Page 16 of His Darkest Desire

Why was there no wound? How was she alive? Was she…

Dead?

Kinsely frantically shook her head. “No. No, I’m not dead.”

Somehow, that dark stranger had saved her. Had healed her.

The muffled voices, so much closer now, broke through her rising panic.

“Hello?” she called, striding around the car toward the fog. “I’m here! Please help me!”

The wisp flew in front of her, stopping Kinsley short. It shook its tiny head.

“There are people there,” she said. “They can help me.”

It spoke, its whispers almost frantic as its body flickered.

“I need to get help.” She stepped past the wisp and plunged into the fog. “I’m here!”

Warmth blossomed on her right wrist, but she barely noticed it. She needed to get home, needed to tell her family that she was all right. The air was so heavy and thick that she couldn’t see, and she could barely breathe. It felt like the fog itself was fighting to bar her passage. She raised her hands in front of her to feel for obstacles in her path.

The warmth on her wrist grew into searing heat, sending waves of pain up her arm. Kinsley hissed and clamped her other hand around the spot, squeezing, seeking some relief even as she pushed onward.

Those voices only sounded farther away.

She called out again, begged for help, for acknowledgement, for anything, and the pain in her arm became so great that she stumbled. Somehow, she remained upright. Somehow, she kept moving.

The wisp’s indecipherable pleas intensified along with her pain. Kinsley clenched her teeth. Fire blazed through her veins, raced along her spine, and flooded her head, sinking scorching claws into every corner of her mind. A scream welled in her throat. It built with explosive pressure, burning almost as much as the pain, but it wouldn’t come out.

Not until the pain drove her down onto her knees. The world spun dizzyingly around her. Kinsley squeezed her eyes shut and bent forward, pressing her forehead on her arms as every muscle tensed against the agony.

Everything stopped. The press of the fog ceased, and the voices gave way to a silence so total that it was deafening.

Hesitantly, Kinsley opened her eyes and lifted her head. There was a glowing green, tattoo-like band of ivy and thorns circling her wrist. Its light faded, and with it, so did the pain, leaving only a throbbing memory in its wake. She brushed her thumb over her skin.

The mark was gone.

What is happening to me?

Brow furrowed, she slowly shifted to sit back on her heels as she gazed around her.

She was no longer in the fog. She wasn’t even in the forest.

Kinsley was upon a bed of moss in the center of a small depression, surrounded by a circle of standing stones, each of which was around five feet tall. The runes carved into their faces were varied and intricate, and they emitted their own ethereal green light that dimly illuminated the chamber. Thick, gnarled tree roots came down from overhead, splitting and delving into the ground all around the circle without a single offshoot crossing into it.

Beyond those roots she could just make out walls of stone, some of it shaped, some of it natural, with clusters of faintly glowing crystals embedded in them.

The tree.

She was beneath the tree that stood at the center of the cottage.

A scream burst from Kinsley as she dug her fingers into her thighs. It was powered by anger and frustration, by helplessness and fear.

When that scream faded, she clenched the fabric of her nightgown in her fists and growled.

“You are a persistent creature,” said her host, his deep, cold voice echoing off the stone and layering upon itself. “But here, your stubbornness will bring only suffering.”

CHAPTER SIX

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