Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

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No! No! I had been on the brink of remembering, the memories swirling up and fighting their way out of a murky, misted swamp, only for them to crash back down under the dark surface and vanish into nothing.

Why! Now all I could remember was a feather, soft, tufted white feathers behind pale ears and pale locks, and a glimpse of a face blocked behind an impenetrable veil. I had been so close this time! Now I remembered all over again the dreams — not the dreams themselves, but that I had dreamed them at all. The memories darted and skimmed like dragonflies over water, only for all the flashes of recollection to die away with every second of wakefulness that layered over them so heavily.

My hands flew to my head, pressing against my temples like they could squeeze out the growing pain knocking in my skull like hammering blows. Now it went from painful to downright agonizing, the splitting pressure building like a geyser until I thought my eyes would pop out of the straining sockets. My head! My head hurt! It hurt so bad—

Lust still held me in his arms in a bridal carry, nestling my head carefully against his chest with the help of his tail to steady my shoulders. Thank God he didn't seat me on his arm the way he always did before. I wouldn't have had the strength to both keep my skull from shattering to pieces and hold onto him at the same time.

And still the veil remained.

I couldn't see him. The boy with the feathers. That face... that laugh... everything, all of it concealed behind a blankness that shouldn't be there.

Unnatural, Mammon had said before.

Interference.

My memories... my earliest years, all of them gone.

And the boy whose existence I knew so intimately, a ravaged yet immaculate hole left in the abyssal darkness — but the boy I could not remember.

Unnatural.

Interference.

Everything is jumbled.

"I know you," I gasped, lungs filling with something thicker than air, too heavy to breathe. Oh, God. I was drowning in nothing. My head— "I know you, I know I do, but I can't—"

"Sable, love, shh, it's all right, I have you."

Lust didn't understand. None of it. He was already following Mammon at a quickening pace, wending through the trees of the thick grove they had dodged into. He didn't understand that I had to stay if I was to remember and get back what I'd lost.

Or what had been taken from me.

"It's moving faster," Mammon growled ahead of us. "Get to the end of the valley and go through, don't let it corner you. It's big enough to keep you busy and go after Sable at the same time if you let it catch you. Go! Now!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mammon. You were certain neither of us can hold it off alone, but now you want to be a hero and remain behind? We'll continue moving together. We can all retreat to safety and plan our next move there."

"This is the plan! If you don't have a better one, follow mine!"

Too late. An indescribable tension swallowed up the air in the grove, siphoning away the muggy warmth, the faint rustling of the leaves, even the fierce throbbing of my pulse in my neck. Time froze, and the noise climbed to a roar, or a great hiss, or simply a bellow like a fierce, monstrous wind howling deep in the trough of a towering canyon.

It's coming for us.

The thought was numb.

And wrong.