20. Ava

AVA

I fought in vain against the arm which crushed my rib cage. But before I could scream, a hand covered my open mouth.

I inhaled something sweet-smelling. And familiar.

It was the same drug used on Liath.

He held a wet rag against my nose and mouth.

I could do nothing against the flood of panic and gasped in blind fear. Whoever took Liath had come for me.

I’d pushed him too far. I dug too hard.

I didn’t really believe it, but it was now an unavoidable fact: he was going to murder me.

I kicked and flailed my fists, trying to stop him from dragging me into the van, but gray dots formed on the stone wall opposite me. The edges of my vision started to blur.

My fingers uncurled from his hands. My toes scrapped uselessly across the asphalt as a powerful sleepiness overwhelmed me.

I could no longer resist the heavy pull of sleep.

This was it .

It was over.

The hands were torn off me and I collapsed, my eyes rolling back as I fell.

The impact of the cold, hard ground was like a bucket of icy water.

With my cheek resting against the pavement, my vision cleared enough to see a large man with beefy shoulders being shoved against the nearby wall. His head snapped back with a sickening crack and he stumbled, reaching behind him for something to catch him.

I lay paralyzed as Scáth lunged for him.

With complete detachment, I watched him drive a knife into the larger man’s gut.

He pulled it back drenched in blood which splattered hot across my face.

Scáth stabbed the man again and again, his arms moving with such steely precision.

I heard cries of pain, and then my attacker collapsed, his face slamming down to the pavement in front of me.

His vacant eyes stared past me and his mouth hung open in a final silent scream, his skin already growing pale with death, a sticky pool of red spreading around him.

As the edges of my vision closed in, another memory slammed into me.

“Where are you?” I sang out. “Ready or not, here I come!”

My words echoed off the walls, light and carefree, as I skipped into the room, a playful smile tugging at my lips.

But the second I stepped inside, the world dropped out from under me.

I froze, a gasp loosening from my lips .

A younger Scáth stood there, towering over the body of a man, his broad shoulders tense but his breaths steady, controlled.

My gaze lowered to the unmoving figure at his feet, my voice dying in my throat. The face was turned away, and I couldn’t make out who it was.

I’d never seen a human skin so pale. It wasn’t just bloodless. It was translucent.

My footsteps as I tiptoed closer were muffled by the oriental rug.

“Is he…?” I dared to ask, my voice barely a whisper.

My heart hammered in my chest, but it wasn’t fear that gripped me. Not horror.

I looked up at Scáth, and he met my eyes with that same cold, unrepentant stare.

“He won’t ever hurt you again.”

There wasn’t a shred of guilt in his voice, no apology. He didn’t even flinch.

I swallowed hard, trying to make sense of the storm of emotions swirling inside me.

And to my surprise, the sharp knot of tension in my chest loosened. A strange sense of calm washed over me, like something heavy had been lifted off my chest.

I was safe.

Lying on the ground, staring at my dead attacker, my blinking grew slower and slower as I was pulled under.

Scáth approached me, his icy eyes cold and intense; his chiseled face covered with his skeleton half-mask was speckled with a spray of red.

But for some reason, I wasn’t afraid.

His bloody hands reached for me as the blackness swallowed me whole.

I woke up groggy, my head pounding. My limbs felt impossibly heavy, like I was trying to move through water. My mouth was dry and tasted like old pennies.

My eyelids fluttered open, but the room around me blurred into indistinct shapes, moonlight filtering through the curtains.

For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was or how I’d gotten here.

My bed. I was in my bed.

I shifted, trying to sit up, but my body protested. It was like every muscle had forgotten how to work, my movements slow, clumsy.

I reached for my bedside lamp and turned it on, wincing as even the soft glow hurt my eyes.

Panic bubbled up in my chest as flashes of the last thing I remembered swam to the surface—the attacker’s hand covering my mouth, the sickly-sweet scent of chloroform, and then…

Scáth.

His nearness had flooded my senses before everything went dark.

My breath hitched, and I ran my trembling hands over my blankets, grounding myself in the familiar texture, but something still felt off.

Did he do something to me when I was under?

I squeezed my eyes shut and explored my body with my hands.

I was clothed, in one of my silk nightgowns. But I didn’t have a bra or underwear on .

