Pika chattered and chirped, and Skittles puffed from exertion, her endurance weakened from healing. I flinched and looked away. I’d come here to escape pain, and instead, I’d run straight into another version of it. “He’s not well.”

“No?” Her forehead furrowed. “He should eat more fruits. Make better.”

I smiled sadly. “He’s not capable of eating much at the moment.”

“Need make him eat.” She put her hands on her hips, reminding me of the fierce girl who’d told me I would die if I jumped overboard and fell into Drake’s hands.

I hadn’t died, but Sully...

Please, Sully!

Make the choice to stay.

Moving away, the girl plucked a blackberry off a vine that’d crept across the ground in the nut orchard. “Feed him this. Big vitamin. Good for body.” She placed the oozing berry into my palm. Pika promptly fluttered down and smeared the black sweetness all over his beak. Skittles joined him, squabbling over the dessert.

I sighed with a worn-out smile. “He can’t eat.”

“Then drink?” She mimicked squishing the berry and making wine. “Liquid many vitamin.”

“He can’t swallow. He—”

I froze as ideas unravelled.

Plans concocted.

Fate once again intervened.

Senses.

Flavours.

Reasons to live and indulge.

I’d forgotten the most important thing.

The rules of Sully’s Euphoria were based on changing perception with sensory deception. Sound, taste, smell, touch, and sight.

Sully was locked in a Euphoria of his mind’s making. It’d blocked him from sensation. It’d muted and deafened his world.

But what if I could break that?

What if I could slip past the deadening of his mind and give him a final taste of what he was giving up?

He couldn’t drink or eat or move.

But...there were ways.

There has to be.

I have to try.

My fist closed around the sticky berry.

Pika and Skittles took wing with a squawk.

And I ran.

I didn’t say thank you.

I didn’t pick holes in my flimsy plan.

I ran and sailed and flew back to Sully’s side.

But on my way, I made a detour to the kitchens.

I grabbed blenders and berries, ice and tropical delights.

I was a witch making a potion.

A witch with one last trick to try.

Chapter Thirty-Three

SOMETHING WRENCHED ME FROM the infernal darkness.

I thrashed toward the grey, desperate for light after so much black.

I’d made the choice.

I’d vowed to never make the same mistakes and find some way to atone.

I’d chosen to live.

To return to her.

To fight for happiness even if I might never earn such a thing.

But instead of granting me a second chance, something had grabbed my ankles and sucked me deeper. An entity, an evilness—something monstrous was inside this blackness with me, and it’d dragged me down, down, down until I’d been shackled inside a dungeon where no light, sound, or air could reach.

That cruel presence was still here, slinking in the shadows, gliding through my mind, but there was something else.

Something refreshing as rain and as life-giving as the sun.

Something that was the opposite of the evil within me and it smashed the shackles and hoisted me higher into consciousness.

It made me aware.

More aware and alive than I had been in weeks.

Eleanor!

I fought harder. I swam in muck and molasses. I kicked and crawled.

I opened my mouth and bellowed.

Eleanor!

Could she hear me?

Could she feel me fighting?

Could she see how much I wished to keep her?

I was trapped.

Trapped in this cranial cage with no fucking way out.

And I wanted out.

Fuck, I wanted out.

I wanted to make amends. To free those girls. To banish those guests.

I froze as sensation broke through the stifling silence of nothing.

Temperature.

I groaned.

I never thought I’d almost cry at the ability to differentiate between hot and cold. To know I had skin. To feel the body that hadn’t forsaken me. A body that I couldn’t manipulate or return to the helm, but a body that still fed me senses.

I gasped as it came again.

Coldness.

On my lips.

I groaned at the sheer delight.

Not just cold.

Ice.

Freezing snow upon my lips being pushed into the hot cavern of my mouth.

Stripped of every extremity and faculty, denied every pleasure receptor and passion within this vacuum of blankness, that single taste of sleet undid me.

I shivered with need.

I grew hard for a single sensitivity.

Hunger slammed into me with another sensation.

I had a stomach. I had muscles. I had an appetite that’d been denied for so fucking long.

The ice vanished on my tongue, melting into a non-distinguishable temperature.

I mourned it instantly.

I had nothing to break the monotony. Nothing to rip off my blindfold or pull out my gag or unplug my ears. I was empty without noise and sight and her. Empty and cornered, being pulled down into the blackness.

Things hissed and slithered. Nightmares rolled in. Numbness resettled over my awareness.

No!

Christ, no.

I wouldn’t survive if I slipped again.

That dungeon was my coffin. A coffin that would slam shut with a padlock that would never reopen. If I let the evil have me, I would never see Eleanor again, never talk to her, kiss her, look at her.

NO!

I went berserk.

I did my best.

I enlisted every weak skill and broken power to wake up.

Wake up.

WAKE UP!

Something cackled in my mind. The blackness thickened. And I—

Ice on my lip.

Oh, thank God.

It interrupted the suction; it gave me vividness to cling to. A violent tear in the never-ending ether.

I crawled toward the lighter grey.

More ice melted on my tongue.

More.

Please, more.

It came again, this time the frost didn’t just coat my lips but dribbled down my chin.

I felt that.

I tracked the slow-moving trickle. I relished in the intensity—in the sheer magnitude of survival.

I want to survive.

I want to wake.

I searched every crevice that I’d already searched before. I scratched at the blackened corners. I reached for the endless ceiling.

I lost myself to fighting and almost missed the gift that switched grey into red, granting the first blaze of colour in so long.

Colour!

I blinked at the blinding pigment.

Violent crimson and bittersweet scarlet.

Sanguine and vermillion.

Words spilled from my mind that’d forgotten speech and intellect.

A colour wasn’t just a colour. Colour was what painted the world with dimension and depth. It was what gave life purpose and precision—the honour of being alive to witness such saturation of self.

I inhaled with lungs I couldn’t see and bathed in the colour of red.

It felt warmer than black.

It promised to keep me awake, all while another sensation thunderstruck my anesthetized world.

Taste.

Sweet.

Sharp and fresh and perfect.

Berries.