I’d been arrested.

I’d been trialled.

I’d been released because I had something that they didn’t.

Money.

Lots and lots of fucking money and with money came untouchability.

But not this time.

Instead of coming after me, Drake had gone after my most vulnerable.

Bullshit.

Motherfucking bullshit!

I punched the fuselage in an explosive strike.

Cal flinched beside me, his voice piercing my ears via our headsets. “Just to distract you from your chaotic thoughts, I’ve called ahead. The guards have set the snares. They’re armed. They know their position and protocol. She’ll be fine, Sully.”

I snarled in his direction. “What makes you think I’m worried about her?”

He snorted. “If you could sprout wings right now, you’d be down there with her already.”

“I’d be looking for Drake.”

“Well, whatever your first priority, she’ll be fi—”

“She won’t fucking be fine. Not while she’s mine.”

He shrugged as if this was a fucking shrugging matter. “Everyone has family they’d rather keep hidden.” His lips twitched, delivering the twisted joke, hoping it’d shatter my rage but only adding to it.

I was not in the mood to let go of the shit I’d seen.

I was not going to be pacified just because I had men on my payroll who knew their jobs and were proven in merciless warfare.

The things inside me?

The fact that I would die for her? The knowledge that I would turn into anything, sacrifice anything, destroy everything for her...it made me a highly dangerous individual.

It made me volatile.

It made me unpredictable...even to myself.

She can’t be near me.

“I want her gone.” I glowered out the window as we began our descent. “Now.”

His voice crackled, offering solutions to my fury. “We’ll arrange for the goddesses to be sent to Lebah. They’ll be close by and safe while we deal with Drake.”

“There is no we.” My knuckles cracked as I fisted my hands. “His pain belongs to me and every fucking creature he’s just snuffed out.”

“Fine.” Cal nodded curtly, his reflection bouncing off the window. “I’ll evacuate the guests too. They can go to Angsa. The fortified encampment there will keep them out of harm’s way for a day or so. We’ll ensure those who want to go home have transport available.”

Two islands named after creatures with wings. One with feathers and one with membrane. A swan and a bee. Both far too delicate and defenceless.

My goddesses and guests could go there.

Frankly, I was done with humans for the time being. They could be casualties in this war; I didn’t fucking care.

But Eleanor...she wasn’t going with them.

She’d done this to me. She’d stripped me down to my final mask and shown me how lacking I was. I was a man who’d turned off his empathy toward his own race, only to cripple beneath the swarm of it for fragile animals.

I’d once told her that too much empathy could kill a person and not enough would kill someone else.

Well...my empathy had become a double-sided weapon, and I didn’t want to be responsible when I wielded it.

Therefore, all my promises, ill-fated joy, and unbearable pleasure were over.

“Tell the pilots they have a flight to Java in one hour.”

Cal stiffened beside me. “You’re sending her to the mainland?”

I tensed, doing my best to stop my heart from leaping from my mouth. “She’s going home. I’m done.”

His silence was as damning as his sarcastic ‘sir’.

My goddess island came into view, the helicopter sank, and I gathered up all the masks that Eleanor had stripped from me with bloody, gory hands, and put them back on...one lie at a time.

Chapter Two

“STOP STRESSING, JINX. I’m sure he’ll be back soon, and everything will be fine.”

I ceased shredding the napkin from our untouched dinner, eyeing Jealousy. “He should have returned by now.”

Unless what he’s dealing with is so, so much worse than I feared.

I’d had no appetite all day, my stomach a riot of serrated knots whenever I thought of Sully and whatever carnage he’d faced.

Are those animals okay?

I couldn’t shed the awful, awful feeling that we were over.

That Sully would be reminded of far too many things.

That he’d push me away before I could solidify just how important this was.

We were.

Yes, disaster had come.

And yes, things would need to be addressed.

But...unless he trusted me to have his back, trusted that I would be strong enough to put up with his stony silences born from grief and his explosive temper birthed from rage, then I had the tear-evoking sensation that my time here was borrowed.

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. I had a cut there now. A cut that bled each time I nibbled because physical pain was the only distraction that worked against my emotional pain.

God, Sully.

His creatures...

My heart panged, filling me with fear all over again.

Was he okay?

What had he seen?

What nightmares now existed in that perfect, wonderful sanctuary?

I rubbed at the emptiness in my chest, agony swift and sharp cutting me right down the middle.

How many lives have been lost?

What sort of state will he be in when he finally returns?

Would he let me touch him? Soothe him? Hug him?

Would he share his exhaustion and emotional grief...or would he want nothing to do with me?

Once again, that sickening feeling that Sully would push me away rose with acidic bile. We’d admitted we were in love with each other, but that was just the tip of a very big iceberg to melt.

Right now, love was an idea, a promise, a word.

It could be snatched away as quickly as we’d conjured it.

Falling in love was the painful part.

It required the systematic stripping of who you were as an individual, a raw newness, and a terrifying look in the mirror that forced you to realise that the person you thought you were—the person you’d grown into on your own, without interference of another—wasn’t who you were, after all.

The lies we’d fed ourselves. The tricks we’d used to deceive. The motives and methods to get through life were suddenly obsolete in the face of the one person who transcended all other people.

I supposed my young age permitted me to accept my evolution easily. I allowed the metamorphism to flow from girl to goddess to woman in love with a monster because I’d never truly grown to know myself. My youth kept me pliant for my truth.

But Sully...

He hadn’t accepted me as easily. He had eleven years on me. That was eleven more years to build up his walls, smash down his bridges, and create an illusion that wasn’t Euphoria-given but entirely of his own creation.

He saw himself as cruel and unyielding, severe and grim.

I saw him as gentle and forgiving, strict and generous.

Dark and light. Light and dark.

Two elements that cancelled each other out.

Just as he’ll cancel me out if that darkness has smothered him again.

My shoulders rolled as I pushed away my untouched dinner.