The stakes are higher than ever.
It's been months since the four managed to temporarily defeat and escape Laurel, Amber, Kali and the others but the four's problems are far from over. Forced to live with their guilt and still plagued by nightmares o...
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Huntalia - Rosalia's POV:
The pain. The pain I feel when Laurel starts smiling is all-encompassing. Though it pales in comparison to what I know is coming next. What will happen next. To what's about to happen that I can't stop.
Laurel and the Triskelion vanish and seconds later, Heidi, Angel and my demented, psychotic half-sister Amberle follow. All wearing identically sadistic smirks that make my blood run cold and shivers shake me from head to toe. They probably just disappeared off to find Ash and Leila - but the Dark Ones.....the Dark Ones and the Shadows don't move from where they were continuing to keep me and Hunter apart. For half a second I foolishly allowed myself to hope that it was just paranoia before I saw it.
Looking across the room with an unflinching expression of what I hope to be neutrality but that illusion shatters when I see the first set of claw-like Shadows wrap around Hunter's wrist and pull. Hard. He doesn't make a sound but I see him pale considerably from the force of the pull and how the bones there snapped clean in two as a result. That and the pain in his eyes that remain fixed on mine as if he's trying to memorise how I look in case he never sees me again. As if he thinks this will be the last time we see one another and that we won't meet up again after this is all over.
More and more Shadows start to obscure my vision of him but I keep my eyes on him for as long as I can, not ready to let go of the image of the one person who shares half my soul, half of myself. Not ready to let go even with the pain I can feel dully radiating through my whole body. Phantom pains flare up inside me like fireworks but I know it will hurt more when it happens to me. When I have to suffer the same pain - a mercy being that he won't have to share it with me since.....since.....No. I can't think of that or I'll lose what little control I have left and I promised I'd stay strong. I promised it to Kalli. To Hunter. To myself not to break down and lose it when the end eventually did come. I promised it to my parents -and to the parents of the three others Bound into this - to do it in their memory and take it without tears. Without dramatics even though I know the people I'm leaving behind will be hurt by my absence. I couldn't control it. That's my rationalisation of it. That it was out of my control.
So why does that feel like an excuse? Or even worse, a lie? Why does it feel as though I'm just trying to pass on the blame to another when it's my fault? Why does it feel like a lie?
More and more the pain inside me spirals as I feel as though I am methodically being torn apart from the inside by the pain. By the pain of watching the love of what was supposed to be my forever be torn apart in front of me without there being a way, I could have stopped it. The Shadows keep working their destructive magic and I can feel my muscles screaming or a release as if it's me being torn apart instead of him. As if I'm the one enmeshed almost fully into the Shadows and him held by the Dark Ones unable to come to my aid. Just like when I almost watched him die all those years ago down in the dungeon where we'd kept his and his siblings' parents until we had to get rid of them the only way we knew how, so they wouldn't hurt Kalli or Dana. so they would be safe enough from the horrors we'd had to face before they'd come along, like two bright lights in what had been a bleak and dismal future for the four of us. Even if it meant that when they were born we knew we were then living on borrowed time. A feeling all four of us were used to long before they'd ever drawn breath.
