I never wanted to give her the opportunity to look at me that way or feel she had a single reason to gloat.
Because I know a priceless truth: when someone has done everything in their power to mangle your wings beyond recognition, to slice them to shreds so that they can never be used, there is only one way to win.
Fly.
RISING
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world
The master calls a butterfly.
—RICHARD BACH
Live without your sunlight, love without your heartbeat
I WOKE IN THAT RARE, smooth, focused mood that told me I was either under attack or Ryodan had spelled me into a healing slumber again. Given my fragmented memories, it was the latter.
I sat up, glancing around in the dim light. The room was huge, with high transomed ceilings of ornate, dark tiles, the walls wainscoted black. To my right was an enormous fire in a hearth that filled half the wall, a black leather sofa and chairs, a dark coffee table, above which hung a single shimmering cut-crystal chandelier, reflecting hundreds of tiny flames.
I was alone, in a high-backed, black-velvet bed, tangled in black silk sheets.
I could smell him on the sheets. Picture him too easily here, naked, powerful, savage yet controlled, those cool silvery eyes glittering hot, bloodred with beast. I knew how he fucked, like a man on fire. Uninhibited, raw, one hundred percent focused. I’d watched him when I was far too young to have seen it, yet old enough to have shivered with awareness. Clutching a fistful of silk to my nose, I inhaled. It was a violent turn-on, slamming lust painfully awake and alive. I’d never once gotten to have the kind of sex I wanted to have, the way I lived my life, at a headlong, all-out run, wild, unrestrained.
Torture.
I thrust the sheet away and began sorting through disjointed memories.
Ryodan finding me on the floor at Sanctuary, rolling me in a blanket, tossing me over his shoulder, carrying me. A brief flash of Chester’s nightclub, then darkness.
Ryodan demanding I wake, drink a protein shake, wake, drink more. Fighting with him, wanting only to sleep. A gloved hand behind my head. Liquid poured down my throat, being threatened with a feeding tube again.
No matter how far off the deep end I went, he always brought me back.
Balor. The memory slammed into my mind laced with pure adrenaline and I tensed.
Holy soul-sucking fiends, I needed to talk to Ryodan, to the Shedon! We had to find Balor but more importantly we had to figure out how to kill him, since even my staggering power had proven ineffectual against the god. My first blast alone would have blown any Fae to bits. Yet all I’d managed to do to the deadly, rapacious Balor was wound his leg.
Exhaling gustily, I scraped my long tangled hair from my face. And blinked, staring down at my hands. Both were coal black. In one of my fists was a tangle of raven curls. In the other was a tangle of red. I shoved up one sleeve, then the next. Thorns on both arms.
I surged from the bed and tried to decide which of five doors led to the bathroom. I opened the nearest and blinked, staring. It looked familiar but it was hard to tell with every piece of furniture shattered. Even the walls and floors had deep gashes slashed into them, as if massive, lethal talons had been turned against them in fury.
After a long moment I recognized the bits of furniture, so similar to mine. It was the room Ryodan had tattooed me in, that I’d thought was his private chamber but was only the anteroom to the true private chamber within. Wait—what? I stood, processing the shambles. It was furnished exactly how it had been when he’d tattooed me. Holy mimicking monkeys, I’d aped his taste, not the other way around! And I hadn’t even realized it. I was the copycat. My mood soured.
I slammed that door and tried the next. A kitchen. He didn’t have my exact counters but they were damned close. I slammed that door and opened the third then stood, hesitating on the threshold.
I’d found the bathroom and it sported an entire wall of mirrors—in anyone else’s abode but Ryodan’s, those silver glasses would have made me uneasy—yet abruptly, I wasn’t in such a hurry to look at myself anymore. I had a damn good idea what I’d find.
Shaking my head, bracing myself, I stalked to the mirror.
And gasped.
I yanked up my shirt, unbuttoned the fly of my jeans, dropped them and stared, abruptly so angry I couldn’t breathe.
The only parts of me that weren’t black was half my hair, half my face, and a fist-sized spot on my stomach. My left eye was full black. Deep within fiery sparks glinted. I had a Hunter eye. Bloody hell.
I stood there a long moment, battling emotions so intense I didn’t know what to do with them. I wanted to box them. Knew I could. Simply pack it all up and get back out there in the world and see what happened next. Deal with whatever did. That was the way I lived.
“And how’s that been working out for you so far?” I muttered at my reflection sarcastically.
Not so well. Ryodan was right. Boxing the things that bothered me was, long-term, deadly. It was past time I faced things, and not just the state of my body.
I tugged my jeans back up, dropped my shirt, then stared at my reflection, eyes meeting eyes, telling myself what I’ve always told myself: it is what it is. Find the silver lining. Throw that head back and belly up a laugh. It’s just another adventure. Greet it, master it.
It didn’t work. Because it wasn’t this time.
This adventure was stealing me away from my world as surely and inevitably as Balor had been wresting my soul from my body.
My adventures were supposed to happen here, in my city, with my friends who were finally back. With Ryodan. He was here. We wanted each other. We’d finally engaged in that long overdue dance of lust and…well, who knew what else…I was being yanked from the dance floor against my will.
The thing I’d hated the most about being caged was being shut away from the world, cut off from it. I’d hungered for OLDER and OUTSIDE because, deep down, I’d had the same dreams as everyone else, only superhero-sized. I’d been raised by those dreams, unfolding on the television in front of my lonely, riveted, intensely impressionable gaze. One day I, too, would have friends, a place to belong. I’d date, maybe even go to university. Dance. Fall in young love like I did with Dancer. Maybe fall in love again. That was how it worked on those shows.
But my time was running out. Fast.
I suddenly understood how Dancer must have felt, with his damaged heart, his loathing of clocks, his refusal to wear a watch, his abject rejection of the relentless march of time.
But my heart wasn’t damaged, and Ryodan’s was immortal, and I’d had every reason to believe we had plenty of time.
One kiss and two days later, BOOM—I was untouchable. If I were a character in a novel, I’d snipe the bitch who wrote my life this way.