My wrists and forearms hurt from where the attacker gripped me. And my head felt stuffed as if with cotton wool. But I didn’t feel bruised down there.

He must have undressed me. But where were my bloody clothes that I had been wearing?

I remember the hot spray of blood on my face. I touched my cheeks, exploring with my fingers, but they were clean when I pulled them away.

I glanced over to my dresser mirror to double-check. But my face looked clean.

Damn. He must have cleaned me up, too.

I smelled my hair. Jasmine. He’d washed my hair, too.

I glanced to my bedside table where my phone lay charging.

Beside my bed was my bag and after a quick look through, it seemed he’d left everything, my schoolbooks, my notebook, my wallet.

I couldn’t say he wasn’t a thoughtful stalker.

To my surprise, there wasn’t a lily by the bedside.

I supposed he was too busy disposing of the body and our bloody clothes to bother with flowers.

I snatched my phone and typed out a message to Scáth.

Me: What did you do with the body?

Scáth: Don’t know what you’re talking about.

My blood curdled as the memory I’d uncovered just before blacking out crashed back into my mind, sharp and unrelenting.

That faceless figure, lying motionless at the feet of a seventeen-year-old Scáth.

He had killed for me before—I knew that much—but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember who .

If only I could remember more. More about him. His name.

If I had that, I could do my research, dig through records like any good journalist, and find out whom he’d killed and why.

But of course, Scáth, or whatever the hell his name really was, had no interest in giving me that.

He hadn’t even told me his real name, for God’s sake.

Why was he so hell-bent on keeping me in the dark? Why did he need to hide everything?

But one thing was clear: he’d killed for me once. And last night, he killed for me again.

And now he was acting like none of it had even happened.

My mind raced, questions crashing into each other. Was he messing with me? Lying straight to my face? Or was this part of some twisted game, to keep me off-balance, to erase any evidence in a message trail?

Either way, something was seriously wrong with him.

He was dangerous. There was no denying it anymore.

I swallowed hard, my mouth dry, my hands trembling as I realized the weight of it.

I couldn’t just let him walk. Right?

But then— Shit! —did he take back the evidence? What if he had covered his tracks?

I scrambled for the dresser, yanking open the drawer and pulling out the jewelry box, my pulse thudding in my ears. With shaking fingers, I pried it open.

To my relief, the vile contents were still inside, staring right back at me.

I shuddered and snapped the box shut .

The jewelry box felt heavy in my hands, the small object rolling against the edges every time I shifted. I stared down at it, my mind racing faster than I could process.

This was my proof—my key to bringing him down.

I have to turn him in.

I had to tell someone. What I knew. What I remembered.

I’d tell Ebony once she got home—she’d know what to do. She always knew what to do.

But as I held the box tighter, the gravity of what I was about to do settled over me like a weight I wasn’t sure I could bear.

A sudden period cramp made me drop the box. It fell in among my blankets.

I clutched my stomach and let out a cry.

Fucking period.

Ebony had prescribed me pills for the pain, but I knew from experience that I had to move fast. My pain pills were in my bathroom in the medicine cabinet.

Gasping for breath, I clutched my dresser to steady myself on my feet. I turned toward the bathroom.

But as I took a step forward, another cramp doubled me over, stealing the air from my lungs as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I collapsed to my knees as white-hot pain laced through my belly.

Fear twisted with the pain of my cramp to make me nauseous; this one was going to be even worse than usual. And ‘usual’ was fucking hell on earth.

I felt the emptiness of the mansion swell out around me. I felt the loneliness of crying out and no one caring.

No one coming to my side.

No one caring .

I started crawling toward my bathroom door, one arm gripped over my midsection, because it felt like otherwise my intestines were going to spill out.

On one shaking hand I tried to tug myself forward. My feet slid slowly across the rug, my knee-high socks snapping with static electricity that barely registered because of how dominating my cramps were.

Sweat broke out across my forehead and I panted between whimpers, but the bathroom appeared just as far away as it had before and I was completely spent.

Tears distorted the impossibly far away bathroom door. I felt completely helpless as I cried.

I heard my bedroom door open and I sobbed in relief. Ebony must have just gotten home.

“Ebony, please, I—”

But it was not my mother who entered my bedroom.

It was Scáth.