Ruined Castles (The Elite King's Club 8)

I’m going to die.

“Move her to the bed. Set up the camera.”

My eyelids feel like lead, my will to fight slowly disappearing. Someone picks me up, I think, and I’m moving, floating through the air. Maybe I’m flying—that could make more sense right now. And now I’m falling… falling and falling into a soft cloud. I chuckle, smiling at the clouds surrounding me. Reaching out to touch them, air whooshes up my inner thighs, curling around my curves. I giggle at the way it tickles all of my sensitive regions, and then my back arches off the bed when I feel more air push around me. Widening my arms out, a smile spreads on my lips. I’m jumping now. Jumping and jumping on the clouds like balls of bubblegum, and then I’m falling… falling far down. Smack! My head hits the hard pavement and sets off a pounding headache. I groan, turning left and right. No longer on clouds, no longer bouncing, no longer happy. A familiar dread begins filling my mind again, touching all of the raw memories from what it felt like moments ago. Something is torn off and I’m looking up at an unfamiliar face. He’s young. I don’t know him.

Oh my God, they’ve been following me. Tate’s key. The club. My recklessness.

My thighs ache, everything hurts.

He cracks a smile at me that reeks of evil. But it’s not. It’s not evil. I know evil, and he drives a Maserati. “Now, you’re going to play along with this.”

“Fuck you!” I spit at him, trying to push up from the bed but failing. My arms still aren’t working properly, despite the fact they’re no longer restrained.

The boy leans down, meeting me at eye level. I can’t tell how much time has passed since he drugged me, or what kind of psychedelic he drugged me with, but it’s well worn off. It’s not until I look down to my thighs to notice he’s changed me into a small leather skirt and a white crop top with no bra. The jumping around must have been him changing me.

“Who the fuck are you?” I reach for the sheets on our bed to cover my body, only they’re too tight to pull.

He takes a seat on the edge of my bed. Mine and Bishop’s bed. And flicks open the button of his shirt. “I’m someone who is going to kill every single person that you love if you don’t go ahead and play a cute little game with me. Don’t believe me? We got into your house without you or Bishop knowing.”

“What game?” I ask, my eyes falling up and down his body.

Jeans, hoodie, but an air of danger hovers over his shoulders and there’s something. Something that is telling me that whatever Bishop has been hiding from me all this time, it has to do with this man here, which means that if Bishop was hiding him from me, he’s dangerous. Dangerous enough to follow through on his threat. Bishop has always said I wasn’t strong enough to stand beside him when he took the gavel. If I folded and destroyed everyone that I loved because I couldn’t do my part, I’d never forgive myself.

I sigh, my heart beating fiercely in my chest. So hard that it almost snatches my breath. “What do you need me to do?”

The breakdown of a relationship isn’t the only thing that breaks.

SUNSETS OR SUNRISES. ONE SIGNIFIES the end of the day as it baptizes the sky with streaks of blood orange, and the other symbolizes the start of a new day. New sins to be made, new memories, new regrets.

I sit perched in a lounge chair on the patio of my parents’ house. I couldn’t go back to the apartment. I can’t go back. Not after what I did.

Swiping the tears that fall down my face, I blow gently into my mug of hot chocolate. An empty void fills my chest that I know will never refill. I’m not broken, I’m damaged. I wasn’t before. I was his, now I’m not. Guilt grips me from around my throat and refuses to let go. Even when I suck down the rich melted chocolate, the guilt lingers right there beside the notes of crushed cocoa beans.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” Elena takes a seat beside me. “It’s cold out here.”

“I like the cold.” I swirl my drink around in the mug and peek at her under my lashes. “I’m not. I don’t think. Okay.”

Elena leans forward, crossing her hands on her lap while pulling her cardigan tighter around her waist. “Do you want me to cancel our trip and stay with you?”

I shake my head with wide eyes. “No! It’s okay.” I peer out into the distance, watching the baptizing from today’s sin spread across the sky in a bright pink casting. “Just—I might stay here for a bit if that’s okay.”