Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 7.5) (2 page)

I pause, staring at my reflection in the mirror an inordinate amount of time. What have I become? I would have lied down for Logan and let him map out the landscape of my body with his mouth if he wanted.

A hot spasm sears me at the thought.

I touch my hand to my head to cool myself. What the hell is happening? This is about Gage and me, right? Logan said he was backing off until after the faction war. That’s why he broke up with me, so that Gage and I could test the waters—see if it went anywhere. Aren’t I going to marry Gage and have a million dark-haired babies with dimples deep as oil wells? And for darn sure not one of them will be sleeping in a casket.

That memory of him holding baby Beau on my bed imprints itself in my mind. Gage is amazing and my heart breaks because I believe Logan is right. It’ll be me and him in the end. I don’t get this and I certainly don’t get my mother.

The distinct sound of laughter emits from the butterfly room, so I sling my purse to the floor and head on over.

God, if that’s Mia or Melissa with their prepubescent boy toy, I’m going to seriously freak the hell out. I’m a bit pissy after realizing I’m still sickly in love with Logan. I can’t stand the dual-edged sword my heart has become. Being in love with two people is impractical and all-around agonizing.

My mother, who has appointed herself as the divining rod of my destiny, has no clue how love is supposed to work. In fact, the only clear thing about my mother is the fact she very much can’t stand me.

More female laughter—followed by a distinctly male voice, beckoning for her to keep it down.

I open the closet and walk near the back.

“Aren’t you afraid Skyla’s going to catch us?” he asks. He sounds older, far too old to have just finished the seventh grade.

“
Afraid
of Skyla?” A wild cackle breaks out. “I hope she finds us—serves her right,” she coos. “We should put on a show for her.”

Shit. That’s freaking Chloe. Who knows what plaything she’s hauled up there—wait… Isn’t Ethan her playmate of the hour? And doesn’t “said playmate” have his own space under this bawdy freaking roof?

I climb on a small tower of boxes I sometimes use when I don’t feel like hauling my desk chair in and crawl toward the transom.

“I care what Skyla thinks,” he says it resonate and familiar. The register of his voice is far too baritone to be Ethan.

Is that…
Gage
? That is Gage! Oh God.

I clap my hand over my mouth in horror.

“I owe her a lot,” his words rumble through the wall.

Shit.

“Who knew you had a heart?” Chloe laughs.

“I’m the one with the heart. You’re the one with the hot looks.” It thunders from him low.

My entire body freezes. That can’t be Gage. It only sounds like him. It’s probably a Fem—Demetri or something equally as hideous.

The sound of shuffling emits and I scramble out of the closet and into the bathroom.

I hear Chloe descend and the sound of my dresser sliding to the side. Hopefully, she’ll think I went straight to the bathroom. God knows I’m staying in here until she’s good and gone. The last thing I’m going to give her is the satisfaction of witnessing firsthand some bizarre verbal exchange between me and my soon to be ex-boyfriend.

I give her a full five minutes to exit. There is no way in hell I’d want to have that run in.

I head back into my bedroom, looking for subtle signs that could offer me a clue to whether that was really Gage. At this point anything can incriminate him—his jacket, a shoe. I try to detect the scent of his cologne, but nothing.

It takes me less than three seconds to secure the dresser back over the entry and jump in the closet. I crawl into the butterfly room and am horrified to find Gage sitting there like he’s been there all along, a grin on his face, happy to see me—or laughing at me, either or.

“What the hell just happened?” I land hard on my bottom, dizzy from seeing him at the scene of the crime. The strong scent of body odor lights up the room and the comforter is all rumpled and displaced like it was just heavily used, most likely soiled—by Chloe’s disgusting clothing-deficient body.

“What?” Gage looks genuinely perplexed as if he really didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.

A pair of lace panties lie to his left, and he stretches out his leg causally, covering them in the process. Gage never takes his eyes off me and suddenly it feels as if he’s trying to hide more than Chloe’s underwear. 

My body closes in on itself. My limbs go numb and my insides loosen all at the same time. A train could run me over and I wouldn’t feel a thing.

“Get out,” I whisper as my chest palpitates wild with disbelief.

