Page 145 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

“We are taking you all back to turned territory,” I said, scanning the heartbreakingly terrified group of abused humans. Some of them were shivering, barely clothed with open wounds. “From there, you will be cared for at a mortal-run care center. They will help reunite you with your families and provide safe passage back to your homes.”

I tried not to stare at Isabella again, but it was impossible. Nothing about her reminded me of Scarlett. There were no similar features, familiar facial expressions, or mannerisms. Like I’d always thought, they could not be more different. So if they weren’t sisters, how had Scarlett ended up with this human family?

On the flight back home, born blood sprayed on my skin and victory ripe in the air, I finally allowed myself to process Sadie’s demonstration.

My unending, eternal obsession with Scarlett hadn’t been an illusion. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t a plant, feeding off my unmanipulated desire and spying for unknown enemies. She was a succubus, and she’d kept that from me.

Just because my twisted, all-consuming love for her had been real, didn’t mean she felt the same.

66

SCARLETT

I’d secretly copied down from memory some of the more beautiful things Rune had said to me in our disappearing notes. I’d hidden them on scraps of paper with his opening chapter, stashed away in the box that had once held my dress and tickets for the opera.

I guessed I was a mental masochist as much as physical. Because though I wanted to puke up my guts the whole time, I reread each and every one of Rune’s beautiful sentences.

In my search for the truth—the poison, the roots of our shared delusion—all I ended up doing was falling deeper in love with him. And falling this endlessly for someone who would never love me in return was a pain I could never have prepared myself for. It shattered everything I thought I knew about fate and souls, romance and destiny.

It shattered me.

The axis of my reality had been irrevocably tilted, and there was nothing left to cling to as I slipped right off the edge.

My whole life had been a lie. My family. My identity. My gifts. My flaws. Sometimes I found myself floating away, observing myself from third person. I was untethered, just a heaving, sobbing broadcast of hopelessness and devastation that ran on repeat.

You’re mine. You always have been.

I will never let you down, never let you go, no matter how much you beg and plead.

Even his twisted words reeled me deeper. I should’ve hated him for what he did to me. For switching his feelings off so easily. For dosing me with his blood and tracking me without my knowledge. For watching me as a child. For all of his lies by omission.

I should’ve hated him, but I didn’t. I loved him so much that despite my crumbling reality, that unrequited love was one of the few things that had dragged me out of bed.

That, and the unfathomable love from my friends, who knew what I was and what I did and stood by me, anyway. I must’ve been a powerful demon indeed.

I kept reading, kept mining his words for the meaning that had eluded me. The meaning I’d once felt gazing at his favorite art and listening to his collected music. The meaning that had poured from his lips and risen from pages and spread along my skin at his touch’s command.

Finally, a wave of grief transformed into anger. The call to move, to act. He’d made too many promises to break them all this easily. If my love had been real, then how could his not have been? He had to have been hurting just as badly as I was. He’d only pretended otherwise to punish me for my perceived betrayal.

I rose to my feet. I couldn’t make anyone love me. Snow had confirmed what I knew in my heart, even if I doubted it. And Rune had loved me.

It had to have been real.

I didn’t know who I was, who my parents were, where I came from, or why I’d been left at the local temple for Helia. And because I’d driven Snow away and refused to hear anything more about my powers, I barely knew anything about them either.

I was hated for what I was. But so was Rune. I manipulated desire, withheld certain truths and parts of myself from prying eyes. But so did Rune.

All I knew was that Rune had claimed me. He’d sworn to take care of me and protect me forever and I wasn’t about to let him run away from me so easily.

If I went to him and he killed me right there on the spot, fine. Then at least I would’ve saved my friends from the same fate if he’d come for me first instead. If he decided to string me up from the ceiling and torture me for answers I didn’t possess, that was fine too. I had nothing to give him.

All I had was this love bleeding out of me uncontrollably. This pure, naive, silly feeling that he’d said a demon like me wouldn’t be able to feel.

But I felt it. Damn him, I fucking felt it.

I burst out of my door, a black sweaterdress haphazardly thrown on, my hair half brushed, my face likely puffy and eyes bloodshot. I had no idea how bad my appearance was, because I still refused to look in the mirror at the remaining faded marks. I was frazzled, disoriented, and likely on the edge of the final breakdown of my tenuous sanity. But I had to move. I had to see this—us—through.

Halfway across one of the cobblestone, back-alley short-cuts to the castle, I realized my shoelace on my black ankle boots had come undone. I looked around, making sure I wasn’t about to flash anyone, before bending to retie it as quickly as possible. It was fine. It was dark out anyway. How late even was it? Time had become meaningless a while ago.

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