A malefic hush had fallen over the woods.
Languorous shadows, urged by the night’s tale, twisted around me as the fire blazed at my feet. Fallon was inside showering, changing.
She’d never once asked me why we’d broken into the Sacred Sea chambers and stolen books from the room. On the way to the exit at the cemetery, we’d talked of everything else as we walked the tunnels, both avoiding the things we’d left behind us. I knew she wanted to, but she also knew I’d never tell her.
I picked up the Book of Cantini, flipped through the pages until my sight latched on to the crescent moon birthmark sketched onto the aged papyrus paper.
I tore out the pages, crumbled them in my fist, and tossed them into the fire. I did the same with pages from the Book of Danvers. Once Clarice Danvers had found out how to break the curse, she’d stolen these journals and written the answers into the Danver’s book before Matteo Cantini confiscated them—just before he’d cast her out of Weeping Hollow.
She’d taken on the identity of Carrie Driscoll, waiting, for over a hundred years, for the perfect opportunity to finish off the job of murdering the moon girl.
The moment was so bittersweet. For almost two centuries, the Hollow Heathens searched and searched for the same truths I’d discovered, only to throw it all away for love—for Fallon.
I wondered what my ancestors would think of me and if they’d be disappointed. If they’d curse my soul for eternity, casting me into a witch’s hell with the inability to reincarnate fully like the Forbidden Girl.
I wondered what my brothers would think if they knew the truth, the things I’d done. If they could one day understand that … I, Julian Blackwell, had found a love that was deeper than love, and I loved in a way as if it were all that I’d known.
The fire crackled, and a raven called out to me in the distance when I reached for the Book of Blackwell. I’d never held my family book in my hands, and the silver foil glimmered against the flames of the fire under a pitch-black sky. A drowsy terror stole through the woods, through my veins.
Why had everything felt right until this moment? Why had the Blackwell book been taken to begin with? Had my family always known the answers to the curse too?
The thought paralyzed me. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I couldn’t destroy the pages of my book. Not yet.
The raven called again, and I nodded as if I understood what it was trying to tell me.
Once I returned inside, I hid the books under the cushion of the couch. But not the Book of Blackwell. It screamed in the palm of my hand. I straightened my back and walked toward the fireplace, pressing my foot to search for the loose floorboard. The wood creaked, and I crouched down, removed the plank before wedging the book inside the tight space.
The plank slid back into place, and I walked to my bedroom, where Fallon was standing. Her hair was damp. She was wearing one of my shirts and pants.
Fallon had only been in my bedroom once before, and it was brief. She had been upset, probably didn’t get a chance to get a good look around, not in the way she was doing now. There wasn’t much to see.
A full-sized bed pushed into the corner of the room under a window where moonlight cast a single beam between us. A lantern rested on the sill. Over the bed, the sheets and blankets were hand-made by Mrs. Edwin. A nightstand Phoenix had built, along with the chest against the opposite wall. No pictures. The only décor was the dreamcatcher Jolie had made me, hanging from my wooden headboard, which never caught dreams. No light aside from the lantern. My cherished Frankenstein laying on my nightstand. I watched her eyes flick to the novel, then back to me.
The way she looked at me had my heart stripping off its armor from the night’s events. I swallowed. Cleared my throat.
“Take off your clothes,” I told her and turned to close the door. Then pinned my back against it. “All of them.”
The witching hour was long gone. The sun would soon rise. While the pre-morning dark was on, I needed to be with her in the way the night was with the moon.
Fallon watched me watching her undress.
Shame, guilt, fear, none of that lived here with us. Only something else. Something immortal. Some ferocious thing that tasted like deathless devotion on the tip of my tongue.
She peeled off my shirt from her body, and my gaze followed the way her stomach slightly rose when she stole a breath. Her pants were next. I watched her white hair fall around her shoulders as she slipped out of them. Her spine erected, facing me again. My mouth parted behind my mask as my eyes followed her curves in slow motion, her dips and valleys and uncharted places my mouth hadn’t traveled.
Under the necklace I’d gifted her, her breasts rose and fell when her eyes locked on mine. I tore my gaze away and dropped them down her body, settling them on the dip of her hip bone. I closed my eyes. Opened them again. My vision was blurry but still burned by the patch on her hip.
