11

D ane Dalton doesn’t know what ChapStick is.

The message that probably took him all day to type stares at me as I sit in the library.

Dane: Where do I find ChapStick and what does it look like?

To annoy him, I’ve so far waited three hours since receiving the text. Instead of going to combat training with the twins for some extra credit with Valin, I came back to the library to read more of this book. Well, read what I can. Basically, none of it makes any sense to me. I’ve even hunted for books to help translate certain words and phrases and symbolic meanings, but it seems it’s a dead language of which there’s absolutely no trace in the history section.

That’s strange. All the other realms have shelves upon shelves of research, yet I have one tattered book that better not give me a rash.

I scratch my arm impulsively and chew my lip.

Surely there must be more? I could ask our history professor, but I fear being trapped in a room with him. He reminds me of Slenderman and, from what I’ve heard, is a cannibal.

The librarian also looks like she wants to eat me, so I don’t bother asking for any assistance, even though she’s been watching me for the past hour.

I sip on my fruit juice while I flip through pages and take notes—mostly scribbles of faces and three-dimensional houses as I try to figure out what the hell certain equations mean.

Eventually, I give up and slam the book shut with a loud thud, pushing it across the table.

I cross my arms and ankles before slouching in the chair. Annoyance and something similar to deflation have me sighing and huffing as I stare at the papers before me.

“There you are! I snuck away from combat class to come sit with you,” Poppy says with a huge grin. It falters when she sees my expression. “Cheer up. It’s Wednesday.”

“Although it’s Friday, there’s nothing good about Wednesdays, Poppy.” Her smile drops completely, and I instantly regret my words. “I mean…” I sigh and lean forward. “In the human world, I used to hate mid-week. It dragged in, and all I wanted to do was go out on a Friday night, get drunk, and dance until my feet fell off.”

The smile thankfully returns, and she’s intrigued. I know for a fact that she’ll fit in so well. She’s mesmerized by everything human.

Sitting across from me, she rests her chin in her palm. “Your feet fell off when you danced?”

I can always count on Poppy to cheer me up. “It’s a figure of speech.”

She giggles. “Humans are so different from us, so I never know what’s serious and what’s not. I know my sister can be moody with it, but can you tell me more about your kind?”

“What do you want to know?”

Her eyes light up, bright and alive. “Everything.”

My plan to message Dane back with some snarky response floats from my mind and takes flight out the window as I go into hours upon hours of details. From being young and playing in the yard, to going to a normal school and experiencing life as a teen. Poppy listens to every word as I tell her about high school, about sneaking out of the house to get drunk with my friends and then sneaking back in. She gasps when I tell her about the game of dares that landed me my first kiss with the school’s bad boy, and that he turned out to be a terrible kisser.

Blushing through each story, Poppy stays with me until it’s dark outside, and she has more than enough to keep her fascination with humans at bay.

She even asks me how she would be able to have a relationship with a human and tells me she wants to have a family one day. Her partner, she explains, is fun, but she can never see a future with him.

She wants happiness and peace and love.

Without thinking, I tell her all three of those exist—an instant thought that makes me question myself. I’ve never once found happiness. As I said, I grew up in the system. Peace is make-believe in my world, and love… I can’t imagine being in love.

But telling my friend that she could have all three puts a huge smile on her face. It has her clapping and laughing and getting excited about graduating.

She has a pure heart.

When Poppy and I finish up, she eyes the large, tattered book. “What’s this?”

I shrug. “I wanted to know more about Dane.” When she gives me a knowing look, I sigh. “For educational purposes obviously. I should know who I’m partnered up with, right?”

“You have no idea who he is, do you?”

“Of course not,” I reply. “Tell me. Please.”

“Dane’s from an extinct realm. He was the heir, but some people now know him as the Prince of Darkness. When their world perished, most of them lost the ability to contain their power, but somehow he kept all of his. Dane doesn’t have full control. But yeah… It was pretty nasty from what I’ve heard.”

I tuck the heavy book back into the hiding spot I chose on the third row of shelves. “Can you tell me what you know?”

She bites her lip. “It’s not my story to tell. All of them… the survivors, they lost a lot. I’m surprised Dane got out before the explosion.”

“When?”

Poppy glances behind me then around us, making sure no one is near. “A long time ago. He’s been searching the realms ever since.”

I frown. “Searching for what?”

“I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to tell. Some things are kept secret for a reason.”

The line between my brows deepens. “I don’t understand.”

“Keep this between us. I’m sure I overheard him talking about a blade. Him and Orsen were looking for it. That’s the only information I can give you.”

My brow furrows even further. “A blade?”

Poppy blows a bubble with her gum, pops it on her finger, then rips it off with her teeth. “I need to go. Speak to you later?”

