Page 24 of Fire Kissed
That’s what severs the magic of our emotions in two.
I pull away and peer out into the darkness to find Torben standing in front of a building so black, it nearly bleeds into the night. The entrance is just to the right of the warrior who doesn’t seem too ready to lead the way inside.
With just a few steps closer, the shriek of screams crawls out of the enormous, towering building. The sobs of men are all I hear just behind that door.
Latham’s inside.
His voice might be one of those heartbreaking cries.
And that’s all I think about as I grip the handle and let the sound of all that pain crash over me.
Neverend
Rhys
Prisoners shriekat us as we pass, but I know I won’t stop until I reach the twelfth floor.
“It’s the tower of Neverend. The more powerful prisoners are kept on the last five floors.” Torben trails behind me as I pass the cages built into the walls. They line the hall, but every now and then, the building shifts, cutting me off at a dead end and making me hike back to find a stairwell to carry me up to the next floor.
We’ve been inside for around half an hour, and we’re only on the fourth floor.
Latham needs me. Maybe I can’t rescue him tonight, but I need him to know I’ll come back...
Torben grunts when I turn abruptly down an endless hall. Quiet seeps in, the yells of the others fade with every rushing step I take. Their screams are like whispers now, raking over my flesh with an eeriness that settles right into my bones.
Just as I turn onto the fifth floor, the wall shifts... and I’m right back on the second floor landing. My jaw clenches, and I just know it’s Hela’s doing. I don’t know if she’s watching or controlling this screwed-up game called my life, but I know she’s responsible for all of this.
“We don’t have time for this, Rhys,” Torben tells me for somewhere around the hundredth time as I turn abruptly and look for the everchanging stairwell.
“We have an endless amount of time here, really,” Aric argues, possibly for the sake of arguing.
I roll my eyes at both of them, and my tattered shoes squeak when I turn the hall at too fast of a pace, avoiding the shift in the walls.
The changes of this screwed-up labyrinth of a world won’t stop me from seeing him.
Cage after dark cage blurs by, but it’s a strange magnetic pull that stops me dead in my tracks.
Rhys, he growls at the back of my mind.
Except it isn’t Latham in my head this time.
My mouth falls open as I stare down at the once-honored son of my Alpha.
“Kyvain,” I say slowly, assessing the blood and dirt that smears the angles of his angry face.
“Hhhelp me,” he mumbles on a quivering lip.
My heart is so startled, it doesn’t remember how to beat. It’s too fast and then skipping and shaking all at once.
I’m not afraid of him though. I never was. Seeing him like this just confirms that for the first time in my entire life.
The other men in his cell are hunched down and silent. The will in them has been beaten out. That’s why they’ve been placed in this Neverend prison.
Just like Latham.
But this realm isn’t just a place for the dishonored dead. It’s a place for monsters.
And Kyvain is both.
