Page 82 of Phantom Flower

Suddenly I was not in the hallway of Bloodburn Academy anymore. I was back in that mangled car in Tokyo, with my father’s body draped over mine, shielding me as glass and metal tore into him. I could feel it again. The hot blood soaking through my clothes, dripping onto my face, my neck, my hands. One of his fingers had been sliced clean off by a shard of the windshield. I remembered staring at it in horror, the way it lay on my lap like a discarded piece of meat while he gasped my name with his last breaths.

I could not breathe.

My lungs refused to work. I slid down the locker, my hands clawing at my throat as if I could physically pull the oxygen in.

People were staring.

Dozens of them, but no one moved to help. They just pulled their phones and recorded. It was entertaining. The rich Japanese kid having a breakdown in the hallway.

My hands trembled as I reached up to my hair, desperately searching for the flower Dimitri had given me that morning, the bright red one that usually grounded me during panic attacks.

It was gone.

I must have lost it when that person bumped into me.

I began sobbing. Without the flower, I had nothing. No small piece of color to remind me I was not still trapped in that car, drowning in my father’s blood.

“I can’t— I can’t breathe—” I gasped, curling into myself on the cold floor. Tears mixed with the blood on my face. “Please… someone—”

But no one came.

They just kept filming.

I was suffocating.

My vision started spotting black at the edges. My heart was going to explode. I was going to die here, on the dirty hallway floor, surrounded by strangers who only cared about getting likes.

Where was Dimitri?

Where was Marco?

Why was I always alone when it mattered most?

I pressed my forehead against my knees, rocking slightly, trying to make myself smaller. “Make it stop…”

For the first time in weeks, I felt like the old Rei again.

Empty.

Broken.

Drowning in blood that would never wash off.

Chapter 23

Dimitri Morozov

There was a crowd gathered in the hallway like fucking vultures circling fresh meat. I did not give a shit what they were staring at. All I cared about was finding Rei. He should have been at his locker by now. Something felt wrong. That primal instinct in my chest was screaming.

Alexei appeared beside me, eyebrows raised. “What the hell is going on?”

“Go look,” I said.

But then I heard it.

A broken sob that tore straight through my ribs and clutched my black heart in a vise.

I knew that sound.