The Exorcism of Faeries (Morbid Realities, #1)

by J.L. Vampa

That was when Atta saw it. The blossom sprouting from his lungs. Not a phantom or a trick of the lamplight. Not even a seedling-looking thing one could pass off as an abnormal growth of some sort. No, it was a macabre bloom of foreign flora that had taken root in the man’s lung, and flowered.

All right, Jane Bennet, get your shite together. You are a Lizzie, damn it. And this man is no fucking Darcy.

Outside, the campus was bustling with students, a hint of the approaching autumn on the wind, stirring the leaves that would soon lose their chlorophyll and show the world how beautiful it is to die.

Professor Sonder Murdoch was the cliff-jump that terrified, the majestic wolf that captivated, the risk you knew might kill you, yet you couldn’t pass it up.

Turning on his heel, he strode away, one hand in his pocket and the other—the one that had just been so very close to touching her—clenched in a fist at his side.

“Sometimes fear cleanses the soul, Atta. It reminds us to look at the important things we took for granted while at peace.” He let his words sink in for a moment. “Come with me.”

But he didn’t want to risk being the reason she stopped laughing.

Fucking hell she was beautiful when she was angry. But not as beautiful as when she laughed.

If Sonder Murdoch was the dark lord, her soul was begging to be burned to ash.

“If you so much as look at her the wrong way, I’m the one who will make you wish you were dead. That’s who the fuck I am.”

“I’m sorry,” she hiccuped. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“I’ll wait all night if it means you’ll stay.”

“How I thought I was destined to be alone, but it turns out I was starving all these years, waiting for you?”

Loved each other countless times in countless other lives, other realities.

he knew then and there he'd set the world on fire for her. Slay a thousand beasts, cure any Plague, fight to the death. For her. His Patroclus.

“You, a stór, are everything that is right with the world. My world. With all the worlds. And don’t you dare apologise for it.”

If he were to die, she’d envy the soil that cradled him in its arms, the flora that sprouted from his bones.

Ἁμαρτία. Hamartia. The tragic flaw. Achilles and Patroclus.