Lux (The Nocte Trilogy 3)

I know it as Dare limps across the lawn, his forehead bloody.

I know it as he stands in front of me, battered and raw.

“Calla?” he whispers, his hand on my shoulder.

There’s blood on his fingers.

“Calla?”

I somehow manage to move my head, to look up at the boy I love, the man I hate, the man I’m afraid of now. I don’t know why, I just know I do. All of these emotions swirl in me and I don’t know where they’re coming from and it doesn’t matter right now. Only one thing matters.

“Where’s Finn?” my lips move.

Dare stares at me, his dark eyes guarded and urgent.

“We’ve got to call an ambulance.”

I’m frozen, so Dare grabs my phone and punches at the numbers, crimson blood staining the keys.

His voice blends into the night as he speaks to the dispatcher, but one phrase penetrates the fog of my consciousness.

“There’s been an accident.”

I wait for him to finish, I wait as he calls my father, I wait until he hangs up and stares down at me before I finally speak.

“Was it?” I ask him, my voice shaking and frail and thin. “Was it an accident?”

He closes his eyes.

I close mine too.

Because I know it wasn’t.

I know my mother killed my brother.

And it wasn’t an accident.

Dare sees it in my eyes, he knows that I know, and I hear his phone drop to the porch, and I hear it shatter.

Just

Like

My

Heart.

Chapter Fifteen

The world is black

The world is punishing

The world is mine

The world is black

The world is punishing