Sweet Innocence and Gentle Sin || 𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐑

Chapter 24 Part 2: Live For Me

Offer me my deathless death. Oh good God, let me give you my life

Content Warning for gore

~)(~

I slipped and slid across the blood-covered stone and had to use the doorframe to keep myself from falling onto my side. I didn't care that I was running over the insides of dead people staked to the walls. They were dead—it didn't matter.

What mattered was the darkness of my room—the complete silence that met me when I walked in. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the first thing I could see was the mess. Everything was thrown around the room—blood splattered on the walls, and cracks covered the stone.

But it was all slightly off. Like it was a painted image so I wouldn't look further, to the backside where I'd find what happened, it was all too well done. A little too dramatic, too bloody, too broken.

And knowing Clythia, she wouldn't just do this, not without there being a good reason. There was always a reason, however warped and twisted into her perfect view it was.

The hand on my shoulder made me jump and spin around. Azriel was looking at me the way those people did when hearing about my tragic childhood, or the people that had to tell me all the horrors of my future. It was a look I didn't want to ever see, especially on his face.

"Let's go," he said, voice low. I could feel him slowly pulling me further from the doorway.

Leave the scene behind. Hope it wasn't what I thought—what it tried to paint itself as. Pretend it was all a dream, and return to life as normal, without knowing what "normal" meant.

There was a sound. Distant, but loud enough that I could hear it. Loud enough for me to recognize the voice that made it.

I knew who that voice belonged to, where it was coming from, and why I could hear it. Clythia had Nalia, and she wanted me to find them. So I would, because there's nothing on this rotten planet that will keep me from at least trying to find my best friend.

I started walking, almost running down the hallway with Azriel trailing close behind. They were beneath us, the sound of her screams in the caves below, where the faebane was forming from crushed crystals and acidic water.

Azriel grabbed my arm and I twirled back around, almost crashing into him. "Look at me," he said, but I couldn't do it—I couldn't stop moving, stop trying to get out of his hold. He held onto both of my shoulders hard enough to stop me from even trying to wiggle away.

I wanted to scream at him to let me go—demand it of him. Every second was another where Clythia was hurting her—torturing Nalia for her own sick entertainment.

"Stop—look at me, breathe," Azriel said, a hand against my cheek to turn my head to him.

I couldn't. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move or speak—or anything. This terror flooded my system as soon as the realization hit that this was happening and that I wasn't there to stop it.

"Rowena, please," he said my name in a voice so soft I could consider it a whisper. A tone I never heard from him, so gentle and calm—different from everything I knew about him.

I sucked in a heavy gulp of air and exhaled a shaky breath as I tried to keep from crying. "Clythia will—she'll kill her."

He shook his head. "She won't. Not if we keep a level head, okay?"

I nodded slowly, closed my eyes, and felt the few tears already formed fall down my cheeks. When I opened them again and looked at him, a shiver ran down my spine. "You don't know her like I do."