“Get out?” He leans forward to take my hand and I recoil.

“Yes,” I scream. “I said,
get out!
”

“What?” He squints, his brows hitching up on the sides. Gage has the power to express just about any emotion with those thick lines that hover over his jewel-toned eyes. I find everything about him alarming at the moment, right down to his disturbing good looks. “What’s going on? Did something happen with Logan?”

“Did something happen with Chloe?” I throw it in his face just as easily as he brings up Logan.

“What?” He leans forward and interlaces our fingers just as quickly as I retract them. “Talk to me, Skyla. What’s going on?”

“I
heard
you. You were in here with her.”

“Swear to God I just got here.” He holds his hands out in distress.

“What a coincidence. She just left,” I hiss.

“Is that why—?” He looks around at the mess and shakes his head. “Wasn’t me, I swear.”

“Then why did it sound like you? I heard him say that he cared about me.” I bump over his features with my gaze, anxious for answers. “Which one of her sex toys would say that?”

Gage doesn’t refute it anymore, just tightens his jaw like he’s ready to explode.

“I was with Logan,” I seethe. “And you know what? He still insists this is my time with you. Looks like you had us
both
snowed.” A sob heaves through my chest.

Gage holds my stare. He could cut through steel with his hostile aggression.

“I would never cheat on you,” he grits through his teeth.

“Are you throwing something in my face right now?” I can’t figure this out. It’s been a long night and now all I want is to go to bed. “I bet you’ll replay this entire conversation with her later. The two of you can laugh about how stupid
Skyla
is.” A bright blue wrapper catches my attention and I pick it up and examine it briefly before letting it fall to the ground like a flame. Condom.

“Did you get in a hard situation that you needed to protect Chloe from?” I want to die. I want the floor, the ground—the universe—to swallow me whole. I refuse to live on a planet where Gage Oliver does Chloe Bishop in my freaking butterfly room. I would rather die a thousand fiery deaths than even think it were possible, let alone inhale the rancid odor of their love making at this very moment.

“You’re being played.” He spits it out like rusty nails. “Collect yourself. Light drive back in time and find out exactly who the fuck she slept with because it sure as hell wasn’t me.” His voice rises to an octave I’m not used to hearing. Gage is pumped and looking for a fight. He’s pissed, and right about now, it looks as though his anger is one hundred percent focused on me.

“Maybe I will,” I say, lowering myself through the hole in my closet. I don’t say anything else, just crawl into bed and try to blink my way out of existence by way of sleep, but such a gift eludes me.

The dull night lingers like a song you can’t get out of your head—one you never want to hear again. It drones on forever, amplifying my pain as I bury my face in the pillow.

I try to light drive to earlier this evening, but keep bouncing back, a sure sign of a binding spirit. Figures. Of course he’d suggest I go back. He probably knew he was safe.

His effigy burns behind my eyelids, pleading his innocence.

It couldn’t have been Gage, could it? Gage loves
me
, not Chloe. Gage saved his kisses for me. He’s saving every part of himself for me. Chloe landed me right in the pit of the fire. Chloe was the hunter and I was the game, the prey. She shot me night after night. I was the fox burrowed in a tiny well of earth that could neither cover nor protect me from her wicked ways. Chloe always wins.

I’m going to lose the faction war, and Gage—and quite possibly Logan to “Paradise,” all because my mother just might be the biggest bitch in the universe.

Maybe I was switched at birth.

Maybe Chloe Bishop is really Skyla Messenger.

Now that would make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

***

Dreams come to me in the throes of my distress.

A scene opens. I twirl, taking in the all too familiar landscape, lavender skies and a low-hanging moon graced by the same hue of purple. An entire arsenal of weaponry is being unleashed at my feet.

A familiar boy with dark hair runs in my direction. He’s so alarmingly handsome, his face a close second to that of Gage, I want to bow in his presence. I recognize him from the Celestra tunnels. It’s the one who sucks the marrow right out of my bones, the one and only, Wesley.

“Take this.” He sets a molded black gun in my hand. It’s heavy, ice cold to the touch. “Bastardized Ruger.” He smiles. “You can stop anyone you want, Skyla. It’s all up to you. The bullets never end.”

