something the three of you seem damn sure you don’t want me to do!” My voice was so soft, low, and raspy, but all I wanted to do was scream at them. “I just want the pain to stop! I want to stop being afraid all of the time,” I wailed, shaking with sobs.

“Pandora,” Skel rasped, horror in his eyes. “I saw it. You. My Fates, it wasn’t an illusion. Darkmore really saw you like that…”

“Shut up,” Dex hissed at him. “Your pain is killing me, Pandora. Come here. Please. I’m eating everything you’re putting off, but it’s too much. I can’t remove that much pain. No shadow demon I know can.”

“We weren’t chasing you.” Skel’s voice broke, tears filling his red-rimmed green eyes in a glossy sheen. “We just wanted to talk, and then you heard us and took off, and my fear magic wouldn’t stop leaking. Pandora, I’m?—”

Their words bled together, and I couldn’t hear anything other than the pounding of my own heartbeat and the anguish lancing through my chest.

“This pain is suffocating me, and I can’t do it anymore!” The truth tore from me, raw and vulnerable and on display to the three men who were more my enemies than friends.

One misstep, a twist of my ankle, and suddenly, I was falling backward. The sandy ground slipped out from under me.

“Pandora!”

The three of them lurched forward, but they were frozen in their place as my soul and magic exploded like a supernova, draining my magic reserves until there was nothing left.

Five matebonds lashed out of me and violently snapped into place, binding me to my fated mates—my soulmates.

As I free-fell through the air toward the lake below, I noticed that three of those bonds were connected to the men screaming my name up on the cliff, but it was too late.

The lake’s cold embrace swallowed me whole, and as I sank down to its depths, the last thing I saw wasn’t the shocked, horrified expressions of Dex, Hemlock, or Skel. It was the moon, a silent witness to how unfavored I was by the Fates.