And what laid behind it.
I blinked them back in front of me, took a step forward, and stood before her. Then I dropped to my knees. Fallon tensed when I peeled off the patch. And under it, the dark shape of a crescent moon marked her pale skin.
The truth slammed into me all over again, a reminder that everything I’d done tonight was for her. I could never tell her. I could never tell anyone.
Breaking the curse did not come first. Fallon came first. And they would kill me for what I’d done if they ever found out what I knew. Over and over, I’d do it again and again. I wanted to rip the scar from my palm, replace it with a new one. One that would never heal, so I would always feel this suffering.
That way, I could remember how she made me feel like a man and not a monster.
Fallon fell back and sat over the edge of the bed, took my head into her lap, and pushed her fingers through my hair. I kissed her birthmark, both hating and loving it. Wanting to rid her of it, and wanting to cherish it. It was a peculiar feeling. One that was inescapable. It was the very thing that made me see so clearly. Made everything hurt like hell.
My thoughts tortured me. I’d blurted out words, moved fast and slow. My mind was everywhere, digging fingers into Fallon’s pale skin, kissing her softly before sinking my teeth into her. I couldn’t make sense of anything. She gripped my hair as I fought with myself.
Fallon told me she was here with me. She spoke words, something about me being good. She trusted me. She believed in me. She loved me. We were both unhinged for different reasons, and she had no idea.
“Julian,” she whispered, unbuttoning my dress shirt, her voice brushing my skin. Then I was out of it, kneeling between her legs and looking up at her. My gaze moved back and forth between hers, my palms sliding up her back. “I’m right here,” Fallon insisted, studying me, soothing me. “What’s wrong––”
I grabbed the back of her neck, pulled her close until her eyes fluttered closed. Then I lifted my mask, slipped my tongue inside her mouth. I tasted something that felt like a combination of running and screaming and letting go.
A moan rattled in my throat. I pulled back, my thumbs brushing her closed lashes as I admired her parted mouth. My tongue darted out to stroke her delicate lips, to meet hers before I filled her mouth again. My cock swelled inside my pants from her taste. Everything was sensitive, like an open scar.
Rising to my feet, I leaned over her. She undid my button and my zipper and slid my pants off my hips, and I wanted her to. Her fingers brushed over the lesions that were slowly healing, and she pulled away, but I grabbed her face.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, shaking my head, keeping her in this kiss.
Fallon pulled away. “No, it’s not okay. Who did this to you?”
I hung my head, drew in a breath. “My coven needed me.”
“Your coven did this to you? Why? And don’t give me some vague answer either. For once, just be honest with me.”
I tried to hold off for as long as possible. I didn’t want to tell her what they did to me. What they always did to me. What I’d let them do to me. Fallon rose from the bed to get closer. I brought her flush against me, leaving no space between us, searching for the right words to help her understand.
“Because a fourteen-year-old girl was dying, and they needed our magic to save her. You have to understand that I wanted to save her. This is what I am. A host for magic.”
“No,” Fallon shook her head, her fingers drifting over old scars and new wounds. “You’re so much more than that.”
Silencing her, I turned her around and nailed her back to my chest. Her throat was a fragile thing in my palm, her collarbone carved and delicate. I kissed her shoulder and neck. Both of her hands squeezed my naked thighs before she found my hands.
She guided them, dragging one across her stomach, the other over her breast. She wanted me now. Her arms lifted, wrapped around my neck, giving me access to touch her freely.
White hair covered my vision when her head fell back against me. I hung my head and watched my hands slide over her shuddering skin. These same hands I’d used to murder were capable of holding her together in my arms. But that was never me. This is me.
My palm glided up to her breasts and cupped them, a gentle squeeze. The other dipped down and covered her sex, and I swiped a finger through her heated slit. Fallon moaned so lightly. I watched her pull her bottom lip between her teeth.
