I’m worried. Not just about what Kingsley and I discussed, but because something is stirring inside me. It’s part of why I suggested I go search for a dragon to cure Raven’s burns once we were finished with the witch doctor. That will get me out of this shimmering blob for a while and far away from Raven until I can figure out what hell is going on with me.

I hate the idea of leaving Raven, but I’ll do anything to protect her, even leave her. I need to make sure I leave some of my blood behind, though, for her to drink. I’m unsure whose blood I’m supposed to drink, though, if it turns out she’s having a bad reaction to me drinking her blood.

I swallow hard at the idea that maybe I won’t ever be able to feed from her.

Before I enter the room, I discard my torn shirt and hurry and clean some of the blood off my chest, trying to make my appearance as less alarming as I can.

“Good evening Harper.” The witch doctor greets as the three of us enter the room.

She’s sitting in the center of the dark room made up of dirt and mud. Large, winding roots of the tree snake around the area and faint flickers of light creep in from somewhere.

“I know we’re creatures of the undead,” I whisper under my breath to Kingsley. “But this place gives me the creeps.”

“That makes two of us.” He shifts Raven in his arms as he surveys the area.

“Gentlemen, have a seat,” the witch doctor instructs, patting the spot on the ground beside her and offering us a smile.

I eye her over warily. She’s probably only a couple of years older than Kingsley and I with blood red hair that matches her lips. Her eyes are like liquid fire, her skin inked with tattoos, and she’s wearing a white, flow length dress that has to be getting stains from sitting in the dirt. She’s in no way, shape, or shapeshifter form, what I expected a witch doctor to look like. I expected someone much older and dressed in rags. I’m not sure why.

Kingsley casts a glance in my direction. Sensing what he wants, I take a seat beside the witch doctor. Then he sits down beside me while continuing to hold Raven in his arms. Harper lowers herself to the ground on the other side of the witch doctor.

As silence takes over the room, I decide to ask the witch doctor if she knows what’s wrong with Raven, but she holds up her hand before I can even get my lips parted.

“The girl is very sick,” the witch doctor mumbles, her tattooed brows pulling together as she assesses Raven. “But, she is curable.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Kingsley asks, shifting so Raven’s head is resting in the crook of his arm.

The witch doctor—I think Harper called her Breezy—slants forward to get a better look at Raven. “Many things are eating the girl from the inside.” She closes her eyes and places the heel of her hand against Raven’s forehead. Then her face instantly bunches in pain. “There’s so many cracks inside. So much pain eating her away. Little webs of poison gnawing at her insides and her mind.”

I force down the lump welling in my throat. “How much pain is she in?”

“Surprisingly not much,” Breezy answers with her eyes shut. “She will be when she wakes up, though, unless we can find a temporary fix.”

“Can you do it?” I ask, hoping to the Gods she can. “Heal whatever’s making her like this?”

Breezy smiles, but it’s not the kind of smile that leads to a cheerful answer. No, I’ve seen this kind of smile before.

She wants to make a deal.

“Heal her from what exactly, though?” Kingsley demands, growing impatient. “Because you haven’t even told us what was wrong yet. Just that she has cracks inside, which we already knew, and that you want us to give you something to heal her, but how do we know you know what you’re talking about. Maybe you’re just fucking with us.”

I shoot him a look. Calm down, I mouth.

The last thing we need is for him to lose his temper and piss her off before she helps us.

Breezy’s eyes pop open, her gaze locking on Kingsley. “Such impatience.”

“Vampires aren’t known for their patience,” Kingsley states unapologetically. “We are known for our ability to kill with a single bite, if we need to.”

Her brow meticulously arches. “Is that a threat?”

“Not at all.” Kingsley holds her gaze. “Just a simple reminder.”

“I see.” She studies him with a curious expression, her tongue slipping out to wet her lips. “Fine. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with her. But just know that I have the only temporary cure and that comes with a price.”

“What about a permanent cure?” I ask. “Do you have one of those?”

She shakes her head. “But I do know of one. Only she can get it, though.” She nods her head at Raven. Then she slants forward, the liquid fire in her eyes flickering. “To break the poison feeding off the girl’s body, she has to break the curse.”

