I have no clue how long I laid there for.
It was pain that first dragged me from the depths, the biting, screaming sensation that filled the world around me with red. In a series of violent waves, it shredded me awake to my lungs seizing, forcing in sheets of air full of rain that burned the whole way in. A violent, choking cough burst out of me, and my body convulsed as if it were ejected into the world against its will.
Every nerve felt exposed. Raw. As if someone had flayed the skin off me and thrown me into the storm.
I was alive.
Barely.
The ground icy under my body as I rolled to my side with a fractured wheeze. I tried to push myself up but my hands just slipped against the slick stone. The fall had knocked the wind right out of my lungs—my ribs protested my every breath, my head rang like a bell from a hard hit—but adrenaline would not allow me to remain down.
Not now.
Forced myself to my feet, swaying, my eyes blurring and refocusing.
I looked up.
And my heart sank.
This place was enormous.
I found myself amidst a maze garden, high hedges like living walls repelling me on every side. Black roses flourished everywhere—syrupy petals, heavy and slick with rain, dark as thinned blood. This odor that was both sweet and rotten filled the air.
The odor of damp soil combined with some metal.
Iron.
Blood.
A prison disguised as beauty.
High above the maze, towering stone walls rose with an impossible height, soaring into the storm-dark sky. The top was spiked with iron, sparkling in the flashes of lightning. Cycling light beams moved slowly back and forth in sweeping cadences, parting the rain like searching eyes.
No escape.
And that words kept repeating in my head, as horror crept deep into my bones, unbearable and stifling.
Then I heard it.
Footsteps.
More than one pair.
Fast.
My heart banged hard in my chest.
Panic exploded through me.
I ran.
The cold stone path slapped my bare feet with each step, exploding pain in my toes. Blood splattered below me, a stream of it forking, curling, painting the pale stone red as shards of glass embedded into my skin. My feet were screaming, nerves arced like bare wires, but I didn't slow down.
Pain meant I was still alive.
Lightning cracked overhead, illuminating the maze in violent flashes of white. Shadows leapt and twisted around me as I darted between hedges, rain soaking my scrubs and plastering the fabric to my skin. The weight of it dragged me down, clung to me like hands trying to pull me under.
My breath came out in ragged sobs.
I pushed harder.
Behind me, voices erupted.
"Get her!"
"She went this way!"
Not just Kaida.
Men in black poured into the garden, spreading out with terrifying efficiency. Shadows with guns. Boots pounding against stone. They moved like predators who already knew their prey had nowhere left to run.
My heart hammered so hard it felt like it might rip straight through my chest.
Think.
My arms slapped against branches as I slashed through the hedges, thorns nicking at my skin. Black rose petals adhered to me like an infection, coating my clothes, my hair, even the blood that coated my hands. My arms burned. My legs screamed.
I didn't slow.
The maze turned in a mindless circle, paths blending with one another and everything becoming the same. Left. Right. Straight. Dead end. Turn again. Panic scratched up my throat, because it would be so easy to become lost here, so easy for them to corner me and be done with this.
A gunshot shattered the air.
It was a sharp crack, rippling off stone walls, cutting through the storm.
I screamed and lurched hard to the left, my foot sliding on wet stone. I just had time to save myself in falling. My hands hit the ground, glass cutting into my palms once more.
My blood poured in an arc now, running down my arms and onto the path.
Another shot.
Closer.
I stumbled to my feet and fled.
My lungs ripped each lung felt like it was ripping, breathing shallowly was painful. Rain spotted my vision, lightning striking so often now that it seemed as if the sky itself sought to reveal me, wanted to gift me back then.
Then—
The hedges opened.
I broke out in a huge open yard and slid to a stop.
I saw a big swimming pool in front of me, the dark-green water bubbling under the rain. Drops pummeled it without mercy, waves sent smashing into one another by the force of those drops. Lights from under the water are a sickly lambent green, as if the pool were something unnatural and alive.
Beyond it—
The ocean.
The breakers were beating with a violence that made them drown the sound of the storm on jagged rocks beneath the cliff. There was no beach. No gentle shore. Nothing but an abyss waiting to suck down anybody dumb enough to stray near.
My stomach dropped.
Behind me, the maze came alive with activity.
Men poured from every path with guns drawn, filling a massive arc that negated every avenue of retreat. Kaida came up, hair matted to her face with rain and eyes gleaming in wicked pleasure.
"End of the line, Doctor." She called out in mockery:
My ribcage expanded as I stepped ever so closer to the pool, my heart pounding so fast it drowned out the thunder. I had nowhere to go—walls and guns to my back, water in front of me, ocean past that.
Nowhere left to run.
Another gunshot rang out.
Pain exploded in my side.
I gave a gasp and stumbled a little, my body was protesting. I felt warmth spreading quickly over my scrubs, rain and blood soaking into the fabric. Automatically, my hand flew to the wound, finding my fingers slick and red.
I didn't look down.
If I did, I'd stop.
And stopping meant dying.
I turned and started running again, this time running directly toward the pool.
Shouts erupted behind me.
"She's crazy!"
"Shoot her!"
The gunfire shattered the air with bullets splintering stone, ricocheting off the ground that surrounded my knees. I ran not too gracefully along the slimy edge of the pool, sliding, almost losing my balance as agony ripped through my leg and foot.
Then I jumped.
The water swallowed me whole.
I went under and cold punched me through the wind with the full fury of my lungs lava blasted out from my throat by losing all my air. The world went silent—rain drumming overhead, gunfire becoming muffled pops as bullets chased me into the water, losing energy, dotting past me like dead metal sinking.
I farted, lungs on fire, tired but desperate arms curling, as I swam towards the other side of the pool. I felt the blood streaming from my body as it dissolved, blooming in the water behind me, a cloud of dark ink.
My fingers brushed the tile.
I pulled myself, heaving, rainfall mixing with water seeping down from my hair and under my eyes. I heaved myself on to the wet stone, my body started trembling.
And then—
I froze.
There was a person standing on the edge of the pool.
Kieran.
His swell black long sleeve shirt, somewhere between open and closed in the front exposing a dark tattoo spiraling along his chest. His sleeves were rolled to his forearms and rain dripped from his fingers. His wet hair stuck in strands straight into his eyes, his face and the shadows and lightning carving it.
He was… beautiful.
Breathtakingly so.
A beauty that took your breath away and left reverberation in your chest.
No.
The devil that brought me to this place, he was.
Before I could take a step, I was grabbed by the arms.
Kaida.
She pulled me out of the pool with the force of a bull, her fingers squeezing like a vice on my upper arm as she dragged my body towards a stand-up position. I staggered, unable to hold my ground, water mixed with blood around my feet.
Kieran stepped closer.
The storm appeared to quiet down all around him.
He lifted his hand and caught my chin between his fingers, forcing my face up. His touch was warm. Controlled. Terrifying.
"Running away," he murmured, leaning down until his face was inches from mine, "from me?"
"Let me go," I shot back weakly, defiance trembling through my voice.
His lips curved into something that wasn't a smile.
He leaned closer, so close his breath brushed my ear.
"You made a very big mistake by trying to run away," he whispered. "And now you will face your death sentence."
My eyes went wide.
My heart slammed so fast it felt like it might tear my chest apart.
He straightened, his expression going cold, empty. His eyes lost all color, all emotion, becoming blank and distant.
"Take her back inside," he ordered.
Kaida's grip tightened.
.