CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
ALICE
The darkness is relaxing.
It's a thick, heavy shield that refuses to let the chaos of the outside world touch the inside of your mind.
It feels like a sanctuary, a quiet room at the edge of existence where nothing is demanded of me, nothing is expected, and nothing hurts.
The shadows here don't destroy anything. They don't bleed.
They don't scream.
They just keep me at peace, cradling my consciousness in a numb, velvet void.
Slowly, the blackness begins to shift, molding its edges into something familiar, pulling a memory from the graveyard of my mind.
The darkness bleeds away, replaced by the stark, sterile white walls of a room I know too well.
I am standing in a hospital. The air smells of ozone, floor wax, and impending grief.
In the center of the room is a bed, and lying beneath the sheets is my mother.
She looks just as she did before the world fell apart—pale, fragile, but beautiful, her dark hair fanning out across the pillow like silk.
"Come here, Alice," she says softly.
Her voice is a forgotten melody, a sound I have starved for over the course of six long, brutal years.
I step toward her, my chest aching with a childlike desperation that makes it hard to breathe.
The cold linoleum floors feel icy beneath my bare feet, but I don't care. I just need to reach her.
"Don't leave me, Mom..." I plead, the tears already hot and thick against my cheeks, blurring her beautiful face.
"I am not leaving you," she smiles, reaching out to stroke my hair.
Her touch is feather-light, completely devoid of the pain that usually follows me.
"Do you want to come with me, my little girl?" She extends her hand, her fingers light and airy, waiting for me to take them and cross over into the quiet with her.
I open my mouth to answer, to tell her that I am so incredibly tired of fighting, but a sudden, violent vibration ripples through the dreamscape.
A voice—deep, shattered, and raw—cuts through the sterile quiet of the memory. It doesn't belong here.
It's too heavy, too dangerous for this peaceful place.
'Wake up, Wildfire. Please.'
The voice is pleading. It sounds like a monster begging for mercy at the gates of heaven.
The sheer force of it makes the walls of the hospital room fracture, thin lines of black smoke spider-webbing across the white paint.
I shake my head, refusing to look at the cracks.
I focus entirely on the woman in front of me, terrified that if I avert my eyes for a single second, she will vanish.
"Don't go, Mom. I want you to stay with me. Please."
I am sobbing now, throwing my weight forward, clinging to her fragile frame.
"Oh, Alice, I can't stay here, my princess," she whispers, her image beginning to ripple and blur at the edges like a reflection in disturbed water.
"You have people to love you. You are going to be so deeply loved, dear... let me go, and go back."
"No, Mom! Please, don't go!" I beg, my hands gripping her gown, trying to anchor her to the earth.
And right beneath her voice, the voice echoes again, fierce, uncompromising, and terrifyingly possessive.
'I won't go. Do whatever the fuck you need to do while I am here.'
The words are a tether, wrapping around my ankles like heavy iron chains, pulling me downward, away from her.
My mother smiles, looking past my shoulder into the dark abyss gathering behind me. She isn't afraid of the shadow.
"See that, Alice? He is there. He'll take care of you. Go, princess."
"No!" I yell, reaching out for her one last time as she begins to fade.
But the moment my fingers touch her skin, her entire body shatters into a million pieces of brilliant, crystal glitter.
The light blinds me, swirling around the room before dissolving into absolute, crushing agony.
The dream tears away, and the peace goes with it.
I am violently dragged out of the dark, forced to fight through suffocating layers of heavy medical sedation.
My mind is a chaotic mess, I don't know where I am.
The first thing I register is a sensation.
A warm, solid hand is clutching mine in the waking world.
The palm is calloused by a binding, the grip possessive and unyielding, holding onto me like a lifeline.
But suddenly, the warmth begins to pull away.
The fingers slacken, preparing to leave my skin cold.
A sudden, primal panic flares deep in my chest. No. I can't be left alone in the dark again. If that hand leaves me, I will drown in the blackness.
Using every single ounce of strength left in my broken, feverish body, my fingers twitch.