I nod, confused. “Sure.”

She skips out of the library.

I turn back to the table, drop my bag, and go for the book again.

Hours later, no further forward with my research, I’m woken by the librarian slapping me hard and telling me to get out before she turns me into a puddle of vomit.

A shiver wracks through my body as I stare her down, paper stuck to my cheek. She eventually straightens her spine and goes back to her desk to stamp floating books.

As I check my phone on the way to the dorm room, I notice it’s two in the morning, and I received a message from Dane half an hour ago.

Dane: C109

That’s all.

I stop walking and stare, unsure of what this means.

The classrooms are all labeled like that, or maybe he sent it by accident?

C stands for the cult studies corridor, and the 1 stands for the first floor, door nine.

Me: ???

I know he’ll take forever to respond, so I click off my phone and make my way to the cult studies corridor. It’s late. Dark. The usual harrowing screams are silent, but I can feel eyes on me. I’m being watched as I walk through the darkness.

I grab a candelabra from a table sitting outside one of the classrooms, using it to guide me. The soft glow from the flames licks the walls, and if it wasn’t for the eeriness of the entire situation, I’d say this was a nice aesthetic.

If Wi-Fi were a thing here, I’d take a picture and post it to one of my socials.

I’ll make do with seeing it and living in the moment.

Something moves in the distance then, and I stop in my tracks.

“Dane?”

No response.

A hiss of a snake comes from behind, but as I gasp and spin towards the sound, there’s nothing there.

I gulp down my fear. I should be asleep or heading to my bed, not hunting down Dane Dalton of all people. This could potentially be a prank he’s pulling, where I step into the class and he and his friends do something to me.

I think I’ll slap him if he’s messing with me.

My nerves catch fire as another hiss sounds, further down the corridor, straight towards door nine. I want to turn and run, to get away from the potential threat, but I don’t. My feet move without thinking, the clicks of my heels filling the still silence of the corridor.

I’m a little scared, but I’m also intrigued to keep going.

It’s like something is drawing me in. Like I’m being lassoed down the corridor. The candelabra is heavy, and my bicep burns, but instead of placing it down, I tighten my grip on it.

My unsteady breaths echo through the pin-dropping quietness. A chill creeps up my arms, coldness encasing me, and the faint sound of a piano playing has me stopping outside C102.

I push the door open, and a box sitting on the professor’s desk glows brighter than the candles in my grasp. It rattles on the desk, but the only noise that comes is the keys of the piano.

Around the edges of the box, a bright glow of a white light beams through. Then the box rattles hard. A slam. No—more of a smack against a skull. The thud of someone’s head hitting a hard surface. Again and again. Crack. Crack. Crack.

The closer I get, the more my heart races. I’m terrified but can’t stop my hand reaching out for the lock.

“Mortal.”

I nearly drop the candelabra as Dane appears in the doorway, holding his side, black blood oozing between his fingers.

“Do not open that, or we’re all dead.”

I step towards him, away from the screeching screams. “What happened to you?”

He doesn’t shove me away as I close the distance and take in his appearance. I set the candles aside, their glow highlighting the side of his face. A fresh bruise sits on his cheek.

“I’m fine. I just need assistance.” The words are shaky, and his voice is off.

Dark liquid drips from his nose.

A lick of rage has my teeth gritting together. The words, seethed, are out before I can stop them. “Who did this to you?”

“It’s amusing that you think you can do something I’m incapable of.” He gestures to the doorway. “And you’re in the wrong room.”

“I heard something,” is all I reply as I follow the Prince of Darkness, leaving the candles behind.

Dane doesn’t reply to me, but I keep right behind him, looking around us for the hissing snake or the singing killer. The closeness—I’m nearly stepping on the back of his shoes—is unnecessary, considering I’m not actually scared.

Yet here I am.

We reach C109, and before he opens the door, he glances over his shoulder. “I needed someone with no powers. Don’t think I’m bringing you here for a repeat of what happened the other night.”

I hum. “And here I thought you were surprising me with roses and chocolates.”

He rolls his eyes, holding his side as his blood drips down his pants.

Screw him—he can lick his own wound.

He opens the door to reveal numerous weapons sitting in the middle of the room and scattered across the floor. The place is destroyed.

“What happened?” I ask as Dane closes and locks the door, trapping me in here with him. “You’re not one of those kinky demons who like dub-con, right? My safe word is not pineapple.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” He winces as he lets go of his side, leans down to grab a large diamond, and places it on the professor’s desk. “I need you to open this, that’s all.”

