Page 93 of Shadows in Bloom

“We both gave it blood, right? The board. The…thing, we invited in. You cut yourself, remember? At the beach. It got a taste of yours, and then when it got mine that night…” Her voice hitches painfully, and my eyes fall shut. “We opened the door, Winnie. It’s our fault. We let her in. And then…then we forgot to say goodbye.”

I swallow hard. “Yeah, well aware,” I say stiffly.

A long weighted moment passes. “You do know it wasn’t because we kissed, right?”

This time, I turn to stone.

“That’s not what cursed us, that’s not?—”

My head snaps up, and I whip out, “How do you know? How do you know that didn’t just…feed it. Like our blood. An offering, because it was a sin, because we turned away from God’s?—”

She scoffs.. “Oh, be so fucking for real, Winifred. Your precious God doesn’t give two shits about us or anyone in this Godforsaken town, much less about two teenage girls kissing.”

My jaw trembles with how tightly I mash my molars, as a familiar burn licks at the back of my eyes. “It goes against?—”

“If you say nature,” she grits out, “I swear to whatever demon’s got a hard-on for us, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

My face bunches, and I take a shaky step back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She just purses her lips and stubbornly kicks up her chin, shrugging. And in doing so, my gaze flits down before I can help it, trailing over the prominent lines of her collarbone…

Lower…

I’m quick to rip eyes away, my face growing hot in a way that has nothing to do with the nearby flames.

She barks a short bitter laugh. “Thanks for proving my point.”

I’m shaking my head. “That-that’s not?—”

“Oh, come on. Can we quit the saintly act for one night?”

Anger builds in my chest. But before I can fire anything back, she adds, “Just long enough to get this over with.”

Right. The door.

I meet her annoyed gaze head-on. “And how do you suggest we do that? The board burned, Ophelia. How?—”

“We don’t need it,” she says simply.

My brow furrows. “That makes zero sense.” I quickly shake my head. “No, you know what, none of this makes any sense.”

This time, when I go to turn around and head back the way I came, I don’t know how I’m still standing upright when I find Ophelia is right. There.

Standing directly in my path, preternaturally still, brow arched. And naked.

Not that I forgot that little detail.

But right now, it’s much easier to focus on all that pale, silky-looking flesh—all those gentle curves and sharp juts of bones, the subtle dips and valleys and the startling dark buds of her nipples—than the fact that it is humanly impossible for her to have moved that quickly.

As if she winked in and out of existence, defying the laws of physics.

I stumble back a few steps, hands raised to ward her off, mindless of the heat of the fire blazing hotly through my nightgown.

Ophelia remains where she is as her gaze drifts past me, a troubled look overcoming her furrowed eyes. “You see now?” she says so softly, I have to strain to hear her. “We’re running out of time.”

Blood thunders in my ears. “H-how did you…I…What?—”

“You’re still a virgin, right?”

---