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“This is the last time, Silas,” Alistair says, conviction in his voice. “This is the last time I come back to that fucking place. Even if it kills me.”
I have never once known what that feels like. To simply exist without someone having a preconceived idea of who I am.
“In order to take over as CEO of Hawthorne Technology, you have to be married.”
My heart rate speeds up, an overwhelming amount of pressure slamming into my skull with a sledgehammer. My father is dying—do I even have the time to prepare for that now? There is a cyber villain threatening the freedom of my friends, and now I have to get married.
“You deserve to marry for love, Silas,” he says with a gentle ease. “For happiness and for joy. Not on a whim, not in a forced setting. I want you to know the happiness of family.”
On a whim, with no other choice, I lie to my father for the very first time. “I have a girlfriend.”
In the dark of night, I seek artificial happiness to fill the void of my empty days.
I laugh obnoxiously, knowing the only time I’m allowed to hear that foreign sound is because of the drugs. Sad life, isn’t it? Unable to laugh unless I’m drowning in chemicals.
The Hollow Boys played a huge part in discovering the Halo. Without them, who knows what would have happened to hundreds of missing girls.
Only the voice. Smooth and calm as the night sky. Silas Hawthorne.
It’s his voice. The same one that mumbled in my ear through a phone speaker and kept me from jumping to my death. It’s a blend of darkness
and warmth, a low rumble that emerges from the depths of his chest. A single candle flickering in an abyss of nothingness.
He holds my head in his hands, fingers curling around the base of my neck, tugging me forward. My forehead drops to his chest, nose inhaling the smell of tobacco and cologne stuck to his shirt, luring me closer. My body seeks his, looking for…I don’t know. Comfort? Calm?
“Coraline.” He whispers my name like a secret. “Breathe for me, Hex. Breathe.”
“Don’t judge me, Silas.”
“How can I judge the way you choose to kill your sadness?”
“Can you—”
“Anything,”
I’m the spindle lover boys prick their fingers on. I leave them comatose with only the memory of my touch. I’m not the princess. I’m the rotten apple. The poison made to demolish happily ever afters.
I’m no good for him, for anyone. “Let go of me.”
No one is normal. It’s a societal term slapped on people, but regardless of life experiences, no one is actually normal. Especially not me, but it’s the image I present to people. I can’t even be angry at her for assuming it.
But if she could have seen me just the other night, crumbled in the arms of a man I barely knew, fleeing the moment I’d been able to catch my breath, refused to even thank him for what he’d done? She’d see me much differently.
I’ll suffer through life as long as I need to if it means she can keep her joy.
I am cursed. Inside of me lives a spell that crushes the hearts of men. My bones are built from a hex, dark magic that drives boys mad. This curse I live with makes love a lethal weapon.
Falling for me is not the fear. It’s what happens when I fall for them.
Every man I have ever loved has either disappeared, died, ...
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“No one enjoys being alone, especially you, Cora. I get it, you love showing the world this cold, remote version of you who snaps at people if they get close. I don’t
blame you. But don’t lie and say you enjoy it. I know you.”
I was his Circe, and Stephen Sinclair would always come back for me.
For the first time, someone was desperate for me to talk. Needed it. I’d never known what that felt like, someone needing my voice. But with every word I’d muttered, she’d melted. Lost that wild look in her eyes and started breathing. “I need to get married.”
“We started it together. We end it together,” Rook adds. “We’ll finish this and leave this fucking hellhole behind. All of us.”
Fear is a starved beast, no matter how often you feed it.
There was no pain or sadness. Only us. I was his. And he was mine.
Stephen Sinclair is my home. My wrists ache for his chains that
keep me safe. His hands are the ones that fed me, his kiss the one that both broke and healed me. No one else has ever been able to love me. It’s only him.
“You’re mine, and I will come back for you, Circe. I will always
come back to you. You belong to me only.”
I stand here in this room full of people, letting them admire my work, letting them admire me, wondering if deep down they can all see the shame. If they can see how weak I am, how silly and stupid I feel for falling in love with my captor.
In art, you’re given permission to be the ugliest version of yourself just so you can make something beautiful from it.
“Voice in the Canvas.”
She became something to fear. I know what that is like. How much easier it is to be scary. If people are afraid of you, they won’t risk getting close. The truth is I don’t know Coraline. Not really.
That’s what makes this…odd for me. Having this connection with a person I hardly know. I do not know her the way most do, but I know her in a way no one else ever would.
What do I see? A woman who nearly every man in this room has stopped to admire in one way or another. Not just because she’s the artist but because of her allure. Allure that has nothing to do with her beauty.
“They say you don’t talk much. Yet, that doesn’t seem to be the case.” “With you.”
I think Coraline Whittaker does concern herself with me more often than she wants me to believe. That there is a curiosity she has toward me because that night at Vervain, when my voice was the only thing keeping her from crashing over the edge? I felt it. That connection.
It kills her that she can’t pick up the scissors and cut it. It kills me that I want more of it. I shouldn’t be wanting more of anyone. Especially not of her.
I may not be good with people, but I’m fucking incredible with puzzles. Coraline is attracted to me, and that bothers her. Bothers her so much, I might get the worst of her venom if I push a little too hard.
He’s the kinda guy who enjoys stripping another man of his pride just to feel like a big man.
“Who is the lucky girl, by the way? Anyone from the Springs? I’ve lived here all of my forty-five years. I doubt I wouldn’t know her.”
“Coraline Whittaker.”