The small gesture was enough to provoke all five senses. An eagerness spurred my movements. I held my breath, dipped down, and plunged my cock inside her. The instant and electric connection almost took me off my feet, and I choked on my words as her tight warm pussy clenched around me. “Fallon—I’m—fuck…”
She was on her toes now, digging her fingers into my neck for leverage. I wrapped my arm around the front of her and palmed her sex, slamming my cock deeper, feeling her ridges grip everywhere from my tip to the base. I felt it throughout my entire body. Fallon whimpered, and I cursed, and this was us.
Connected, I held her close, crossed my hand against her chest, the other stroking her clit as I lost myself in the grind. The friction made me dizzy, made me gone. Made me crazy, made me calm. It felt so right to be wrong. My god, her fairytale scent was swelling the room, soaking into my skin.
My moans were broken. Her whimpers were shattered. I tilted her head until my mouth crushed hers, and my tongue swept between her sweet lips before we both fell forward onto the bed.
Lifetimes pressed into ten fingers and rewrote our new story on our bodies.
We found ourselves tangled with the bedsheets.
She whispered sweet nothings in my ear.
The night held us in its hands.
Mouths alive, palms pressed to palms, fingers woven, breasts sliding against my chest, and submerged deep inside her was when her orgasm gripped mine, and my own began to pulse. The vibrations started in my bones, and I felt the change shift in my veins. It felt like an injection of rapture straight into my blood, an endless and enduring climax.
Then my magic expelled a silver aurora around us, protecting us. It had never happened like this before, and I pulled my hand over her eyes and looked around the illuminating room. It seemed as if the galaxy had fallen around us. Or the world had been turned upside down, and we were hanging in a star-filled sky. My heart was calm, but my body was spent and tipsy and spinning.
“This can’t be real,” I breathed out, my soul drunk from it. I dropped my head, watching Fallon pull her bottom lip between her teeth. Then she parted her trembling lips before I filled her with my kiss once more, losing ourselves all over again.
Fallon
The large awning window stretched across the wall over his bed. There were no curtains. No blinds. Nothing but a backdrop of the woods.
The cold, fresh morning air slipped through the opened window from the bottom because he’d cracked it before we’d fallen asleep. It was so cold in his bedroom, but I felt at home here, lying bare between his warm sheets.
Julian slept with his turned head under a pillow and on his back, one hand above his head, the other laying naturally across my hip.
Julian had always disappeared before morning came, and I’d never seen him sleep when the sun rose. It was fascinating, watching as his chest and stomach filled and fell in a soothing cadence. All these things inside him working together so beautifully without effort.
I sat up against his headboard, pulled the blanket up to my chest, and looked around the bare room. I picked up a book from the nightstand. Frankenstein. There were mug rings on the cover. The book was treated like a favorite childhood blanket or stuffed animal. I opened the book and flipped through it.
Julian’s handwriting filled the margins. Black ink had sentences underlined, and pages were creased at the corners. It was fascinating.
Julian stretched beside me, and his hand moved from over his head. He rubbed his chest, slid his palm down his torso and under the blanket, where he grabbed himself. His other hand that was laying on me moved too, and his fingers canvased my skin like a map, recognizing everywhere he’d journeyed through the night.
“Are you awake?” he asked from under the pillow, squeezing my thigh.
“Yeah.” I quickly closed the book, held it close to my chest.
“In the drawer of my nightstand, there’s a mask. Hand me one?”
The drawer slid out smoothly, and inside were a collection of plain black masks. I grabbed one and reached behind me to drop it over his chest.
I stayed on my side, faced the doorway when I felt the bed shift as he rose. “Okay,” he said, and I turned back, laid against the headboard beside him.
Julian pushed his fingers over his eyes, through his hair. Then he looked at me. And I wished I knew what was going through his head, knew what he was thinking. He looked at me like he’d never seen anything like me before. He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time, each time.
“Have you read it before?” he asked.
Read it before? And Julian’s eyes fell to the thing clutched to my chest. “Oh,” I said, then looked down at the book’s cover. “No. I mean, I know the story, but never actually read the book.”
“Then how do you know the story?”
I tucked my smile into a straight line. “Everyone knows the story of Frankenstein.”
Julian shook his head. “The story could be different depending on who you heard it from. Filmmakers, critics, people who’ve read it, they all retell their versions, their perception of the story, but you have to read the book for yourself to find your story.”
I raised a brow. “I didn’t know you liked to read.”
