Page 50 of Barely Breathing

If places carry emotions, then this hotel room radiates desperation and despair. Paul and I are tangled in sheets, the aftermath of passion still humming through my body. There’s an undercurrent of fear we can’t ignore, but for this brief moment, it doesn’t matter. My fingers trace symbols on his skin, patterns I learned from my supernatural family but never thought I’d use. His hand catches mine, pressing my palm down to stop the movement.

Through the blood magic, I can feel Costin’s jealousy spike at this intimate moment.

“I hate that I brought you here.” Paul’s voice carries the weight of a man who’s seen too much. He stares at the stained ceiling tiles. A pencil stuck in one of the panels catches my attention, and I stare at it until my vision blurs with unshed tears.

“I hate that I brought chaos into your life,” I answer.

Part of me knows I am reliving a moment that happened, though it feels real. I sense Costin on the edge of my mind like an unwanted voyeur, hispresence growing more intense as he searches for something specific in this memory. And yet, it’s hard to resist the feelings just as it was the first time. They again pull me into the scene.

Paul’s brow furrows, and he turns onto his side to study me. “I have to ask you something I’ve been wondering about.”

My stomach tenses. “Ask.”

He cups my cheek. “What particular thing were you supposed to find in the enchanted forest game?”

A tiny laugh escapes me. He’s referring to a game called Hunter and Hunted. I told him about, when I was younger, Anthony and his friends invited Conrad and me to play with them in the woods. Everyone drew a card and searched for that object. The woods were enchanted, and we couldn’t leave until we found it. I got separated from the others. Branches kept scraping my skin because the forest was so dense. I had been terrified.

“A fairy ring,” I answer, thinking of my object. I had no clue at the time what that was. “I thought it was jewelry. Turns out it’s a ring of mushrooms.”

“How did you get out if you didn’t know what you were looking for?” he persists.

“My grandfather ended the game when I didn’t come home. He came to get me.” I briefly touch my amulet. “I think he would have liked you.”

Through the blood magic, I feel Costin’s grief atthe mention of my grandfather. Their friendship had spanned decades, and a promise to George forced Costin to watch over me. Even now, years after his death, Costin is keeping that promise… though perhaps not in the way either of them had imagined.

“Show me everything,”Costin whispers in the back of my mind, and I feel him drinking from my past.

The memory shifts like smoke caught in a sudden wind. Costin’s blood magic pulls us forward, hungry for understanding. Paul and I are sitting up now, tension thick between us as his expression grows serious. I want to stop reliving this.

“Who would want your family dead?” Paul demands.

The question hits me like a physical blow, then and now. This was our first time together, and instead of afterglow, we got this. I try to resist showing more, but Costin’s blood magic won’t let me hide.

I don’t have an answer. In this erased reality, my mother, father, Anthony, and Costin were all dead. Killed in the birthday fire. My chest aches with phantom grief for deaths that never happened, lives the amulet restored when it broke. The memory feels too real. Through Costin’s magic, I can feel both timelines overlapping.

My family is alive now, but the memory of theirdeaths still haunts me. I mourned at their graves. That kind of pain changes a person. Even now, that grief settles over me like a thick, smothering blanket, and I can’t breathe.

“Show me everything,”Costin’s voice demands, each word driving his blood magic deeper. The pressure builds behind my eyes until I think my skull might crack.

My temple is pounding, and the more I fight against the memory, the worse the pain becomes. I already have these answers. This only leads deeper into Conrad’s betrayal, Paul’s death in that timeline, and Diana’s innocence being shattered. Why is Costin forcing me to relive this? What is he really looking for?

The blood magic won’t let me hide. Finally, I’m forced to answer just as I did that day. “They were some of the most extraordinary magics in the world, but feared and loved are not the same thing. They probably have enemies I don’t even know about.”

Through Costin’s power, I feel the bitter irony of those words. I had no idea then that the real enemy was sitting at our family dinner table.

As I follow the memory, the pain in my head lessens.

Costin’s presence grows heavier. He’s watching intently now, seeing through my eyes as Paul pieces together what I couldn’t.

“Who would want you dead?” Paul’s eyes tell me he already suspects an answer. Even now, through the blood magic, I can see the moment he figured it out before I did.

“No one. I’m nobody.” The words taste like ash in my mouth. Even as I say them, I know they’re not true. In this erased timeline, the birthday fire had killed most of my family, including Costin. Then came the second explosion at Conrad’s birth mother’s apartment. And the third that almost took out Conrad’s old foster family. It’s a pattern I had been too blind to see, too hurt to acknowledge.

“Who had the addresses for all three fires?” Paul demands.

Paul’s words come faster now, each one hitting like a physical blow. Through the memory, I feel Costin’s grip tighten on my real body, his presence a cold shadow as he watches this intimate moment between Paul and me. There’s something possessive about how he holds me as if he’s trying to anchor me to the present even as we dive deeper into the past.

“Conrad’s family. Conrad’s remaining sister. Conrad’s birth mother. Conrad’s foster family...” Paul says, laying out the evidence of my brother’s betrayal.

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