“You want me to open a diamond? Are you for real? They’re specially made by pressurized—”

“Stop. Speaking.” Dane rudely slams his hand on the table. It’s covered in blood. His blood. “Do you take anything seriously? You do all that research on me and still try to provoke me? Do you have any idea what I could do to you without even blinking?”

I straighten my spine, attempting to make myself seem taller, confident, and hopefully a little intimidating. “You don’t scare me.”

“Then you’re as dumb as I assume all humans to be.”

“Hey, have you forgotten we’re partnered up for everything? Stop treating me like I’m worthless and show me some respect.”

Dane looks bored as he shoves one hand into his pocket. “No. Can you open this or not?”

I cannot believe this guy.

“Tell me how you got hurt and I will.” I have no idea why I said that, or why I have the urge to know, to hunt down the person responsible and rip them to shreds.

Sighing, he pulls his hand out of his pocket, takes his other hand from his wound, and begins to undo the buttons of his stained white shirt. I feign indifference, but the sight of him stripping down his top half with only the moon shining through the window is fascinating. I allow my gaze to trace his chest, the powerful muscles there, the ridges of his abs and his hips, coated in blood.

“Why is your blood black?”

He freezes as the shirt slips from both arms. “Because it is. Why is your blood red?”

“Because I’m normal.”

“Nothing about you is normal, human.” He leans against a student’s desk, showing me the deep gash at his ribs. “I tried to open the diamond and it sensed my magic, so it struck me. It has information I need.”

“A diamond beat you up, and you think I’m the weak one?”

His patience is nearly nonexistent. Good. “It won’t be able to trace any power from you, and you’ll be able to pull the scroll free.”

I stare at the diamond, which is no bigger than my palm. “And how do I do that?”

In a foreign language I can only assume to be from his world, Dane mutters a sentence that sounds like it could hurt my tongue. His eyes flicker to a soft silver, not the bright version I’ve seen a few times. With the wound beginning to heal itself, he says the five words again. Are they even words?

“You sound a little Russian.”

He scowls as he repeats the sentence again, and the sliced flesh begins to knit together, little thin black tendrils crisscrossing, closing the wound.

The creature can heal himself. I have no chance of ever winning against him.

His eyes don’t leave mine, and an odd sensation has me swallowing melting ice. Is it hot in here? Did I drop the candles and they’re currently spreading fire through the castle? That would make sense, unlike this nonsense about me opening a diamond for a scroll.

Dane stands, stretches his side to test the skin, and then reaches down for his shirt. When he notices the blood on it, he crushes the fabric with his fist and tosses it aside.

Realization dawns on me. “Why didn’t you heal yourself before coming for me?”

Looking from me to the ground, he shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know…”

“Grab the diamond and read this out loud,” he says, handing me a piece of paper with the most illegible handwriting. “Say it clearly, and when your mind opens up to its power, you follow the humming noise and grab the scroll. As soon as you do, shut your mind off again, got it?”

No. “How do I say that?” I stare at the squiggly lines. “How is that pronounced in English?”

Dane looks like he wants to kill me. He’s impatient, yet patient. “Do as two, do as one.”

I curl my lip. “Sounds stupid.”

“Just fucking say it.”

I do, and the instant the last word drops from my mouth, so does everything around me. I’m falling, flying through colors, my stomach close to emptying with how fast I’m falling. I try to scream, but no sound comes out. Like a never-ending well I’ve toppled into, down and down I go.

My feet hit the bottom. I’m weightless in a sea of glitter, with tiny black dots—ash— floating around me. The oxygen is weird—it feels like water in my lungs, yet I can breathe.

The silhouettes in my bedroom walls are here, or maybe I just think they are. The dog is barking, frantically running from left to right down one wall, the other has a couple pointing to the right, and the little girl walks with me until we reach a wooden door full of fragments of glass.

I can see my reflection. And it stops me. I’m me but older, and my eyes are silver. She’s saying something I can’t hear, and she has a terrified expression. I blink, and a younger, more present version of myself stares back.

I can see the scroll. It’s near a window, one that I walk towards and peek out to see a humongous castle. Instead of white bricks and looking like something inviting from a kid’s movie, it seems to be more of a horror style. Everything is shrouded in blacks and grays and… death.

So much death.

That explains why it’s so cold here.

I look up, and above the tallest tower is a spiral vortex, angry and fast, taking up the entire sky. The other night, while Dane and I did task two, that was above us. Maybe not this specific one, but one of them.

Where am I?

The world around me stills—even the vortex halts its spinning—and I frown. Ice trickles against my neck and spine, sending shivers all over, and I have the feeling I’m no longer alone, as if I’ve been seen. Caught. Close to being a captive within this world.

