Wait.

My voice sounds hollow and distant, like it’s coming from far away. Felix hovers over me, a darkness dawning in his eyes as I speak.

“Wait, Felix,” I whisper. “This isn’t… I can’t do this.”

His dark hair falls in front of his eyes, and he pushes it back as he nods, releasing me as he sits up, leaning his back against the trunk of the tree we lie beneath.

 I stay on my back for a few moments, trying to catch my breath as I stare up at the canopy of brilliant bright red leaves overhead. As I watch, a single, delicate leaf drifts down, landing on my breast like a drop of blood.

Felix reaches for it with a faraway look in his eyes, his fingertips leaving echoes of prickling electricity where they brush my skin.

He holds the frail crimson leaf up into the silver moonlight. He seems to be studying it intently, and I watch him, wondering what he’s thinking.

“I wouldn’t have done anything,” he says finally, without looking at me. “I know you’re not ready for that.”

 My face turns bright red as I realize just what it is I thought he was going to do. What I thought we were going to do.

Omg. I only just had my first kiss a few minutes ago, and already I’m jumping ten steps ahead.

“Unlike the so-called angel, I don’t have my mind permanently in the gutter,” he says with a sneer, crushing the crimson leaf in his hand. It crumbles with a dry whisper, the crisp papery rustling of the leaf disintegrating in his hand, red fragments scattering on the moss.

At the mention of Alastaire, a memory takes hold of me.

On my first morning at the cabin, Alastaire showed me a photo of Felix with his arms around Zara Quinn, the super famous pop starlet he’s supposedly dating, if the press and the entire internet is to be believed.

He was warning me. Why?

“What’s going on with you and Zara?’ I blurt out, without really thinking.

Felix’s hazel eyes widen in surprise; he purses his lips, looks like he’s going to say something, then shakes his head.

He’s silent for a moment, staring at the ground.

“It’s not what you think,” he says finally. “Or not what the tabloids think it is, anyway.”

“Then what is it?” I ask.

He turns away, refusing to meet my eyes.

“Are you dating?” I ask. “Yes or no?”

Felix looks at me sharply, a pained look on his face.

“Stop Ash,” he says, a hint of anger in his voice. “I can’t talk about that.”

“Why not?” I ask.

Felix just looks at me darkly, the pained expression replaced with his same old familiar glacial, unruffled expression.

“Would it kill you to trust me?” He asks coldly.

“Possibly,” I respond, regretting it the moment I say it.

He sighs in frustration, balls his fist up and suddenly punches the ground, swearing as he does it.

“This is all I can tell you Ash,” he says through gritted teeth. “You think I’m free. You think the others are free. We’re not. We’re slaves.”

I’m about to ask what he means by that, but he raises his hand, silencing me.

“I don’t have any answers,” he says. “But I will. I need you to wait for me. One year, that’s all I’m asking. You’ll be safe here in Portland. Then I’ll be back and I can tell you everything. You just have to trust me.”

I shake my head, feeling my eyes prickle with tears.

How am I meant to trust him when he won’t tell me anything?

“In my dreams, you umm…” I struggle with the words. “You-”

“I kill you,” Felix says, his eyes suddenly lingering on my left breast, over my scar, now hidden beneath the lacy white fabric of my camisole. “Over and over. That’s how my dreams end too. Sometimes I’m a prince from this country where it’s always night… sometimes I’m a painter and you’re my muse… sometimes I’m a soldier escaping the trenches, and my comrades and I come across a farmstead… and every single time, there you are, the girl with the silvery blonde hair and those same pale green eyes. And every single time, I kill them, and then I kill you. I stab you. Right… here.”

He reaches out then, his finger hovering inches away from my breast, as if to touch the scar, before I shrink back, wrapping my arms around myself protectively.

“We’re not our dreams, Ash,” he says.

“How do you know that?” I ask, realizing that my voice is choked with held-back sobs, and tears are streaming from my eyes. “It’s obviously some sort of pattern.”