“Why is everything always caused by the fucking curse?” Kingsley growls, a vein in his neck bulging.

“Don’t misunderstand me, vampire,” Breezy’s tells him. “The curse isn’t causing the girls illness. The illness is the curse, running inside her, like a web. And the more the curse is broken, the more the illness grows and breaks the girl. If one crumbles, they both do.”

So does that mean she’s not having a bad reaction to me feeding her? I’m not sure and she’s really not making much sense.

Pain throbs against my temple. “So let me get this straight, if Raven breaks the curse, then the curse breaks her? Yet the cure for the poison inside her is to break the curse?” I ask and Breezy nods. My fingers curl inward—I’m on the verge of exploding. “So that fucking means that she never could’ve broken the curse. That all this time, all these stupid lifecycles of trying to free Raven—to free all of us from this hell—was for nothing. That she’s going to die no matter what.”

I realize that’s exactly what Nadine told Raven, that her—that all of us who were part of the curse—were going to die.

“Not quite.” Breezy rises to her feet, the beaded bracelets on her wrists clanking together as she turns around and walks toward the back wall of the room. “The curse she has inside her is made up of a very ancient magic. Even more ancient than me and I’m older than the trees themselves.”

“Really?” I question. “You sure as hell don’t look like it.”

She grins at me from over her shoulder. “Coming from an old vampire, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

I should probably be polite and smile back, considering she might have knowledge that will save Raven, but I’m too pissed off and frustrated to do so.

“Always so sad,” she remarks. “I guess that makes sense, though. You did curse your love to this painful demise.”

“You said she wasn’t in pain,’ I grit out, clenching my fists.

Kingsley shoots me the same look I gave him earlier, warning me to chill the hell out.

“I meant she wasn’t in any physical pain,” she elaborates. “Her emotional and mental pain, however, is so heavy even I can feel the weight of enduring it.” She twists around, facing us again. “But the pain to come will be so heavy none of us may be able to breathe through it.”

“Okay, now you’re starting to sound like Harper, talking in riddles,” Kingsley snaps then glances at Harper. “Sorry, no offense.”

“None taken,” Harper smiles at him. “To say that the witch doctor is like me is a great compliment, although, completely not true. I’ll never be anything like Breezy, unfortunately.”

Yeah, I’m not so sure I agree with Harper. Sure, the half pixie, half faerie, might be skipping to the beat of her own drum, but at least she wouldn’t demand a fee to save a creature’s life.

“So how do we get rid of the pain?” I ask. “And how do we save her? Because I’m not accepting the answer you gave me.”

“But I never gave you an answer.” The smile playing at Breezy’s lips makes me question if she’s toying with us.

Maybe Harper was wrong about her being trustworthy.

“Then what’s the answer?” Kingsley asks, his voice controlled, even, but firm. “How do we cure her without killing her?”

He may appear composed on the inside, but I know him almost as well as I know myself and inside, he’s struggling to remain calm.

“I already told you, by breaking the curse.” Breezy turns her back to us again and I start to jump to my feet, any amount of my patience gone, but she holds up a hand. “Be patient. I’m not done yet.” She waits for me to finish sitting down before continuing. “There is a creature that is older than any magic. If you want to save the girl without killing her, you need to go to it. It should be able to help you.”

“Okay, what is this creature?” I cross my arms. “And how do we find it?”

She spins around, the same unsettling smile she had on when we entered the room emerging on her lips. “Before I tell you what it is and how to find it, I want something in return.”

Kingsley glares at her. “Of course you do.”

“Oh Kingsley Midnitegale, one day that fanged mouth of yours is going to get you into trouble.” She pauses, squinting at him, and her eyes light up. “Or maybe it already has. Tell me vampire, have you tasted the darkness that lies in the light?”

I confusedly glance at Kingsley. “What is she talking about?”

His blazing gaze sears into Breezy. “I have no idea.”

Breezy smirks. “So he doesn’t know?”

