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SEVENTY-SIX | CLAWS
The one-two click-clack of the mysterious footsteps drew closer. I held back a shudder, desperately trying to keep up my pretend display of unconsciousness. I longed to crack an eye open, but I held still and took another deep breath.
The footsteps came to a halt beside me. I exhaled, as steadily as I could. Something piercing and cold touched the bare skin of my knee, digging in to the graze there. Hot blood pooled around the point of contact. I winced.
“I know you’re awake,” a nasal, woman’s voice drawled. “I can hear your heart beat. It’s quicker, now.” Slowly, she dragged the pointed object away from my knee.
With a sigh, I opened my eyes. She was pulling off her heel to wipe it clean – red soled, I noted: a Louboutin. I only recognised it because Rebecca had spent more hours staring at them online than studying when we were at college, and I had never been so glad for
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At first, I did not wish to cling to the light. My eyes tried to open, tried to stare blearily up at the stars, and I yanked them shut. The dark was simple: no pain, no morality, no consciousness. I ached to return, but then I realised that the presence of pain meant something incredible.I was alive. Somehow, I had survived.I worked my jaw. My mouth was dry, my tongue pressed to the back of my front teeth. I licked my lips. My head burned, my temples throbbing, one far worse than the other. I shifted, rocking to one side, and my neck soared with pain. Then came a stab in my side, and a flame licking my wrist. Everything was agony, and life did not seem worth the hurt.As I let myself sink back into the darkness, my woozy head lolling against something warm and firm, I heard a voice. It rocked, waves crashing in the night, and then I realised that the sounds were not one and the same, but two separate noises. T
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“I was considered to be something of an eligible bachelor at the time,” he said lightly, teasingly. Despite myself, I snorted.“I’m hurt, Callie,” he gasped, adjusting his weight and mine so that he could hold a dramatic hand over his heart. I rolled my eyes at him, and he grinned down at me, holding my gaze with a power I wasn’t sure he knew he held. After a long moment, he continued.“I was born to a wealthy family – thank goodness. I’m not sure how much you know about that time, but the city streets and the work houses stank.” He wrinkled his nose, and I raised my eyebrows at him. “Though my parents wanted little to do with me, I was glad of them. Fortune had favoured me, though I’d done nothing to earn it. I felt badly for the poor, but I was too caught up in my own dramas to pay them much heed.“My time was spent in our country es
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“Callie?” My name, sleep-worn and grumbled, sounded like a lifeline. My heart thudded loudly in my chest.“Dad. I – God, they’re there.” I turned to Cyrus and mouthed, “Where did you find me?”He squinted at me, deciphering my words, before mouthing back: “Below.” He added a jaunty point to the ground, and I shook my head at him, hoping I understood.There was nothing sleepy about my Dad’s voice. “It’s almost four in the morning. We thought you’d got carried away dining with your vampire beau. What happened?”Thank God they hadn’t come for me; thank God Cyrus had. But my lips stilled. Four in the morning? I squinted into the night, searching for a glimmer or peach or tangerine to mark the first rays of the rising sun. The midwinter sky was still dark, with not even the merest shade of pale blue to suggest
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He was silent for a long time, as if weighing up a hundred different answers – all of them circling around the ugly truth. His fingers were still against mine, and he gazed with a blank expression out across the sea. The colours warped and fragmented as they deepened, pastel pinks and oranges blooming into resplendent, bright beams of rose and tangerine. Rather than watch Cyrus holding the muscles in his face taut – too taut, controlled – I too looked out at the shimmering water.Eventually, through tight lips, he spoke. “Yes.” It was as though the dam had burst with that single word. “Yes, I made you forget. It was a mistake – a mistake to take you on that date, knowing how desperately I wanted to be honest with you, and knowing the consequences of my honesty. I – Callie, I wanted to learn where you stood, without having to face the repercussions of my curiosity. I… apologise.” He swallowed any furthe
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We lay back on the grass together, his arm slipping beneath my head and keeping me close. Idly, as I felt the gushing wave of life return to me, I traced the veins in his wrist, using the barest touch to follow them along his forearm and into the crook of his elbow, making up the path where they dipped from view.Then I traced the stars with that same pointed fingertip, watching as clouds as blue as his veins puffed across the sunrise, startlingly different to the hues of red and gold simmering atop the sea, but fitting all the same. They blurred together seamlessly, night and day, dark and sun.“Do you remember what I told you about Esther?” He asked quietly, his words a whispering breeze against the dawn.I did, now; now that he’d returned my memory to me. “Yes. The witch – right?”“That’s her.” He mused over his thoughts for a moment before con
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“Dad? Paps?” I shrugged off Cyrus’s coat, holding it close to my chest for a moment before hanging it on the rack. It looked out of place beside mine and my Dads’ familiar coats, long and dark and sweeping, carrying his arrogance with it even though it had long since left his body.“Callie? Oh – thank God.” Paps swarmed me, wrapping me tight in his arms before stepping back and patting me down, checking for any wounds. “You’re okay. Oh, you’re okay.”I grinned, one side of my mouth tugging up further than the other. “I’m okay.”“We were worried,” Dad said, his voice low and croaky. I wondered how much sleep either of them had got last night.“It – it didn’t exactly go to plan,” I mused, toeing off my boots.Paps raised an eyebrow. “You can say that again.&
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