Fifth a Fury

I didn’t even have the willpower to cry anymore. With each hour that Sully continued to lie beside me, vacant and still, I withdrew into myself. I lost my spark, my faith. I sank into aching acceptance that perhaps love was a lie and our blistering electrical connection was the biggest con of all.

He’s made his choice.

And...I have to honour that.

I have to let him go...

Louise had pulled me aside this morning and told me my shock had most likely slipped into depression.

She’d offered me a few pills to take the edge off.

She’d told me to stop tracing Sully’s lips with berry smoothies because it could cause asphyxiation, pneumonia, and so many other complications.

She’d said I needed a break and suggested I sleep at my villa on the beach for a night.

I’d snapped.

I’d crawled out of my sloth-like sadness and thrown her and her two colleagues out. I’d told her to sleep in my villa instead. That I needed some time alone with Sully, even if our conversation and affection was completely one-sided.

I needed privacy to say a proper goodbye and tell him everything that’d happened without an audience. I wanted him to myself after having to share him with needles and monitors and oxygen tubes.

As exhaustion pulled me deeper, tears broke free.

I didn’t know if I cried in my sleep or if I was still awake, but fragmented images played across my mind.

“Drink.” Sully forced elixir down my throat and stripped away my clothing. “Let me see what I’ve bought.”

I trembled and stood before him naked. His cruel collected visage crumpled as he drank me in. “Fuck...I’ve finally found you.”

He dropped to his knees and brought my clit to his mouth. “I’ve been waiting for you my entire life.”

The dream swirled and dumped me into another splintered fable.

“Are you ready, Jinx?” He grinned, naked and proud, his gorgeous ruthlessness taking my breath away.

“Ready for what?”

Strapping me into the Euphoria harness, he ducked to kiss me. “For the rest of our lives together.”

The dream popped and exploded into a new scene.

“Feel me inside you?” Sully’s teeth clamped on the back of my neck. A love bite from a mate. My perfect other half, hilt-deep inside me, mounting me from behind as I braced on all fours.

I moaned and rocked back, pushing him deeper. “I feel you.”

“It’s not just my body that’s inside yours, Eleanor. My soul is. My heart is. Every thought and fear, every hope and dream are now inside you because you’re inside me.”

Another switch, this one breaking my heart with longing.

“Do you, Eleanor, greatest Jinx of my life, Grace, take me, Sullivan Sinclair, as your lawfully wedded husband until death do us part?”

“I do. I do with everything that I am.”

“You’ve made me the happiest—” He clutched his chest. He fisted his heart. His eyes caught mine, widening with worry and pain. “El—”

I caught him as he fell.

I cradled him as he died.

I rocked over his body and SCREAMED.

Chapter Thirty-Five

WAKING UP WAS A mundane habit.

An inconvenience if you were a light sleeper, and a nightmare if you were an insomniac. Waking up happened automatically and spontaneously, so much so that most people took it for granted—just like they took breathing for granted, and blinking and swallowing and all the other mechanical parts of a body that didn’t require conscious thought.

Waking up for me wasn’t like that.

I didn’t slip from sleep to immediate comprehension. My eyes didn’t snap open and energy didn’t shockwave through my body.

Waking up happened gradually, slowly, so painstakingly frustratingly I wanted to slash at my face and pry open the heaviness of my eyelids.

But my arms wouldn’t move.

My legs wouldn’t move.

Nothing would fucking move.

All I could do was grit my teeth and blink.

I traded the horrendous blackness for a world I no longer recognised and winced against the brightness even though night kept everything muted.

The lamp in the corner.

The moon casting Nirvana in silver.

It hurt.

I slipped again.

Just below the surface of awareness, I gathered strength that I’d lost while lying on my back for so long.

I clawed my way back through the grey and clung to everything Eleanor had given me. Every word was a stepping stone. Every sentence she’d delivered a life raft to sail free from my mental entrapment.

I blinked.

My eyes burned at the exposure to air and humidity. I glanced around my villa and reacquainted myself with the geckos above me, the thatched roof, the exposed beams, the driftwood furniture that was functional and unobtrusive.

How?

How was I here when I’d flown to Geneva?

Tiredness swept over me, unavoidable and thick.

I slipped again.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was a little easier. They only burned a little. They weren’t as fuzzy or as reluctant to stay open.

The triumph over such a tiny victory made my heart pump harder, finally working with me and rushing through my veins to wake up withered muscles and knock against weary bones.

My waking up happened in stages.

A systematic checklist where things came back online the more I settled firmly into my body. The urge to slip under didn’t hold as much sway. The fear that if I closed my eyes I’d vanish into the wasteland of nothingness was deleted by the rapidly growing feeling of home.

I was home.

Not just on my island but in the body I’d been born into.

Limbs refused my commands to move, but I forced myself to be patient. My body was familiar and comforting, unlike the horror of being detached and forgotten.

Blinking taxed me.

Exhaustion tiptoed back over me.

But I forced it away and swallowed.

I swallowed for the first time in weeks and tasted the faint flavour of sweet berries on my tongue.

That one action alerted my organs to resume their duties. My stomach growled with hunger. My lungs demanded a bigger breath. It was as intimate as slipping into Eleanor the first time. As humbling and enlightening as having sex with her because I was relearning my own form.

Tears of gratefulness stung my eyes, but I didn’t feel weak for wanting to cry. I was overwhelmed. I was ash-covered and fire-charred, hauling myself from the dust of my ruined remains.

Thanks to Eleanor, I’d been reborn.

She’d erased my prior life. She’d given me the opportunity to be reincarnated into whatever man or monster I wanted to be.

Eleanor.

I felt her.

I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to thank her every fucking day for the rest of my life for what she’d done. She’d not only cursed me when she first arrived but broken a different type of curse that could’ve separated us. A hex that would’ve killed me if she hadn’t figured out a way to remind my senses of the vibrancy of love and life.

I had no concept of time anymore, but the moon slowly crept over the horizon as I wrangled muscles that’d atrophied and commanded nerve endings to twist my neck, so I could look at the most stunning, incredible woman sleeping beside me.

It took everything I had to look down.

It took every willpower not to break into pieces at the tears glistening like starlight on her cheeks and the twisted stress of her face. She’d lost weight. Her cheekbones were sharp in the night, her chin dainty, her eyelashes dark, and her entire beauty dauntless and devoted.