Page 35 of A Sea of Secrets
Ace sighed and waved an impatient hand. “Speak, Merman.”
“I’m just so stoked this is happening.” He put his hand out and waited for us to pop ours in the middle, like some kind of preppy cheerleader squad.
“No,” Ace said, looking at Zane’s hand like it would bite him.
“By all that is merciful,” Noah said as he put his hand in. I had to admit I hadn’t expected that from him. Noah had seemed more… conservative than the rest of us. But I guess it was always the quiet ones you had to look out for.
“May the Gods take pity on us,” I agreed as I put my palm in.
We looked at Ace and waited. “For fuck’s sake,” he growled after a moment, then reluctantly followed suit.
“To our sexy starfish and our super pod,” Zane cheered. “Now let’s go get all up in these rooms and dominate the shit out of them.”
“Not something I needed to visualise,” Noah said as he turned the handle on his door. “But I appreciate the sentiment, nevertheless. See you on the other side.”
“Give ’em hell,” I said, releasing him and watching him limp inside before the door clicked shut. The sound of it closing was obnoxiously loud in the long hallway.
I walked down the corridor until I found the door with my own name. I turned to give Zane one of my biggest grins and nodded at Twiggy. This was it. The moment of truth. I squared my shoulders, heaved the door open and charged in.
The breath rushed from my lungs as I came face to face with a lone figure.
“Flynn?”
He threw me a shit-eating grin. “In the flesh. Ya miss me?”
I blinked. “But… how? I saw those goons drag your body through that tower. I saw the blood. They slit your fucking throat, bro.”
No one survived a wound like that. I remembered the frozen look on his face. The way his eyes were flat and dead and the way his head flopped as Victoria rolled it over.
Flynn’s smile widened, but his eyes lost that humorous spark, turning as empty and dark as they had been that day. My spine prickled and I took a small step back. Was this real? Was I imagining things? I scrubbed a hand over my eyes.Gods, Kayden, get your shit together.
Flynn tilted his head and eyed me, still smiling that creepy fucking smile. Then his fingers moved and unzipped his jacket, revealing a nasty scar across his throat.
Bumps formed over my skin. No. This was definitely not the real Flynn. I looked for an exit, finding nothing but the door I’d entered into. Another careful step backward, then another, until I was close enough to jiggle the handle.
Locked. Not that I’d expected any less.
“You left me to die, Kayden,” Flynn said softly, advancing a step. “You left your best friend to rot in that tower, just like all the other things the marsh devours.”
Regret rolled over my tongue, bitter and sour. “I had no choice, Flynn. You were gone. I swear to all the gods, that I would do anything to bring you back. I couldn’t even take your—” The word ‘body’ stuck, so I tried again. “I couldn’t take you home.”
He tilted his head a little too far and, as he did, a spurt of blood gushed from the now seemingly open wound on his neck.
“You may as well have used the blade yourself. What happened to having each other’s backs? You didn’t care about me. You just cared about the game.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “You’ll always be my best mate. Nothing could ever change that.”
“But that’s not true, is it?” His voice dropped and blood began dribbling ever so slowly from his lips. “I’ve already been replaced. First Fallon, then Dick, and now you have your merry band of foolish Potentials. You’d even chase after Victoria’s attacker when it should have been you who ended her miserable existence. You should have avenged me.”
“That’s not the same, I—”
“You left me, Kayden. No one was there when they jumped me or when that bitch ran me through with her knife. It was slow, you know.” Blood began rushing from his throat now, and his voice was distorted as he spoke around it. “She took her time, slicing inch by inch across the sensitive skin.”
“Stop. Stop this!”
He advanced, and I pressed back into the cold metal of the door.
“It hurt so badly, Kayden. The blade went so deep. And the blood… I was drowning in it.” At those words, more blood gushed from his neck, coating Flynn entirely. Gods, it was everywhere. The air was ripe with the metallic scent of it.
