Chapter 22 - you belong to me - Ephy PoV
1004 Words
Another blast shakes the house. Splinters rain from the ceiling.
“Ephy, now!” Raven cries, reaching her hand back through the doorway.
I lunge toward them but before I can step through, the whole house seems to inhale.
The door upstairs slams open.
A voice cold, feminine, dripping with venom calls down the stairs:
“Ephy… I know you’re here. The Lord wants you alive. Don’t make this unpleasant.”
My blood turns to ice.
Maggie shoves me hard toward the passage, urgency sharpening her voice.
“Go! We’ll collapse the tunnel behind you and buy time.”
“No—” I start.
Maggie grip my chin, forcing me to look at her. “Your mother died to protect you. Do not waste that sacrifice.”
My heart cracks.
The witch’s footsteps creak across the floor above us.
The front door exploding inward.
And a voice that chills me to the bone, echoing through the house:
“Find the girl. Kill the rest.”
“No.”
The word rips out of me before I even know I’ve spoken.
Raven stops mid-step, eyes wide. “Ephy—what are you doing? Move!”
But something inside me snaps — a line I can’t let anyone else cross for my sake.
“I’m not letting anyone else die because of me.” My voice trembles, but the heat rising under my skin says otherwise. “Not the twins. Not you. Not Jake. No more.”
Jake shakes his head violently. “Ephy, don’t be stupid—”
“I won’t live with myself if I keep running while everyone gets torn apart behind me.”
I meet each of their eyes Raven’s terrified, Jake’s desperate, Maggie’s horrified.
“I’m done hiding.”
Before anyone can grab me, I spin on my heel and sprint back down the tunnel toward the hidden door.
“EPHY!” Raven’s scream cracks.
I slam my shoulder into the rune-marked door it bursts open, the magic responding to the chaos inside me.
The twins’ house is shaking. Dust falls like snow. The witch’s voice echoes upstairs, cold and amused:
“Ah… there you are.”
I charge up the stairs two at a time my heart pounding, magic burning just under my skin like molten gold. My vision pulses at the edges. Lights flicker. Wood groans. The air tastes metallic.
I can feel Dalston’s presence like a poison in the room above.
Pure evil.
The kind that laughs while your mother bleeds.
The kind that destroys everything you love.
My hand brushes the wall to steady myself, but the moment I touch it, a burst of light shoots from my palm, scorching the wood. I flinch.
I don’t know what I’m becoming.
But I know what I have to do.
Behind me, Maggie’s voice breaks, “No goddess, no, she’s going to confront him—”
Margie shouts, “EPHY, STOP—YOU AREN’T READY!”
But it’s too late.
I reach the top of the stairs.
And there he is.
Dalston stands in the center of the destroyed room, cloak dusted with debris, silver ring glowing faintly. The Seeker witch is beside him, a cruel smile stretching across her face as her eyes lock onto me.
Dalston turns slowly, predator-smooth, and when his gaze lands on me, his smile is chilling.
“Found you.”
His voice is silk over steel.
“You came to me willingly,” he purrs. “How touching.”
I stand there, chest heaving, fury boiling so hot I feel like I might burn through the floor.
“No,” I whisper.
“I came to finish this.”
The witch steps forward, lips curling. “You think you can fight him, little half-fae?”
But Dalston raises a hand to silence her, eyes locked on mine with obsessive hunger.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says softly.
“You’re mine.”
The Seeker witch’s eyes flash black.
Before I can blink, something slams into me not physically, but like icy chains wrapping around my limbs, my chest, my throat.
Invisible shackles lock tight.
I gasp, trying to jerk free, but my body doesn’t obey.
I can’t move.
I can’t even turn my head.
The witch’s voice slithers through the air, thick with malicious triumph.
“Bound.”
My knees hit the floor as the magic drags me down. The cold from the spell sinks into my bones, freezing every instinct, every spark of fire I had rising inside me.
Dalston inhales sharply.
He likes this.
He stalks forward with slow, deliberate steps, boots crunching over shattered wood. His eyes gleam red, hungry, victorious.
“You should have kept running,” he murmurs.
His fangs descend, wicked and gleaming.
“No” The word comes out as a strangled whisper, the only part of me I can still control.
He crouches in front of me like a predator before the kill.
“Oh, Ephy,” he says softly, brushing a strand of hair from my face with a mockingly gentle touch.
“You were always meant to be mine.”
In a blink, his fangs sink into the side of my neck.
Pain detonates through me , white-hot, burning, paralyzing.
My breath catches.
The darkness around me trembles.
I want to scream, but I can’t.
I want to fight, but my limbs won’t respond.
His magic wraps around the wound like chains, pulling something ancient and fae inside me tight, locking it down.
I feel something brand into my skin cold, sharp, permanent.
A mark.
His claim.
His ownership.
“No…” The word is barely audible.
Dalston pulls back slowly, blood on his lips, eyes glazed with power.
“It’s done,” he whispers.
“You belong to me.”
The room tilts.
The walls warp.
The cold spell and the mark work together, dragging me under.
A roar of darkness swallows my senses heavy and absolute.
My vision dissolves into black.
I feel myself falling.
And then I feel nothing.
- Writer
