Verum (The Nocte Trilogy 2)

But I can’t find the right ones.

“Calla, are you ok?” he asks with bloody lips and his teeth are red.

I can’t move,

I can’t think.

He grabs me to him and screams,

And the scream builds into a roar,

And the roar is the ocean.

“Help!” Dare shouts, but I think it might’ve been me.

I close my heart, and he opens his lips, and words fall out, and I shake my head.

Because Finn is on the beach and he’s dead.

And Dare has done something, something, something.

The fear grows and builds and takes me over, covering me up in shadows.

That boy will be your ruin, Sabine whispers. He’ll breakyoubreakyoubreakyou.

In my head, blood spatters and someone screams and I yank away from Dare now, gasping for breath.

He’s here,

and he’s fine.

He’s fine.

He stares at me, nervous, hesitant to approach.

“Are you all right, Calla?” his British words are clipped, and his eyes are concerned. He holds his hand out like he’s soothing a disturbed filly, and I’m disturbed. That’s the only thing to describe me.

Because none of that happened.

None of that is real.

Except for the fact that my brother is dead.

The nausea hits suddenly, in a frightening wave.

I whirl around so he can’t see, and I retch into the bushes.

Humiliation swells in me, but not so much as the sickness.

Over and over, my stomach rebels, and I feel him behind me, trying to soothe me.

“Go,” I tell him over my shoulder, utterly embarrassed.

“No,” he answers firmly. “Maybe you have food poisoning. We should go see Sabine.”

His answer for everything.

But somehow, I feel like she’s causing this. I never felt this way until I met her. These things never happened to me before.