Page 106 of Cursed Lifeline

A feral growl leaves my lips as I turn and kick open the door of Esme’s room just the same. A lonely candle illuminates the space from a small table across the room. Hope fills me as a soft clatter from the bathroom across the way draws my attention to where I’m hopeful I’ll find Esme. The watchers gather at the door to the room and are smart not to enter. That is, not until I find her and demand she tell me what the hell is going on.

Knocking lightly on the door to the bathroom, I wait for her response. After several tense moments, I look up at the three men gathered in the doorway and frown. Alfred’s eyes fall to Esme’s bed and widen. I look down and see haphazardly formed mounds identical to the ones found in the room across the hall. Rage fuels me as I step away from the door and then plow into the wood with my left shoulder. The door shutters but doesn’t give way. Stunned, I look up at Alfred, Silas, and Caelum.

“Meddling fae,” Silas sighs. Alfred’s back stiffens. “Their trickster magic will get them in trouble one day.”

Eyes locked on Alfred’s, my jaw ticks with fury. “It already has,” I insist as I slam into the door a second time, challenging the pixie’s magic with my own.

The door gives way and I barrel into the bathroom to find an open window. Outside, a raven can be heard releasing an eager kraa into the night. The soft clink, clank, and rattle of the metal as the window swings on its hinges mimics the sound I heard when I first entered the room.

Stalking back into Esme’s chambers, her metallic scent calls to me, comforting me, as I start to make my way towards the watchers when the candle on her desk flickers and causes me to halt.

A scribbled note sits below a sharp, scarlet-stained dagger. As I approach the desk, I realize the note isn’t written in ink. It’s written in Esme’s blood.

Felix,

Evangeline knows a way to save us all.

If there’s a chance, I have to take it.

Because…

Three words.

That’s all it takes to crush my hope, raise my nightmares from the dead, and fuel the vengeance that’s been buried inside me for over a hundred years.

I. Choose. You.

“Alfred,” I shout. “I changed my mind. Your pixie dies. Tonight.”

Thirty Six

Esme

Song: Enemy | Tommee Profit, Beacon Light, Sam Tinnesz

Evangeline eyesme angrily as she crosses her arms over her chest and huddles further into the crease of the large boulder’s shadows behind her. Kneeling, I dig a stake out of the bag I packed and strap it to my left thigh. Grabbing another, I do the same to the right before reaching into the bag and pulling out a third. Gesturing with it towards Evangeline, I insist quietly, “Here.”

She eyes me with disgust and tightens the vice grip her arms have around her chest.

Rolling my eyes, I rise and walk towards her. In a hushed tone, I say, “It was the only way. You can’t stay mad at me forever. And you can’t follow me into the lion’s den unprepared.”

Forcing the stake horizontally against her chest, she unclasps her hands and finally takes it.

“Who says I’m going any further,” she insists in a harsh whisper. I shake my head and laugh. The sound of a carriage pulling up to Ember’s gate has us catching our breath. We study each other closely as Talon and Celeste’s voices travel down the steep terrain toward us.

The situation up the hill escalates and I grab the stake at my side. Starting to scale the wall, I stop only when I hear Evangeline mumble angrily, “Your plan is a surefire way to get us all killed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I scoff as the vexed tone of the voices above diminishes, and a secret I sense Evangeline holds starts to reveal itself.

She looks anywhere but my eyes as I turn around and says, “It means, you’re just as foolish in this life as your last.”

“Foolish?” I sneer.

“Imprudent,” she sighs, crossing her arms over her chest again. She keeps a tight grip on the stake I handed her as she shakes her head in dismay. Finally, her eyes snap to mine. “Have you ever considered the consequences of marching into Ember’s estate?”

Hands on my hips, I stare down the fae and say, “Time has taught me that the future is whatever we make it as long as we’re wise enough to learn from our past. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

Beginning my climb once again, I’m stopped a second time as she mutters, “You already have.”

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