Page 3 of Mate of a Monster

Love?

Huffing, I reach for the knife currently twisted in my hair. My bun falls apart, but at least I now have a weapon in my grip as I curl the corner toward the blooming place of the Isles Kiss.

“What the fuck?”

Bloodred, soul-eating flowers with thorns as black as night still sprout from the ground. But what was once a small, rectangular patch pushed against the edge of stone is now a massive fucking jungle.

The thorns are no longer clustered and avoidable. No, now they’re long and thick, braided from ceiling to floor in dark, twisting cords, weaving themselves into columns that stretch up the cavern walls like ribs. Their black tips gleam sharp and wet, the red petals nestled between them deeper than I remember, almost black at their centers, curling inward as though they are guarding something precious.

Or something dangerous.

My eyes narrow and I step closer.

“The forbidden gems.” My hand moves forward of its own accord. A vine lashes forward, striking me as quick as a serpent, the sting ten times worse.

I curse, yanking my hand back, looking down to inspect the damage. But there is none.

I’m healing.

On the island.

I’m healing on the island, but I didn’t die. Instantly, my mind goes back to my fight with the Lycan during the warcraft games. When London took me to Silver’s Infirmary on campus. I had healed on my own. Something that doesn’t, can’t, happen here.

The only way to fix your wounds here is for your heart to stop beating. To die. It’s all part of the punishment of being here. A punishment worse than death, because death greets us over and over and over. This is not that.

The powers I was gaining back on Rathe…they’ve followed me here.

“Double what the fuck?”

Still, I step closer.

The gems should be buried beneath the soil, hidden, protected from the very poison their curse birthed into existence.

So how the fuck do they now sit in the petals, cradled in the center of each bloom, like a crown resting on the head of its throne? Blue light flickers through the dark rubies, refracting against the cavern walls in shards that cut through the darkness in a way I have never seen before. Brighter. Clearer.

Wrong.

And it would almost be pretty if not for what coils around them.

Darkness seeps upward along the thorns and braids itself between them, black and gold shimmering beneath the surface like a living thing inside it. It pools at the base and climbs the stems in slow, deliberate trails, encasing the petals without smothering them.

It’s almost like…like tar has claimed the island at its core.

My pulse begins to pound.

Wait.

Black and gold.

The memory slams into me before I can stop it—the murder site in Darkadia. The stone slick with the same unnatural sheen. The way it pulsed faintly when no one was looking directly at it. No one but me.

I remember crouching there, feeling it hum beneath my boots, wondering if it was alive or merely pretending to be.

This isn’t a coincidence.

The flowers protect the gems, that’s a fact, but now the tar protects the flowers?

Or worse, feeds them?