Tonight, I was defying everything and everyone.
Because when she looked up at me like she was doing now, lips parted in awe of me, a curiosity dancing in her irises, I didn’t care anymore about the Order or to whom she belonged. All I cared about, as the music fell into the background of my deprivation, was trying to be here with her.
“I’m not very good at this,” I confessed, weakened. My knuckles grazed Fallon’s blushing cheek, uncaring of the consequences. I’d drank the poison and had become mindless.
Fallon’s delicate fingers reached for my mask. I snatched her wrist and shook my head before she could.
Her lips moved. Trust me, she’d said, but only the music pounded in my ears. I unlinked my fingers from around her wrist, trusting her. Because in the midst of wrongs, I wanted to get this one thing right. She rolled up my mask from the bottom, revealing only my mouth. The pad of her thumb stroked my bottom lip. The touch flared a wave of heat inside me.
My heartbeat dropped like a bass. Fallon lifted onto her toes. And her lips were on mine.
Soft, gentle, fragile, and shock and horror coursed through me because I’d never kissed anyone, never wanted to before and didn’t know if I could, and the reality of killing her was petrifying. When she pulled away, I blinked. My brows snapped together, studying her reaction. Fallon’s dusty pink lips turned into an off-kilter smile.
I hadn’t killed her. I hadn’t pulled her into her fear. She’d kissed me. If tonight was all we had, I wasn’t going to waste it. I grabbed her elbow with one hand, the back of her head with the other. I pulled her in until our mouths crashed again.
And Fallon’s lips melted with mine. My tongue brushed across hers, and, at last, my soul breathed and my heart aired out on the line of this kiss that tasted like the real thing. Like a blanket, I felt normal fall all around us.
“Fallon,” Mr. Mercedes shouted again in the distance, closing in on us.
I grabbed her hand, and we took off through the maze. I looked back to see her in the leather dress clinging to her body and her hand covering her laugh, which pulled a smile upon my own. And my smile felt awkward and rusty, muscles unused in quite some time.
When we reached another dead end, my back hit another mirror. Fallon fell into me, my hands already in her hair, her lips already on mine. With our bodies pressed together, eyes squeezed shut, the taste of apples kindled over our tongues as we kissed, drunk from the same poison, under the same maddening spell.
We kissed like we’d been doing it and denied of it our entire lives, lips hungry, hands grabbing, bodies grinding, my dick throbbing … My fingers dug into her waist to pull her flush against me as all the darkened blood in my veins rushed toward the surface. My free hand held the back of her head, a fist full of white hair. On my tongue, I tasted a full moon. One half innocence, the other half destruction. A snowflake lost in a nightmare.
Kane’s voice drifted with the murky fog.
Fallon looked up at me, our breathing shredded. “Take me away from here,” she begged against my mouth.
I pulled Fallon once more through the maze as my heart punched through my chest, needing to get her alone, yet knowing how dangerous it could be for us to be caught together.
What was I thinking? It was already dangerous.
Kane was right on our tail.
I paused in the middle of the maze, smoking mirrors circling us.
“Fallon, where’d you go?” Kane called out.
I had to let her go, and the mere thought caused a jolt of electricity to shoot up my spine to the tips of my fingers. The scream in my chest ached to be released.
I couldn’t hold on. I couldn’t let go.
The mirrors made a cracking sound, my shadow-blood causing spider-like veins to crawl across the glass. Panicked, I grabbed her face once more, slammed my eyes shut, and crushed my mouth to hers.
“I’m sorry,” I said, two words of a broken fate, two words from my own self-hating lips that could very well destroy me. I reluctantly let go of her hand and slid between two mirrors, leaving her there for Kane Pruitt—the man who the Order had said she belonged to.
The Secret of Bellamy & Sirius
“Just like me, Marietta,” I whispered, tugging at my hair.
“White hair, just like you,” Marietta repeated. “The girl finally stepped out of the woods, and they called her Sirius ‘Siri’ Van Doren, only sixteen and lived on the border with her mother, Ida, and her mother’s dearest friend, Harriet, and her daughter, Annitah...
“The four of them had fled to the town before it had a name, and made a home there, now known as Weeping Hollow, long before the others. And when the two covens arrived, Ida and Harriet taught their daughters to walk in secrecy. To walk the woods quieter than a whisper and never even so much as cast a shadow, in fear of what kind of dark magic the covens could be practicing, unknown of the witches they were.
“But Siri Van Doren had a taste for adventure, so yes! after her sixteenth year, she stepped out of one of many secret places she hid in the woods, all because of wonder for a boy and how he had transformed into a young man over time. At first, she had watched the way the muscles in his body grew and the way his brown hair only darkened as the days passed. She memorized every line, every movement, the curve of his smile. Siri knew everything there was to know about Bellamy Blackwell, except who he was inside.
“It was a spring month when it was warmer during the day and colder at night—a time when Sweet White Violets and Purple Trilliums popped up wildly like oil over a hot flame. Bellamy was alone at night, walking barefoot through the woods under the Full Pink Moon. Bellamy was rarely alone, and Siri knew this was her chance. She could meet the boy she had a deep fascination for. Much to Annitah’s dismay, Siri was sure he was kind and not what their mothers had said of them. ‘And you better not say a word,’ Siri warned in a hushed tone with her hands on her hips, looking up to Annitah, who was much taller than she.
“Harriet and her daughter, Annitah, were known as the protectors of the Van Doren lineage, protectors of the moon children. Annitah understood nothing good could come from talking to anyone from either coven, but she loved her friend deeply and agreed to stay quiet.
“Siri’s feet maneuvered the woods effortlessly, and when she reached Bellamy, her nerves from the moment materialized because it was real, and she had been waiting on this moment for more than ten years. She slid behind a tree and waited for her heart to calm.
“‘Who’s there?’ called out Bellamy, peering through the dense woods with narrowed eyes. The fateful spring winds tangled her white hair with the sweeping breeze, giving her away. ‘You can come out,’ insisted Bellamy, noticing it was a girl. A girl who had colors he had never seen before. ‘I am not going to hurt you.’
“Siri peeked around the tree at first, and the two locked eyes before she reared back.
“She smiled to herself.
“He smiled to himself.
“‘My name is Bellamy,’ said the young man, walking closer toward the tree as if he had stumbled upon the world’s greatest treasure. ‘Are you lost?’
“Siri could not speak at first. Her eyes darted up to the sky, where stars sprinkled around the pinkish moon. She held her breath until it burned and she was forced to let it go, but it came out in sporadic spurts. Bellamy dragged his fingers around the tree, rounding it until he was face-to-face with her. Then he froze, for he could not imagine her kind of beauty being from this world, and his lips fell open in awe as the two studied one another. ‘What do they call you?’ asked he.