Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 124323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Drawing my knees to my chin, I buried my face into my hands and wept.
At least, these tears were cathartic. I was able to purge instead of suffocating beneath torment.
I cried for Sully and for me.
I cried until a gentle hand touched my shoulder and ripped my head up.
Self-consciousness made me swipe at my tears, and propriety made me stand in a rush. My navy dress fluttered around me as I made eye contact with someone I never expected. “You.”
“You not dead.” The girl who’d been on the boat with her grandfather and brother, who’d brought me back at Drake’s command, eyed me in the dying sunlight. Her pinched disapproval had faded, and an openness in her dark eyes hinted she felt pity for my tears.
Ignoring her curiousness of my state of existence, I rubbed dirt from my dress and glanced around the orchard. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be in the—”
“Is fine. You not in the way. No worry.”
I let my shoulders drop and wiped away my final tear. “Are you harvesting?”
“Harvest all time. Crop rotation mean always ready.” She eyed me, her body language hinting that she didn’t know how to address our past and preferred to just focus on the now.
There was history between us, but it seemed as if we both wished to forget how we first met. I wanted to ask how her grandmother was. Did she have enough for the medicine she needed? But instead of dredging up painful things, I merely asked something simple. “Do you enjoy working here?”
“Yes.” She smoothed her olive uniform with its logo of a banana leaf over the breast pocket with the initials SSG. “It...eh, English word? Relax.”
I nodded, glancing at the edible greenery all around us. The splashes of colour where fruits hung and the glossiness of vegetables waiting to be collected. “It is relaxing, I agree.”
“Why alone?” She smiled as Pika and Skittles darted over her head and descended onto my shoulders. “I change my question. Why you not with him? My boss?”
Pika chattered and chirped, and Skittles puffed from exertion, her endurance weakened from healing. I flinched and looked away. I’d come here to escape pain, and instead, I’d run straight into another version of it. “He’s not well.”
“No?” Her forehead furrowed. “He should eat more fruits. Make better.”
I smiled sadly. “He’s not capable of eating much at the moment.”
“Need make him eat.” She put her hands on her hips, reminding me of the fierce girl who’d told me I would die if I jumped overboard and fell into Drake’s hands.
I hadn’t died, but Sully...
Please, Sully!
Make the choice to stay.
Moving away, the girl plucked a blackberry off a vine that’d crept across the ground in the nut orchard. “Feed him this. Big vitamin. Good for body.” She placed the oozing berry into my palm. Pika promptly fluttered down and smeared the black sweetness all over his beak. Skittles joined him, squabbling over the dessert.
I sighed with a worn-out smile. “He can’t eat.”
“Then drink?” She mimicked squishing the berry and making wine. “Liquid many vitamin.”
“He can’t swallow. He—”
I froze as ideas unravelled.
Plans concocted.
Fate once again intervened.
Senses.
Flavours.
Reasons to live and indulge.
I’d forgotten the most important thing.
The rules of Sully’s Euphoria were based on changing perception with sensory deception. Sound, taste, smell, touch, and sight.
Sully was locked in a Euphoria of his mind’s making. It’d blocked him from sensation. It’d muted and deafened his world.
But what if I could break that?
What if I could slip past the deadening of his mind and give him a final taste of what he was giving up?
He couldn’t drink or eat or move.
But...there were ways.
There has to be.
I have to try.
My fist closed around the sticky berry.
Pika and Skittles took wing with a squawk.
And I ran.
I didn’t say thank you.
I didn’t pick holes in my flimsy plan.
I ran and sailed and flew back to Sully’s side.
But on my way, I made a detour to the kitchens.
I grabbed blenders and berries, ice and tropical delights.
I was a witch making a potion.
A witch with one last trick to try.
Chapter Thirty-Three
SOMETHING WRENCHED ME FROM the infernal darkness.
I thrashed toward the grey, desperate for light after so much black.
I’d made the choice.
I’d vowed to never make the same mistakes and find some way to atone.
I’d chosen to live.
To return to her.
To fight for happiness even if I might never earn such a thing.
But instead of granting me a second chance, something had grabbed my ankles and sucked me deeper. An entity, an evilness—something monstrous was inside this blackness with me, and it’d dragged me down, down, down until I’d been shackled inside a dungeon where no light, sound, or air could reach.
That cruel presence was still here, slinking in the shadows, gliding through my mind, but there was something else.
Something refreshing as rain and as life-giving as the sun.