Page 1 of Anchor

Chapter 1

Taland Tivoux

A slow melody played in the back of my mind, something that wasn’t quite music, I didn’t think. It was more her laughter.

Back when we were in school, and I had her in my bed, and we were under the blankets, and I was tickling her—and she laughed.

She laughed with all of her, every little bit, and now I could have sworn that that melody was playing in my mind. I heard it as clearly as if I’d gone back in time, but I hadn’t. I was fully aware of how much time had passed since those nights, what had happened in between. I was fully aware of the fact that I’d put her into the Iris Roe, had joined her, and we’d both almost died.

Shehad almost been killed by those bloodthirstynothingsthat had been running after her when she had already finished the game.

Even now, in this strange state I was in, not conscious but not fully unconscious either, I felt the rage as I’d felt it then. Those damn fools.Had they no idea that she was the woman I live for?

That laughter continued in the back of my head, like it was the soundtrack to this movieplaying in the center of my mind. A movie made of images, of thoughts that didn’t belong to me at all but somehow they were there.

“What were you thinking, entering the Iris fucking Roe?!”

Thisvoice came from somewhere outside, and that’s why it didn’t matter. That’s why I ignored it with such ease and focused, again, on those images, those thoughts.

In the fear that she’d felt all this time, but especially that night.

That fucking night when she’d followed me out of the party, to the Strongroom.

That fucking night when my life ended because I thought the person that meant everything to me was a liar.

I thought she’d betrayed me.

She hadn’t.

“Wake up, you piece of shit—wake up!”

I knew that voice, that unimportant voice that wanted to take me away from what mattered. From those images in my mind—of her when she first saw me, the way it looked inside her head. When I first kissed her. When she first slept in my arms.

When she fell in love with me—almost as fast as I fell in love with her.

When she lied and when she cried and when she saved me from certain death.

Shesavedme.

“You better open those eyes, boy. I know you’re awake.”

Hands on my face; strong hands squeezing me. My eyes opened a slit to see those of my eldest brother—identical.

He then slapped me twice. “There he is.”

But it didn’t bother me, the look in his eyes, those slaps, his gritted teeth—or even when Seth and Kaid grabbed me fromwherever I was lying and pulled me up to my feet. My legs refused to hold me.

Why? Because I’d walked right across the Drainage. I’d walked right across the Whitefire challenge from the heart of the Iris Roe because I wasn’t strong enough to kill those players who’d come after Rosabel. I wasn’t strong enough to kill them all, so I’d had to walk on those pieces of bones to get her out of there because she couldn’t move. She was paralyzed by the colors of the Iris Roe that she drained.

Which made me wonder why.

That wasn’t what had happened to the victors of the game in the past. I’d watched all the footage available online—the players who’d drained those colors in the past four games had been perfectly fine afterward. More than that—they’d been powerful. Glowing with raw energy. Perfectly capable of walking out of the game by themselves.

I hadn’t had the time to try to figure it out, though. I hadn’t had time to think at all as I carried her out of the game through the Drainage because the Council—those rotten beings—hadn’t ended the game when she should have.

I bet they’d wanted to see more. They’d wanted the show to last a bit longer.

And I’d given them the show of their fucking lives.

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