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"Ambitious and fiercely original. Sondi Warner is the exciting new voice we've all been wai...
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September 12 | Before Daybreak
I couldn't watch. I didn't want to hear what was happening. I shoved aside the maid who had betrayed us and ran from the gilded dining room, nausea cramping my insides. There was no way out of the house. The lines of salt kept me confined to one path. So, my bare feet slid on the hardwood in a mad dash to the guestroom.
I clambered up the stairs damn near on all fours. Slamming the chamber door behind me, I gulped in air. I was at his mercy. Darcy had coerced Tegan to come with us, giving her false hope she'd make it out alive, all the while knowing he would kill her. He was a deranged psychopath, and I was at his mercy.
I gave up thinking help would come. I dropped to my knees and skittered along the perimeter of salt in search of an opening. With mounting desperation, I shoved aside furniture, squinted under the chifforobe, tore at the bedcovers.
Everywhere I turned, the line of salt was unbroken. I couldn't sweep it away. Sodium chlorate was volatile on its own. But if Darcy had added anything to the mixture—the way he claimed—the salt could go up in flames at the slightest disturbance.
I just needed a glass of water to render the NaClO3 harmless. Yet, Darcy had made sure bathrooms were out of reach. My brief surge of adrenaline petered to hopelessness.
Tears soaked my face as my nose ran, and harsh sobs punctuated my hyperventilated breathing. I backed toward the bed and gave the room one last terrified survey. There was even salt covering the windows.
"Why the fuck did you choose me?" I screamed.
The outburst shattered the mirror above the bureau. Whatever remained of my sanity felt in as many pieces. As I cried out again in frustration, the expensive art crashed to the hardwood floor. I whirled in an arc, letting the mad energy spiral out of control, and the fabric clothing the four-poster canopy whipped in the wind that spun from my body.
I begged to become a full-blown poltergeist. I flickered in and out, but my Soul clung stubbornly to this plane. Sobbing, I threw myself to the bed.
"She was warned she'd become dinner if she offended me," Darcy Cyprian said from the door. I sat up abruptly and stared daggers at him. He extended a glass of absinthe, but I refused it. As he sat on the bed, I crawled to the other side of the mattress. "I'm brutally honest, Aurelia."
"You're a literal fucking monster, that's what you are," I sneered in contempt.
"Enough with the histrionics," he chastened in a dulcet voice. His serene expression was illuminated by saffron light from the bedside lamp. This gentle persona he put on for my sake was more disturbing than if he had come in ranting and raving.
Darcy reached across the chasm to cleanse my face with his handkerchief. I recoiled, and he snatched my chin hard enough for his nails to pierce my phantom flesh. I hitched in a breath. Yes, there was the menacing behavior I expected. Eyes the color of the absinthe in the glass bore into mine, and his chiseled mouth became a constricted pout.
