The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

1.9 - Shadow

Dear Readers: Back to the nightclub we go, to revisit the dark rose... what will she do, if Ronan does propose...? Hope you enjoy this little glimpse into her character :)

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Scene 9: Shadow

A.D. 2015

Poor thing. A ring? Atria had known that it was bound to happen soon enough, with Ronan. But already? Was her magic working faster every year?

Maybe too fast, even, for her to keep up. “So soon?”

Axel did not deign to affirm. “Go find him. Now,” he commanded, his tone cold and sharp as an ice axe. “Tell him you’re sorry you ever walked into his life, and then get the fuck out.”

Atria nodded, a rare flash of pensive sorrow in her pine green gaze.

She blinked it away. Remembered that such feelings were a luxury that she could not afford.

Her lips turned down into a playful pout. “No breakup sex?”

Axel’s glare threatened to rip her in half. And not in the good way.

She smirked, sliding out of the prison of his arms against the wall, to go and do his bidding. She had only walked a few steps when she stopped and turned to face him once again, her eyes narrowed as if in deep thought. “Oh, one thing—”

He looked at her. The dark rose in her deadly, dazzling glory. Figure more perfect than the human mind could dream, a face to match, contagious fire coursing through her veins.

Axel could not pretend that he had not been pricked. By every thorn she wielded. And he could not help but think that, if this was the last he’d ever see of her, there were so many things… How could there possibly be just one thing…

“—should I tell Ro how many times you fucked me in his bed?”

The cruel words woke him from the fleeting reverie.

He should never have forgotten about the beast behind the beauty. He snarled and started toward her. “You godforsaken bitch—”

“Lighten up, dickhead,” she teased as he drew near. “I’ll keep your dirty little secret. Take it as a parting gift.”

He came up close to her. So close he saw his furious reflection in her emerald eyes. Inhaled her fatal fragrance. Felt her intoxicating breath against his skin.

He knew the beast. Too well. But still, there was the beauty.

“Oh, that’s no parting gift,” he whispered, sweeping in to grant himself one final taste of paradise.

She let him in; she took him in. Found that a part of her wished that it didn’t have to be the last. The feeling frightened her, and so she buried it, alongside all the shadows in her soul.

She shuddered as it ended. Not entirely from pleasure. From a thousand other things she couldn’t name.

He watched her in that moment, and he knew that she was human. And he wished that she could stay that way forever. But she couldn’t. So he took the sweet release, and let it go.

With Atria, the afterglow was even more exquisite than the act. At least that was how Axel always felt. He realized, in this moment, that it was probably because she never shared the gift of afterglow with anybody else.

He sighed deeply, and where she lay against his rising chest she rode it like the tide. For the last time.

“Where’re you gonna go hunting for moneybags now?” Axel asked.

Atria blinked into the empty air and spoke as if she wasn’t feeling anything. “There’ll always be another sugar daddy.”

She felt his sturdy, gentle hand upon her chin. He turned her face up toward his, urging her to meet his gaze. She did.

Their hands gravitated toward each other, fingers interweaving, as if of their own will.

He sighed again. “We’ve been good to you, haven’t we.”

A smile—soft, sweet, and innocent for once—lit up Atria’s amorous face. “You have. I guess I struck Golde.”

Axel mirrored the smile, at that.

Atria ran the nails of her free hand, polished blood red, along the smooth planes of his torso. “You’re not like the others, Axe.”

He knew what she meant. But he wanted to hear her say more. “The others?”

“All the other moneybags I’ve drained. You’re nothing like them.”

He took it as the highest praise, based on what he knew of where Atria had been.

“Ronan is exactly like them,” she stated. “That made him safe.”

“Till now.”

Another flash of sorrow, maybe, in those siren eyes. “Right.”

“So you run.”

She paused. She did not want to run, not yet. Not this time. But it was of no matter what she wanted. The run was all she knew, and all she needed. To survive. And sometimes even thrive.

She propped herself up on an elbow, studying a different angle of his face. She saw so many unasked questions there. “What is it?” she inquired, hoping to hear at least one.

He did not answer right away, and when he did, his voice was distant. “Do you ever wonder… if things had been different…”

Atria blinked.

And then she promptly rose and slipped into her clothes. “I never wonder. Because I never look back.”

Axel watched as the black dress settled in to sheathe Atria’s gifts. Clinging closely to her frame and to her form, leaving so much bare, and so little to imagine.

She kept her back to him as she dressed, and as she stepped into her heels. True to her word, she didn’t once look back toward him, even when he spoke.

“So that’s how you got like this,” he surmised.

The silent silhouette smoothed down her silken hair.

Axel watched as her human soul receded into shadow. “You know you weren’t born this way. You became this way.”

She reached to readjust her shoe, and then began on her way out.

He remembered, then, what the beauteous beast was on her way to do. He remembered his brother, for whom he felt such simple love. So different from the slippery, elusive things he felt for the dark rose. So many things, none of which he could ever understand.

“And Atria—”

She stopped. She didn’t look back, but her head may have swiveled a bit. A screen of raven silk still shielded her profile from his view.

Axel remembered that she was a shadow, and that no one should feel anything for shadows. “—tell him in person. With your fucking clothes on, look him in the eye, and say goodbye.”

As she turned down a corridor to leave the club, she felt rough hands reach for her from the darkness. Turned to see the buff man with the buzz cut: the one she'd rebuffed at the bar after their brief dance, his eyes wild, luscious lips longing for more. He would be quick enough to satisfy, she knew; so more she gave.

Within moments, she’d left him in a spent heap, gasping for air.

He called out after her in awe, as she departed smoothing out her shadowy hair. “Are you even human?”

She blinked.

But she did not look back.

“Who knows?”

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Thank you so much for reading! Next scene, we'll head back to the Weaver mansion with Lacey and Dan...

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