AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s not the first time I’ve revisited this moment. Hell, I relive it every day in my own head. The thing that makes this worse is that Celine has free reign over altering the details, twisting them like she does.
“Sebastian,” Manon’s voice calls. The real Manon, not the version of her that haunts me in the waking world.
When I turn, Manon is naked, as I knew she would be. She’s lounging with a sheet draped over her torso, her ebony hair falling over her breasts as if to offer her some modesty. Not that I don’t have every inch of her body committed to memory.
“Come lie with me, my love.” She smooths the silk sheet she lounges on.
I glance down at myself and find I am naked too. I sigh as her arms wrap around me, cradling me against her chest. Every muscle in my body relaxes, giving in. Even as I let myself be content, I know it won’t last.
It doesn’t matter—I need Manon.
Even if she is just a memory, at least here I get a few moments of bliss.
“Bastian.”
That moment is cut short. Celine hasn’t let me have a moment of rest in twenty-five years. Why start now? I squeeze my eyes shut, not prepared for what comes next. Only it’s not something I can avoid. The brass handle of a knife appears clutched in my grasp, slick with thick, viscous blood that coats my hand and oozes down my forearm.
“Why, Bastian? We were supposed to spend eternity in each other’s arms.”
“It’s a lie,” I tell myself, shouting over Manon’s pained voice. “She never said those things.”
Gentle fingers, cool to the touch, brush my cheek, and I can’t keep my eyes shut. Kneeling in the center of the mattress, the blood pools around me, dyeing everything red. I lift my gaze and meet Manon’s tearful one. The only thing worse than seeing my sire cry is the look of betrayal. “What have you become?”
It’s not real. Manon never looked at me like that. She didn’t say these things. This isn’t how that night went.
“Stop!” I demand, but I can’t escape Celine’s nightmare.
“Are you sure you can trust your memory?”
The scene around me shifts, and suddenly I’m kneeling in the water-logged grass of Jean Lafitte Park. When I look back down, it’s Celine’s body in my arms, not Manon.
Blood drips from her nose and mouth as she clings onto my arm. Her nails carve crescents into my skin, like she’s determined to drag me to the afterlife with her.
“Everything you love gets destroyed by your own hand.” The voice comes from everywhere at once, as if God himself is speaking from the heavens in Celine’s voice.
I stopped believing a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean it’ll save me from Hell.
I blink again and suddenly it’s Josephine’s wild ebony and pink curls cradled in my arms, her dark eyes empty as she stares up at me, her body devoid of her soul. I toss aside the bloody knife, panic making me frantic as I search for a pulse. Even though somewhere in my mind I know this is a nightmare, it doesn’t register.
There’s no pulse. She’s dead. Gone.
The intense pain of losing a unity bond cleaves through me. It’s a roaring fire that blazes in my lungs and singes my will. The agony rips at the last of my hold on reality.
No. Not again. I can’t do this anymore.
I sit up so quickly I smash my forehead against the solid wood lid of my coffin. “Fucking hell.”
Well, that’s a first.
Celine’s nightmares have never roused me from my daysleep before. Is she getting stronger, or am I getting weaker?
I’ve held onto Manon—the crazy, off-kilter ghost version—because some of her is better than none of her, but it’s not the same.
She’s not the same.
As much as I don’t want to sit down with Sloane, I think it’s time I stop putting off my visit to our neighboring horde of the Marigny territory.
With any luck, enough time has passed that Sloane has forgotten about her promise to disembowel and dismember me.