“There’s nothing to know,” Kingsley bites out, his fangs twitching in his mouth. “So why don’t you shut the hell up and tell us your price before I decide to let my hunger take over.”

I tense and hiss, “Easy. She might be our only way to save Raven.”

“She’s going to help us,” Kingsley says, his gaze never wavering from Breezy. “Because whatever she’s about to ask for, she wants it too much.”

Breezy steadily holds Kingsley’s gaze. “You’re right. I do.”

“Then just ask for it,” he challenges. “Or are you too afraid?”

“Not at all.” She steps toward him. “I think you already know what I want, though.”

“Nope. You’re going to have to clarify it.” His tone is like ice, his body stiff, but anger burns from his eyes.

“Fine.” She moves in front of him then crouches down, slanting so close that, at first, I think she’s going to kiss him. “I want to borrow you for a little bit.”

“Of course you do.” Kingsley slides Raven onto my lap without removing his gaze from Breezy. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Then he stands up and follows Breezy out of the room, leaving me and Harper alone with our jaws hanging to our knees.

“What was that about?” I ask when the door shuts.

Harper gives a shrug, frowning as she picks at her fingernails. “I think maybe they went to have sex.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” That’s a lie. That could be exactly what they’re doing. When the lie leaves my lips, though, she perks up a little bit. The realization that Harper might like Kingsley as more than a friend dawns on me. Considering Kingsley is in love with Raven, that might lead to a lot of drama in the future, but I’ll worry about that later, when I don’t have an endless list of other problems to deal with. “What do you think all that light and darkness stuff was about?”

“I’m not sure.” Harper tilts her head to the side contemplatively. “It reminds me of an old nursery rhyme my mother used to tell me.”

“A pixie nursery rhyme?” I ask, examining Raven over, trying to tell if her condition is getting worse or better. She appears the same, still pale and unconscious. “Or was your mom a faerie?”

“She was a faerie,” Harper says. “But it’s not a pixie nursery rhyme. It’s the Hell Gods’.”

My gaze darts up to her. “Your mother use to tell you a Hell Gods’ nursery rhyme?” Why would Breezy quote that to Kingsley? And better yet, why did it make Kingsley so tense?

She nods with a heart-wrenching smile on her face. “She wasn’t always a kind mother, but I think in a way, she thought she was helping me.”

“By scaring the shit out of you before you went to sleep?”

“By making me stronger.” She shrugs, smiling sadly. “Pixies aren’t always the bravest creatures and from what I understand, my father was a coward. I think by making me frightened she believed eventually she’d make me less easy to scare. Unfortunately, I think I have more pixie blood they fey blood in my veins.”

I feel sorry for her. While I’ve had to deal with torture every night of my life for several decades, my parents have always been kind to me, helping me even after I sealed us to this doomed fate.

“You’re not weak or afraid, Harper,” I assure her, but she shakes her head in doubt. “I mean it. You don’t need to be here, but you are. Even when we found out a whole army of Created were after us. Even when Nadine possessed your body. Through all of that, every lifecycle, you’ve always been here to help.”

“Well, what else am I going to do?” A tiny smile turns at her lips. “If I run away, eventually I’ll just end up right back where I started.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. The only reason you’re part of this curse is because you were at the crowning ceremony that night. And most of the creatures that attended the party pretend like the curse doesn’t happen over and over again. You’re one of the few creatures that has stuck around to help.”

“Well, it’s not like I could ever walk away.” The playful glint in her eyes returns. “You guys would be lost without me.”

“That we would,” I agree, meaning my words.

Her gaze travels to the door. “Do you think one of us should go check on Kingsley and make sure he’s okay?”

I shake my head. After just rebuilding her confidence, the last thing I need is for her to walk in and see Kingsley fucking her witch doctor friend.

“We should probably just wait,” I say. “I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”

Because the longer they’re gone, the more time we waste and the more Raven wastes away too.

But maybe that’s what you really want. A voice whispers through my mind.

Fear lashes through me so potently I nearly fall over.

Who the hell are you?

Laughter echoes inside my head.

I panic, trying to move, but my body won’t budge.

There’s no running from me, it says. I’m going to stay right where I am after I take you over.