Page 172 of Their Blood Rite

I fucking flood with it as images flash through my mind.

I’m hanging. I’m choking back on the gallows, with crows waiting for me to stop struggling so they can peck out my eyes. It’s not my lover’s hand around my throat but a rope. The creaking of it echoes in my ears.

Swing. Swing. Swing.

Dorian yells for everyone to stop, sensing my emotions through the link he created and shoving them away.

I scream as they withdraw, and everything around me explodes in a mess of dirt and splintering trees.

Chapter 30

Huddled up in a ball, I sob and struggle to calm myself in any way.

Hanging. I’m hanging.

Crushed and broken.

Cut. Cut. Cut.

‘Ashe? Ashe, what’s wrong?’ Archie asks softly, kneeling beside me and gently putting his coat over my naked body.

My fingers cling to the soil as I ground myself in the comforting flow of earth magic. Roots rise up and twist around my fingers in comfort as if the magic below wants to help soothe me.

‘Is she ok?’ Shaw asks. ‘Dorian, you’re linked. What do you feel?’

‘Terror,’ he replies. ‘Utter terror and panic. As soon as my hand went around her throat.’

They all kneel around me, waiting.

‘It wasn’t minutes,’ I whisper.

‘What wasn’t?’ Dorian asks. When his hand settles on my back, I recoil.

He doesn’t try again.

‘Talk to us,’ he pleads. ‘We can’t help you if we don’t know what’s wrong.’

What’s wrong? Are they serious? The list is endless. Their betrayal. Their lies and manipulation. Their cruelty.

Slowly, I sit, looking at them all as they watch me.

‘In the circle,’ I tell them, my voice flat and defeated. ‘It wasn’t minutes. It was hours. It was days.’

‘I… I don’t understand.’ Archie shakes his head and looks at the others, hoping for clarity.

‘It took Dhalia three days to die underneath the stones you put on her, Dorian,’ I tell him. ‘I was there. Inside her body. I lived every second as she did. You killed me. I saw you smile as my bones broke and blood flooded my organs.’

He pales. I face Archie.

‘You hung me. Swung me like a toy. Spat on me. I hung for hours. It rained. I can still feel the rain on my skin.’ My hand caresses my throat. Even that’s too much, and I have to let myself go. ‘I left the forest and went there, to their final days. I was gone for three days with Dorian. Hours with Archie.’

I look at Shaw.

‘Please tell me you didn’t die Neve’s death,’ he says painfully.

I nod, and he slumps back, his shoulders sagging and his lips parted.

‘I… we didn’t…’ Archie looks painfully at Shaw. ‘Did you know that would happen?’

---