The Children of the Moon by Laekan Zea Kemp

Author:Laekan Zea Kemp [Kemp, Laekan Zea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Laekan Zea Kemp

33

Bryn

It wasn’t that first breath of air that woke me or even the familiar bite of those thorns. What shook me back into my body after watching Chloe and Sebastían disappear was Roman’s voice.

You made me this way. Monster. Bryn. Bryn. Bryn.

I felt the blood drain from me inch-by-inch, dread, thick and burning, filling me in its place. And yet, when he knelt over me, all I wanted was to reach out and touch him. For him to hold me or destroy me, I didn’t care which. All I knew was that I missed him. In the deepest hollows of me, his memory was still burning, and I missed the boy I loved, the one who used to love me back.

“You made me this way, Bryn.”

You. You. You.

He spoke the words that had driven me mad, over and over until there was nothing but pain. But this was all wrong. I’d already escaped him once. He’d crippled me, driven me out of my mind, and then I’d woken up. I’d woken up.

I thought of Mona and Scarlett, faced with their nightmares, driven mad. They’d disappeared but where to? Had they gone back to the place where they’d gotten lost? Was I on my way there too?

Panic struck me, my fear churned to rage, so silent that Roman didn’t even notice. I strained against the vines, knowing what was coming. But this time I wasn’t going to just let him kill me. Because this time I was awake. Not in my body, but in those parts of me that could carve a waterfall out of stone, that could turn a gust of wind into a tornado.

But the vines were awake too. They coiled around me, pulling me deeper. The ground opened up, a mouth that sucked me down, down. The light vanished and so did the heat, the earth shifting between my limbs until I was just another part of the soil.

It pressed down hard over my lips, my cries muffled. I tried to slow down, to think. Think. I could hear Roman’s voice above me and I could feel the weight of him packing the earth. I tried to move my arms and legs but the vines were nothing but teeth now, sharp points drawing blood.

Think, Bryn. Concentrate.

I imagined the vines were thread, thin and torn and ready to snap. I imagined I was something else too, not just a girl or a Dreamer, but a weapon. The vines unraveled into something soft, knots untangling themselves. I stretched, my lungs convulsing as I clawed towards the surface. My fingers brushed wind, sunlight, skin. And then the soil parted over my face just as a small hand reached out and took mine.

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