“Are you scared of me?” He asks suddenly, his lips curling into a dark half-smile, his eyes flashing.

“I don’t know,” I answer, and his smile disappears. “Should I be?”

He doesn’t answer, just stares straight ahead, into the shadowy moonlit forest, his expression cold, detached.

A sudden cawing sound breaks through the stillness of the night. It sounded like a crow, or a raven. A bird of prey.

“Ash, there’s something I need you to do for me,” he says, blatantly ignoring my question. “I can’t tell you why. I just need you to believe me when I say it’s for your own good. Ok?”

I nod, feeling like I’m lying to him without words.

There’s another shrill cawing sound, and the flap of wings as a bird – a raven, I think – flies out of the forest, alighting on a red-leaved branch in the tree behind Felix.

“Good,” he says, giving a sideways glance to the raven. “Listen carefully Ash. There’s a ring. A silver ring, in the shape of a serpent biting its own tail.”

My blood runs cold; my heart skips a beat.

“It’ll be in the possession of a female ancestor of yours,” he says. “At first I thought it would be in your gran’s things. It could be anywhere. Hidden in a cupboard or a vase or god knows. But it’s not anywhere I can find it. I need you to look at your house. Speak to your mum. Speak to her friends. Whatever. Just find it, and bring it to me.”

He watches my reaction closely, and I fight down the panic rising inside of myself.

The cabin is filled with my gran’s furniture, things she made, her belongings. Did Felix know that before he asked me to help Fable with their new album? Is that all it’s been about the whole time? Did he come to Portland just to get the ring? This whole time, has he been using me?

I scramble to my feet, and stumble backwards. Felix is on his feet in a flash, catching me as I almost trip over my own feet. All around me, I hear the swish of feathers cutting the air, as more and more birds fly out of the forest, settling on the branches of the tree we lay beneath moments before.

Hundreds on eyes watching me from the vermillion branches, cawing and croaking in a mad chorus behind Felix, who seems oblivious to the cacophony.

The once red tree is now black, as if engulfed by an ominous shrieking cloud.

Felix reaches forward, taking my wrist, his eyes hard.

I pull my hand from his grasp, jumping back.

“Don’t you… don’t come near me,” I say.

Felix’s expression is impossible to read: flat, cold, indifferent. His hair black as a crow’s wing, his skin pale as moonlight, I fight the spell of his deadly beauty, the intoxicating rapture urging me to drop my defenses, fall into his arms, put all doubts aside.

He’s a monster. He destroys everything he touches. Everything.

Alastaire’s voice rings in my ears.

A monster.

“This is the last time I’m asking!” I yell above the screaming hubbub of the ravens, gathering my courage. “What’s the silver circle? Who are you, really? What are you? Why are you here? How much do the others know?”

That’s right. The others. Ben, Lyall, Elliot and Alastaire. It’s time for me to tell them everything. And to find out exactly how much they know.

Felix just shakes his head.

For a moment, his eyes flash with something I can’t quite place – an emotion I have no name for.

He raises his arms up on either side of him, and the ravens go suddenly silent.

Without warning they swoop down, all at once – alighting on his shoulders, cascading down in a river of midnight feathers, until they become a long, flowing cloak of blackest night.

The hazel eyes turn a brilliant blood red, his skin becomes paler still, whiter than a ghost. His fingernails are black and pointed, like those of a beast, and I see the flash of dark armor beneath the raven-feather cloak.

A cruel and cold beauty, like a statue carved from ice.

The man from my dreams, my memories. The dark prince.

“My love,” he whispers, his eyes fixed on me.

All around us, the forest has fallen away, dissolved into another scene before my eyes.

We are standing on the same silver stretch of moonlit beach from my dreams – dark waves crashing against the shore, brilliant stars in the black sky above as Felix, the Prince of Night, the prince of mysteries, reaches out to me.

“Ondine,” he whispers.

My name.

And with that, I fall to my knees, and I tumble forward, into darkness, into oblivion.