Page 147 of Sun-Kissed Fangs
“Sorry. Bad habit.” Harper smiled. A genuine smile, even though it looked tired.
Then her gaze fell. Not far. More redirected than averted.
She caressed Maya’s jaw. The side of her neck. Maya only realized what she was doing when Harper trailed her fingers over her shoulder, her ribs, and then around to her back.
“You have demons of your own.” Harper’s finger brushed over the scar between her shoulder blades. “You don’t owe me anything. Just because I shared doesn’t mean you have to do the same, but… you can handle me. I’m sure I can handle you.”
“My story isn’t pleasant. It might scare you.Imight.”
“I think you’re more scared of yourself than I could ever be.”
Those words hurt. Burned. Seared, like silver and flame. Though parts of her nature had become easier to deal with—practical, even—her past wasn’t.
It was more than dark. It was a pit of despair, one she tumbled into every time she closed her eyes. Every moment of rest was ruined by it, as her memories tore it into bloody pieces.
Until Harper. After meeting her, the nightmares had quieted. When sleeping with this woman in her arms, they had transformed into dreams.
“It started a year and a half ago,” Maya said. “That’s when the Court of Night took me. Gave me my tattoo.”
Harper tensed, and Maya took her hand, holding it tight.
“I didn’t go through the same things Evie did. The vampire who captured me saw his humans more like pets than anything else. He wanted us to do tricks. To entertain him. He told me once that us being scared out of our minds would ruin it for him.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “I came to miss him, in a way. He had spending problems and needed money fast, so he sold most of his menagerie. Some to neighboring Night Courts and others, like me, he gave to a warlock. A necromancer, who had a theory that he could create a vampire and bind it to him. We were his test subjects.”
She’d gotten lucky. Unlike most of the others, she wasn’t awake for any of his preliminary experiments. She just woke up afterwards, nauseous from whatever he’d injected her with. Or aching from the samples he’d taken.
The only thing she was awake for was when he’d killed her. She’d been the last to go, huddled in a dark cell as the others were taken away one by one. And didn’t come back.
It took days. Days when she’d barely slept, barely eaten. Days when the only sounds she heard were crying, begging, and screaming.
When it was her turn, she’d been so exhausted that she couldn’t even struggle as she was dragged into his workshop. As he strapped her to a stained surgical table and cut her wrists, throat, and thighs, watching as she bled out.
She was relieved at first. She’d assumed blood loss would be a decent way to go. It seemed almost peaceful. Like you just went to sleep.
That wasn’t reality. She’d gotten so dizzy that she’d nearly thrown up. Her breathing had turned rapid as her lungs fought for oxygen, but were running out of blood to supply it. Doom and panic flooded her mind, with her being too weak to even scream.
Killing her hadn’t been easy or swift. It was a terrifying,slowordeal that her body fought against every step of the way. The last thing she felt before finally losing consciousness was that mad warlock stabbing two syringes into her heart—one holding a translucent liquid, the other a swirling, golden mixture.
She’d woken up in a grave. Had dug herself out as her mouth and lungs filled with soil. And the moment her fingers broke free into the cold night air, he had been waiting for her.
“He didn’t even intend for me to be a daywalker,” Maya whispered. “I was an accident. One he couldn’t replicate, no matter how much he tried. The brand between my shoulders bound me to him. All he had to do was flick his wrist, and I would have no choice but to obey his commands. Kill anyone he wanted.”
She scoffed. “He never got to. When the Chains rescued me, they severed our connection, and I… I lost control. Arcane thralls don’t need to eat, since they’re fueled by the lifeforce of the witch orwarlock who made them. I had never fed. I was starving. So starving that I didn’t see the people around me as people at all. They were just prey. Even now, months later, I have no idea how many I killed.”
She could still remember the feeling. Thehunger.The taste of their blood. It had run down her throat like charred syrup, and she’d been too ravenous to do anything other than savor it.
It was like a dream, remembering it. She saw everything clearly, felt everything clearly. But it was like she was playing the role of someone else. A stranger, with the focus and drive of a rabid predator.
But that monster, terrifying and ravening, wasn’t a stranger.
It was just her.
Harper hadn’t moved. Her hand rested on her shoulder, eyes settled on Maya’s. Blue, bright, and as soft as morning dew.
“You’re pretty messed up, huh?”
Maya smiled, though it was a struggle to get it in place.