Julian laughed lightly. “I don’t, actually. I just like this one book. I’ve memorized it.”
“You’ve memorized it.” It was a statement. An incredulous statement.
“You’re doubting me.”
“No, I’d never doubt you.”
“Choose a page number,” he challenged, and I smiled. “Go on, I’m not kidding.”
My smile was burning my face, and I flipped through the book, feeling Julian’s eyes on me. Then I turned to face him so he couldn’t see the words or cheat. “Page forty.”
Julian thought for a moment, his gaze turning solemn. He looked at me, and his silver eyes filled with a field of emotion. “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” He said the words so fluidly. There was no smile in his eyes, only that of something he’d lost. Then he added, “I want you to have it.”
“Have what?”
He tapped his finger over the page. “The book. I want you to have it.”
“Julian, you love this book.”
“Exactly.” He took the book and closed it, setting it behind me. His palm laid against my back, and he pulled me to his chest and back under the covers where our bodies were warm, and our heads were cool from the early morning chill. He twisted a lock of hair around his finger. “Because I—”
A sound echoed through the cabin, shook the walls. It sounded like someone broke through the front door. My eyes widened, seeing into Julian’s terrified ones.
“They’re here,” he stated, pinched his eyes closed. Time slowed, passed by the counts of my slamming heart. He dragged in a breath. Held it.
He lurched forward, over me, grabbed a shirt from the floor, pushed it over my head. “You have to do something for me,” he started to say.
My eyes darted around as footsteps echoed within the cabin. Obscured deep voices bounced just outside his bedroom door. My heart was in my throat, my stomach twisted. A state of panic froze me still. Julian was fast, grabbing a pair of pants, throwing them into my chest to put on.
“If anything happens to me, under no circumstance do you fight for me. Don’t go to the Order. Don’t go to the woods. Don’t tell anyone about anything. Fallon, you keep your mouth shut. You have to let them take me. You have to let me go.”
“What? No!” The words had come out so fast, as I was tripping over the pants. Julian was naked, not worrying about himself, only helping me dress. Crashes! and bangs! and booms! filled the cabin as his things were being destroyed. “Julian, you’re scaring me,” I cried. “Does this have anything to do with what we did last night?” My eyes bounced between his panicked ones. He stayed silent, grabbed Frankenstein from the bed, tucked it into my waistband.
“I’m so sorry, but just know if anything happens to me, I did it all because…”
“Because what?” My mind was in chaos. Julian’s eyes were wild and desperate. “What did you do?”
“Fallon, I—I—” he dragged in a deep breath.
And the bedroom door was kicked in. Three Heathens barged into the room. Zephyr was slinging one of my heels around his finger. Phoenix was holding two books we stole hours before. Beck’s blue eyes scanned over me once before he came between Julian and me, boxing me out.
I stumbled backward against the wall.
There was no exchanging of words.
A million emotions passed through Julian’s eyes before Zephyr kicked the backs of his legs and forced him on his knees.
Julian cut one last apologetic gaze to me just as Phoenix shoved a burlap sack over his head. They bound his wrists together. But Julian didn’t fight. Why wasn’t he fighting?
“He didn’t do anything!” I screamed out.
I tried to get to Julian, but Beck shifted like a sliding brick wall, not allowing me to pass. Zephyr held the back of Julian’s head and slammed his knee into the side. A crack! rang in the room and tears pushed through my eyes, heat enveloping me. Hot rage rushing through my veins. I lunged forward over Beck, trying to get to him. I couldn’t get to him.
“No! Let him go,” I screamed over and over, but no one looked at me.
No one paid me any attention. No one said a word. Julian was hunched forward on his knees naked as they beat into him. And I was screaming for someone to stop, anyone!
“Beck, please,” I cried, but he never turned around. “Let him go!”
Phoenix grabbed Julian’s arms and lifted him to his feet.
Then they dragged him out of the room.
Beck hung back, stood by the door with his arms behind his back. No matter how many times I pushed and shoved and beat against him, he stood like an invincible stone statue.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, as I was crying and screaming and throat raw with pain.
Eventually, Beck took off, leaving me there in the hallway.
All alone and Julian was long gone.