I rush to the scroll, and as soon as my fingers touch it, everything around me warps into one color, but not before I turn to see a figure with horns charging at me with fire blazing from its body.

I scream, loud enough to hurt my own ears. I drop the scroll, bring my hands to my ears, and let out every bit of breath until the fear unravels and someone’s fingers are grabbing my chin.

“Breathe.” He shakes me. I know it’s Dane, but I’m slipping from this reality again, and I think something from that other world is trying to drag me back. “Breathe, you imbecile.”

Everything halts, and my eyes ping open. “Don’t you dare call me an imbecile after what you just made me do!”

He lets out a breath, drops his hands from my face, and settles his back against the desk in front of me. Both of us are on the ground. Both exhausted. “Fuck. You were in there for hours.”

Shaking my head, I stay as far away from the diamond as I can. “I was there barely minutes.”

“That’s how it works there. Time is different. The sun is already rising, mortal.”

He’s right. The moonlight creeping through the windows is gone, replaced by orange and yellow hues filling the sky.

He’s still shirtless. I try not to look again. But this time, I’m catching a glimpse of more symbols beneath the dried blood, inked words that make no sense. I want to trace each piece of ink. A forbidden image infiltrates my head and has me gaping at myself, of me dragging my tongue up each ab before dropping to my knees. I… I wasn’t thinking about that.

I glance up at Dane, and he averts his gaze.

“You need to stop,” he says.

I raise a brow. “Stop what?”

“Everything. Stop trying to figure out my history. You will find nothing. You can stop spending hours in the library with my father’s book.”

Of course he knows about that.

“What is your reason for looking into my past?”

I shrug, picking invisible lint from my skirt. “I wanted to make sure you’re not going to morph into a dragon while you’re inside me.”

He visibly pales, and I chuckle at his horrifying expression.

Dane gets to his feet, not offering a hand to help me up. “Making jokes about our future unfortunate events is immature.”

“If you want to survive in my world, grow a sense of humor.”

“No.”

His war cry.

I peek up, finding him already watching me. Dane chews his lip, his eyes following my movements as I try to fix my hair and straighten my clothes. “Thank you, mortal. I’ve been trying to obtain that scroll for weeks.”

“Sera,” I correct, trying not to blush from the intensity of his gaze. “And you didn’t give me much of a choice now, did you?”

“No.” He smirks as I shake my head, and I’m definitely going to get flashes of that while pleasuring myself later. “Accept gratitude when offered it and drop it.”

“Fine. You’re welcome. If you ever ask me to do something like that again, I’ll make task five hell for you. Can I go now?”

He stares at me, calculating which task that is, and then nods once.

But as I shoulder past him, skin blistering from the touch, Dane clears his throat and speaks when I reach for the door handle. “You didn’t respond to me earlier. Are you even taking these tasks seriously?”

I spin on my heels, my skirt swishing in the air from the momentum. “You better be kidding me right now.”

Dane takes a step. “Task three’s deadline is in forty hours.”

I cross my arms and lean against the door. “Shame. I wanted a few more days to practice with my pillow.” He doesn’t get it, so I huff. “You can come to my room tomorrow. The rules are for it to be done five times, and for all five to be more than a minute long. Think you can handle that?”

“Can you?” he counters.

We stare at each other, and I’m so sure he’s taken another step, I’m almost compelled to do the same, but I keep my back firmly pressed to the door. “Have you ever kissed someone before?”

His jaw tenses. “Yes. I have.”

“Because you sleep around in the academy?”

Annoyingly, he smirks again, taking one more step. “I definitely don’t sleep around, mortal.”

“Sera.”

“No.”

I tilt my head to give him some smart retort, but I fail as his shoe lifts across the ground and he moves even closer.

“Fine,” I say. “Prove it.”

My heart rate accelerates to a dangerous pace as he rests both of his hands on the door at each side of my head. “Prove what?”

“That you can handle it,” I reply, tipping my chin up so I can hold eye contact.

He laughs. “I mean every offense when I say this, but I’d rather rip out my own heart and feed it to the wolves.”

“You’re such a dick.”

I knock his arm away, but he captures me by the shirt to stop me from walking through the door.

“Wait.”

One word. One demand. Firmly said through his teeth.

I slap his hand away. “You’re the demon version of whiplash. What do you want?”

He waves a finger, and balls of shadows fly to the windows, shrouding us in darkness. “I just remembered I’m busy tomorrow, and I can’t risk failing.”

He walks into the middle of the room and sits, elbows on his knees, waiting. “Can you risk failing, mortal?”

I gulp, bite my lip, then rub my arm. “No. I guess not.”

He hums, a deep sound from his chest. It travels across the room and settles right between my legs. “Then…” He wets his lips. “Come here.”