Page 104 of Tempt Me

Fade: To lose vividness or brightness in color.

How can I watch the man I love fade away?

I woke up in a room I didn’t recognize. My body felt like it was broken. I looked over to the form sleeping beside me. It was Pharaoh. He wasn’t asleep. He was lying down with his eyes unblinking.

“Pharaoh?” I said, my voice coming out as shitty as I felt. I tried to wrap my head around the events, but it felt like whiplash. I hadn’t been able to breathe.

Taliah…

“Where’s your sister? Is she okay?”

Pharaoh didn’t speak. He just kept staring blankly at the wall across from where he lay.

“We couldn’t find her.”

I gasped, searching for the voice in the room. Goliath sat on a chair at the far end of the room. He had a sling around his arm, and his face was covered in healing cuts.

“What…what happened?” I said, suddenly feeling terrified. They didn’t find Taliah?

Where was she?

“My sister used some form of emergency cauterization. There is no body. She’s just…gone. We don’t know where she is. People were looking for her. It has been a week now. You were sedated for a while to recover from some of your injuries.”

I looked over my body. I definitely felt broken.

Wait, a week? I had been in this bed for a week?

“What the fuck? What happened? What’s wrong with your brother?”

Goliath flinched at the word brother. His huge body seemed to shrink.

“Pharaoh will be okay. Eventually,” he said in a soft whisper that didn’t match the massive giant that he was.

A woman with dark curly hair entered the door and walked over to the medical bags hooked up to me. “Hi there. I am Ezello Lavita. I have been caring for you since you arrived.”

Arrived where?

“You’re at Hospital Thirteen,” Goliath said, standing up to his full height and walking over to my bedside. “Pharaoh asked me to ensure you didn’t wake up in another hospital. He wanted you safe…”

I looked over to Pharaoh again, his big body unmoving.

We were in the asylum. Was this for protection?

“Where is Ferdinand?” I said with a shaky breath, feeling my blood run cold at the memories of running from him in the woods.

“Dead.”

I swallowed hard and let out a shaky breath.

“Good.” I meant it. I was glad he was dead. I only hoped Taliah was somewhere safe.

“You can leave anytime, Ms. Summers,” Ezello said. “We kept you here for your recovery, butyouare not a prisoner.”

The way she said ‘you’ made me look over again at Pharaoh.

“We both aren’t prisoners. We can leave together, can’t we?”

I sat up on the bed, pulling myself onto the mattress to see Pharaoh better.

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