I weakly, desperately grab hold of the hand, forcing my eyelids to flutter as a raw, ragged rasp tears from my throat, barely louder than a breath.
"Don't... go..."
I don't even know who I am talking to.
The fog in my brain is too thick to attach a name or a face to the presence beside me.
I just know that the warmth feels safe, and I cannot bear the thought of being abandoned in the quiet.
"I ain't leaving, Wildfire," the deep voice answers instantly.
The response is immediate, a low, gravelly rumble that vibrates through the mattress.
The warm hand instantly wraps around mine twice as tight, pinning me to reality, refusing to let me drift back into the shadows.
"You just wake up. Open your eyes for me."
"Do your work and leave," the voice suddenly barks, the tenderness vanishing, replaced by something sharp, commanding, and lethal.
For the next few minutes, my consciousness comes and goes in agonizing, disjointed waves.
I am trapped in the terrifying gray space between sleep and wakefulness.
I feel cold, gloved fingers touching my bare arm. There is a sharp, metallic tug against my skin, followed by the icy burn of a needle sliding into my vein.
Then, someone shifts my weight. Hands roll me slightly onto my side, and the movement shifts the raw, deeply lacerated flesh of my back.
A white-hot spike of pure, unadulterated agony shoots straight up my spine, setting my nerve endings on fire.
It feels like a hot iron grill is being pressed directly into my muscle.
A broken, pathetic whimper slips past my cracked lips, my body tensing automatically against the pain.
"Do it gently!" the deep voice roars.
The sheer, violent volume of the command rattles the walls of the room, vibrating right through my bones.
It's an explosion of protective fury, a sound so dark and menacing it makes the air in the room instantly freeze.
Instantly, the agonizing pressure on my back lightens.
The hands touching me become hyper-cautious, moving with trembling care as they tape down the fresh dressings.
A few minutes later, the heavy, muffled click of a door shutting echoes through the silence..
The quiet returns, but the heavy, warm hand never leaves mine.
It returns to my knuckles, caressing them with a soothing, repetitive motion before moving up to gently smooth the sweat-matted red strands of hair away from my forehead.
The touch is incredibly gentle, a stark contrast to the violent voice that just shouted down a medical professional.
I try to open my eyes again, fighting the lead-heavy weight of my eyelids.
My entire body feels like it has been systematically run over by a freight train, every bone aching, every muscle bruised.
My throat feels like scorched sandpaper, parched and burning.
I tap my fingers weakly against the calloused palm, trying to signal through the dark.
"Yes, Wildfire, I'm right here," the voice murmurs, dropping into a rough, exhausted register that sounds completely hollowed out.
"I ain't going anywhere."
"W... ater..." I try to speak, but the word catches in my dry throat, coming out as a breathless, pathetic rasp.
A few seconds later, I hear the rustle of plastic, followed by something incredibly cold and soothing touching my cracked lips.
Ice chips. I part my mouth greedily, swallowing the freezing slivers like a starved girl, letting the moisture coat my burning throat and soothe the fire in my chest.
The relief is instant, clearing away a fraction of the heavy fog clinging to my brain.
Slowly, painfully, I force the narrow slits of my swollen eyelids to open.
The bright, sterile hospital lights blur together in a halo of white, making my head throb violently.
I blink once. Twice. The harsh glare begins to settle, and a dark, looming silhouette comes into focus right beside my bed.
I trace the outline in the dim light. A sharp, aristocratic jawline. A broad, towering frame clad in a shirt stained dark with dried, crimson blood.
Bandaged knuckles holding my hand with a terrifyingly fierce grip.
And then, I look into his eyes.
They are wild, bloodshot, and burning with a brilliant, unhinged intensity that steals the remaining breath from my lungs.
Zade.
He is the very last person on earth I ever thought would take care of me.
The man I have fought, the man I have loathed, the monster who claimed my soul in the dark.
And yet, as I look at his wrecked, protective expression, the truth hits me through the fever.
He is the only one who didn't let me slip away when the darkness was consuming me.. .