Page 22 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

The familiar squeeze of grief’s cold hands grabbed ahold of my heart. I remembered how Isabella and I had let our mother’s flowers wilt and crumble in the wind. We should’ve watered them. We should’ve kept them alive for Dad, so that maybe he could’ve seen them and believed that with enough time and love, what had once decayed could thrive and bloom again.

We won’t give up like he did, she’d whispered to me, watching our dad fall to the earth like those dried out rose petals. We’re going to fight. Together.

“I will die,” I agreed. “But first, I’m going to rescue my sister.” I gripped Jaxon’s hand, my stomach dropping when he yanked back from my touch. “I’m sorry. I’ll find you when I’m back. I’ll search all of our stops on the map until I find you.”

Jaxon went cold, my own hardened resignation mirrored back to me. “Don’t bother.”

I nodded, a tear escaping. I quickly wiped it away.

“I hope you change your mind,” I said. “I love you, Jaxon. I hope the coast is just as beautiful as it looks in the paintings. Thank you for being my friend for as long as you have.”

Before you decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. Just like Isabella. Like my parents. Like everyone I’d ever been close to.

Jaxon left without another word, and his silence sliced into me more brutally than any cruel remark ever would’ve.

“You are the dumbest smart person I’ve ever met,” Phillip said with a shake of his head.

He followed Jaxon out, not even bothering to scan my body up and down one final time.

12

SCARLETT

In the morning, I added one more item to my heavy, bulky backpack. I couldn’t resist snatching the leather-bound diary off Isabella’s desk. Just three steps away from the blood splattered sheets.

I wasn’t going to read it. But I also didn’t want anyone else to, like Phillip, or whatever vulture took over our abandoned cottage in the coming weeks.

I’d also stuffed as much clothing as I could into a duffel bag, but I wasn’t sure how much room there’d be for any of it in the firebird’s saddlebags. I didn’t even know who I was hitching a ride with now, let alone how much it would cost me.

That was another thought I mulled over as I made my way to the stables. Jaxon and I were no longer pooling resources. It would’ve been a hit to both of us if I didn’t also have the money that I’d planned on leaving Isabella. Now, it was only a hit to him. I added that pang of guilt to the growing pile.

Everything had changed in the blink of an eye. I hadn’t slept a wink. As both emotional and physical exhaustion mixed with the steady pump of adrenaline, I couldn’t deny there was a part of me that wanted to collapse. Drop down to the earth and go into that empty place and sleep until my life was as unreal as a hazy dream.

But there was this bigger, more expansive feeling inside of me that rang loud in my ears. It was a hum that went on forever, waves that spread in all directions, the powerful crest of the gods’ creation. This force I’d felt my whole life, like hope but stronger, propelled me forward.

I thought it might’ve been fate.

Eternal, terrifying, and beautifully certain, and I was a shooting star on a collision course, heading straight into its grasp.

“Your friend already left,” a man said when I got to the firebird stables. He was stroking a firebird’s huge head outside the expansive building, gently and steadily. It appeared as though he was preparing for flight. The sharp calls of the other firebirds rang out every once in a while, accompanied by the sound of taloned, pounding feet.

The sheer size of the creatures never failed to silence my every thought, lost in awe and wonder as I gazed upon their fiery orange and red feathers. Their irises were bright red too, crackling with what looked like orange strikes of lightning. It was as though they’d been crafted from the sunset, a gift from Helia herself. When they flew, they streaked across the sky like feathered beams of pure sunlight.

I’d never ridden one, but I’d heard it was the most freeing, exhilarating feeling you could ever experience in this life. As if you became a part of the wind, a facet of the sky. One with the clouds and planets, as close to the gods as a mortal could get before death.

“He was your friend, right? The shifter lad with a pierced ear?” the human man asked, his lips quirking up as he watched me. He had sandy blond hair and stubble, kind gray eyes. He was older than me, perhaps in his late thirties.

I stopped staring at his firebird, picked my jaw up from the ground, and closed my damn mouth. I nodded as words slowly made their way back to my brain. “Yes, he was—is. I need a ride to Aristelle.”

I tried to place this man in the sea of faces from the market. I knew he wasn’t a local, but I didn’t recognize him as a merchant either.

“Is that so?” His smile was warm, with a hint of flirtation. He seemed to make mental calculations as he went back to stroking his bird.

“I know it’s not too far of a flight,” I said, lifting my chin and throwing myself into my single-minded focus.

The only thing that mattered was saving my sister now, nothing else. I was doing the right thing, so I could let go of the guilt and the shame over leaving Jaxon. I had to let go of it if I wanted any chance at all of surviving.

I began with that suggestion—that Aristelle wasn’t that far of a ride by firebird—to prime him for my initial lowball offer. Not too low, but a good starting point to go higher and meet where I expected us to meet and not a cent over.

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