Page 1 of Iridian

Chapter 1

Rosabel La Rouge

My hands were so numb I hardly felt them attached to my body. Voices called out my name, but I was drowning in this never-ending darkness, and no matter how hard I tried to break free, I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the light.

I wondered,is this what it’s like to die?

Then I thought,no matter; Taland is okay.

My memory was perfectly functional. I remembered exactly what had happened, how I’d come to dive into this darkness, and as absurd as my mind insisted those events were, it also knew that they werereal.That all of it had happened.

I, Rora La Rouge, had gone into the Devil’s very lair and had offered him my bracelet in exchange for Taland’s life, thinking it would be easy to walk back out of there. And maybe it would have been if not for the fact that the Mergenbach siblings of Selem had barged in uninvited.

That’s when everything had gone to shit.

Even now, in this state that I was, a part of me couldn’t help but wish they hadn’t. A part of me couldn’t help but wish theexchange had happened, that I’d put the bracelet into Hakim’s hand, and that Seth and I had taken Taland away from that house, that neighborhood, the damn country.

Even knowing what was at stake, I wished it with all my heart.

I guess it’s a good thing wishes don’t really mean anything.

That voice called my name again—or maybe it said something else; I couldn’t be sure. My mind still raced with memories and possibilities, withwhat-ifs,like always.

Sometimes I wondered if I was my own worst enemy.

Sometimes I believed it.

But, eventually, I began to recognize the voice.

It wasn’tpeoplelike I first thought—just one person. Just one woman who’d made me sweat ever since I was a little girl, who’d showed me how little the wordfamilycould mean, and how much of your life depended on the actual individuals you considered that. Just that one woman who’d made me feel like I was never enough, like there was something wrong with me, like I wasn’t worthy of love and affection and patience and understanding, and I’d gone out into the world to search for it without even understanding what I was doing.

It wasthatwoman’s voice that called me, and that’s the reason I both wanted to stay in the dark forever, and why my mind, guided by fear and panic that were completely out of my control, shocked itself awake. Wherever Madeline Rogan was, that’s where I needed to be the most alert, figure out how to get the hell away from her, as far and as fast as I could.

It was instinct, so deeply ingrained in me by years and years of neglect that I reacted even when unconscious. Or maybe it was just the spell she was chanting?

A spell—not my name. She wasn’t calling for me to wake up. The harsh Iridian words that left her lips in a rush sent a red-hot shock throughout my system, yet I was still confident that it wasjust the thought of her being near me that had pulled me out of unconsciousness first.

Either way, my eyes opened.

A white ceiling over me. My chest rose and fell so fast. My hands were indeed completely numb, and I couldn’t blink or move at all for a good minute while my thoughts raced.

That ceiling—I knew it. That smell in the air, the faint scent of the sweet perfume lingering—I knew it. The warmth, theweightof her presence near me—I knew it. And even if I didn’t want to believe it, I knew exactly where I was, too.

In the mansion, in Madeline’s office—and she really was there with me.

“Look at me.”

It was an order, one my eyes obeyed without my need to even think through what I was doing.

Madeline leaned down, closer to me. Her face came into view and our eyes locked.

I stopped breathing.

She, to me, was the boogeyman come to swallow me whole.

“Can you see me?”

I couldn’t speak.

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