I fire a shot in his stomach without putting too much thought into it and he looks down with morbid surprise. His lips part as a tiny arrow presses into his shirt, a dark stain blooms like a necrotic rose from the point of incision.

“I have to go.” He staggers backward. “Laken needs me.” He runs off into the forest in his quest for love, and deep down inside I admire him for that.

A crowd emerges from over the hillside. Chloe—Nat with Pierce by her side. Ellis appears and takes Chloe by the hand, sees me aim in their direction and covers her body like a shield.

“Move!” I scream at him. My voice sizzles like an electrical current through this strange dreamscape.

“Don’t do it, Skyla,” he pleads—so I shoot him first.

I fire at Nat while Ellis falls to his knees. I shoot Chloe in the eye for sport. I’m a good shot because I hit her in the Noster eye that Marshall saw fit to gift her with. Her face pinches, her beautiful features writhe as she struggles to pluck it out.

I hit Holden in both kneecaps.

It feels good like this, powerful and dangerous. I wish I could bottle this feeling. I’d call it Killing Chloe for Kicks.

“Skyla!” A deep voice rumbles from the right. Gage trots up the hillside with his hands held out. “Don’t kill Chloe.” I find it strange that he has no regard for the others. He could give a rats ass that Ellis is vomiting in pain while trying to suck in his last lungful of air.

My hand shakes as I raise the svelte, black pistol and close one eye to improve my marksmanship. I squint into his beautiful face and shoot Gage straight through the heart. He bucks backward a good five feet, stagers but doesn’t fall. I shoot him over and over, filling his chest with the arrows of my discontent like an overdrawn bull’s-eye.

My arrows become drunk with his blood as the world around us claps into darkness.

I bolt up in bed with adrenaline racing through my veins, my heartbeat resonating in my ears. The blank of night envelops me. It shifts under the weight of that horrible dream.

The walls press in with an eerie silence. An anemic light streams in from the blinds. I’m still here, safe on Paragon, in my own bed.

The alarm on the nightstand reads three thirty-three.

I pull the covers up to my neck and try to shake the images of that nightmare out of my mind.

Gage.

Chloe was pitting me against him in every realm. She was filling me with disbelief, having me kill him in my dreams.

None of this was real.

Was it?

Chapter 58

The War and the Whore

The morning greets us with a slate-grey sky as rain falls like axes. It has the power to etch the glass with its hellish fury. I wish it would. A storm like this should have the knowledge to inscribe my destiny on my bedroom window, tell me what the future holds for Gage and me—let me in on why he’s so damn insistent on cutting out my heart and gifting it to Chloe. She is the witch who desires nothing more than to devour my existence. Gage is the hunter eager to please.

I gaze out into the murky world. How did I ever end up starring in such a demonic fairytale?

A dark stain appears and pecks at the glass. Nevermore. He’s tucked neatly under the eaves, the rain afflicting him with its psychotic sizzle. I open the window to let him in.

Nev shakes out his feathers like a dog after a bath and hops along the floor before landing beside me.

“Hello, you.” I’ve don’t ever recall Nev coming out in such inclement weather. “Everything OK?” I place my hand over his back. His moist plumes cool me—offer respite from my anger regarding Gage if only for a moment.

Everything OK?
Nevermore mocks with a light croak.
Dear child, rid yourself of the blinders. What’s become of the war?

“We’re losing. But that’s all going to change. A principality named Delphinius will be here any day and my father and mother are both coming to Paragon to help me train. Things are going to turn around for us, Nev.”

How are you fairing with the Counts? Rumor has it you’ve had the displeasure of meeting Ingram
.

“Ingram? The guy that walks around with the glow in the dark clipboard? He’s nobody.”

I’ve been convinced of that for centuries
.

“What do you mean for centuries? How do you know Ingram?”

That’s my bride’s story to tell, not mine. Be apprised he is an insolent sloth that has, as proven by time, never amounted to anything. Good breeding does not equate prosperity and success. He is a lowlife, a scoundrel that has amassed a just punishment even if he does bend the truth and insist he voluntarily took on the position. He’s nothing more than a coward
.