Chapter 6

E verything is muddled around me and I can't make sense of my world, my life, my mind. I don't know what's real. Can't tell the difference between soul-wrenching nightmares and long-forgotten dreams.

My mother. My family. My only family.

Skylar Moreau.

They're gone.

Princess of the Bay.

He died in my arms.

Daniel and Evelyn were there. They killed my men. They took them from me, and then they took me.

Blood. So much blood. So many bodies scattered on the ground.

Dead.

The parking lot was chaotic. There were people running everywhere.

Dead.

My mother.

Dead.

I remember.

Dead .

"You fall, I fall— "

Hunter's dead.

"Where are they?" I scream.

The person holding me, stealing me, pauses and tightens their arms around my body as they murmur, "They're gone."

Stone is dead.

Maddox is dead.

Gage is dead.

Nyx is dead.

They're all dead, and I…I'm in the darkness.

I want to stay here forever. Because my life without them is nothing. Without them, I am nothing.

My heart cleaves in two, and I let it. My surroundings go black, and I let them. My mind turns to ash and flames and pain, and I let it. The numbness claws at my insides, and I let it.

I welcome it.

But when the room spins, and my eyes drift shut, it's not the darkness that greets me, embracing me like an old, familiar friend.

It's the memories. It's my past. Everything I've long since forgotten. Things that were once tucked away for safekeeping—held until this exact moment as if my mind knew this was coming.

And as the first vision flickers to life and dread coils in my gut, I realize that the memories I'd wished and prayed would return for all those years were better left dead.