Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles 3)

She looked at him through the cloud of smoke quickly filling the room. Sarafine watched the flames with remove. She wasn’t standing in her house, about to watch her husband burn to death. He didn’t look like the man she loved. Or even a man she could love.

He’s a traitor. The voice was perfectly clear now, and there was only one. Sarafine recognized it right away.

Because it was her own.

Before she walked away from the house and the smoke, her life and memories that were already fading, she remembered something John used to say to her. She looked into his green eyes with her gold ones.

“I’ll love you until the day after forever.”

Lena fell to her knees on the step beneath me, sobbing.

I wrapped my arms around her, but I didn’t say a word. She had just watched her mother kill her father and leave her for dead.

There was nothing left to say.

12.13

The Verdict

A few hours later, Lena was shaking me.

Wake up. You have to wake up, Ethan—

I sat up with a start. “I’m awake!” Only I looked around, confused, because it wasn’t Lena shaking me, it was Liv. Even though I could still hear the echo of Lena’s voice lingering in my head.

“Ethan. It’s me. Please—you’ve got to wake up.”

I looked at her through half-open eyes. “Am I dreaming?”

Liv frowned. “I’m afraid not. This is real.”

I rubbed my hand through my hair, confused. It was still pitch-dark outside, and I couldn’t even remember dreaming. I only remembered Lena’s voice and the urgent feeling something was wrong. “What’s going on?”

“It’s Marian. She’s gone. Come on.”

Things were starting to fall into place. I was in my room. Liv was in my room. I wasn’t dreaming. Which meant—

“Wait. How did you get in here?”

Liv looked embarrassed. “I hitched a ride.” She pointed to the scorpion belt around her waist and glanced behind her.

An Incubus was sitting in the corner of my bedroom.

Great.

John picked up my jeans from the floor and tossed them at me. “Hurry up, Boy Scout.” For a guy who didn’t have to sleep, he was as grouchy in the middle of the night as I was.

Liv blushed, turning around, and a few seconds later I heard the familiar ripping sound. Only for the first time, it was for me.

“Where are we?”

Nobody answered. Then I heard John’s voice in the darkness. “No clue.”

“Don’t you have to know where you’re going to rip? Isn’t that the way it works?” I asked.

“Is that some kind of Mortal word for Traveling? Real clever.” He sounded annoyed, which I was used to by now. “Sort of. Usually.”

The shadows were shifting, and I rubbed my eyes, trying to see in the dark. I stretched out my hands, but I couldn’t feel anything.