The sound of her careful steps sinks into my skin, and like a pop of kindling in the open air, my body heats with kinetic energy, and a twisted smile hooks the corner of my mouth.

I take off after her.

From the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of her white streak as she rounds a gnarled tree and dips into the thick underbrush. She’s fast. So damn fast. The thrill to catch her heats my blood to molten as I gain on her. The faint sound of her sharp breaths touches my ears like the moving notes of a classical piece. Decadent, affecting. Erotic.

The deeper we verge into the wooded landscape, the denser the canopy above, the darker the terrain below. The storm hovers on the brink of the field, as if waiting for Halen to break before releasing the torrential.

I’m already soaked in her desire.

The charged current cracks the air between us and electrifies my body, shrinking the distance between us as I’m drawn to her like a moth to its fiery goddess of flame.

“Why are you even running, Halen? Do you know?” My boots punch down on the soppy ground. “Are you running from me, or how turned-on you were when I snapped his neck?”

The captured still I have of her in that moment flares hot and tantalizing, the silver flecks of her eyes ablaze, her sultry mouth parted, the exquisitely pained expression creasing her features—the same way she looks right before she peaks in pleasure.

My groin throbs in painful demand to deliver her that release.

A clearing breaks up ahead, and I stop before the array of thin willows. Controlling my breathing, I wait to see if she’s brave enough to try to outrun me in the open.

“Your heightened emotions are telling, little Halen. I can feel you.”

The eerie stillness thickens around us. Then, like the defiant muse she is, she breaks the silence. “You knew it was Devyn,” she calls out. “Right from the start, you knew who the suspect was. When I asked if you knew it was her, you lied to me.”

I could tell little Halen the truth, that the only lie I’ve told her has nothing to do with the priestess or this case. I could pour my proverbial heart out and beg for forgiveness—but I’ve been telling her the truth since our eyes connected across that quad.

“It’s not what you think,” I say instead as I sweep my hand over the top of the reeds. “As cliché as that sounds, it’s not as if I went to diabolical lengths to keep my petty manipulations a secret.”

“Secret,” she echos, her tone low and mocking as her voice carries through the marsh. She’s itching to fight. “At the hunting grounds, you told me a detail like the chalk used on the victim’s face would only be known to the officials working the case. You knew it was her and you were fucking with me.”

“Oh, sweetness. I love fucking with you. But your logic has you all twisted up.” I settle my shoulder against a tree and pull the necktie from around my unfastened collar. Leisurely, I loop the tie around my hand.

The movement of the reeds snags my attention, and I imagine little Halen crawling along the muddy earth, using the high grass to shield her. She’s so clever.

I rub my thumb over the cashmere tie, aching to feel her soft skin. “I could have sat in that institution, day after excruciating day, waiting, hoping you’d come to me on your own. But I’m not very patient.”

“So you used her—a dying woman—for some twisted game with me. I trusted you. More than anyone…even before my memories resurfaced, I trusted you.” The tender undercurrent of her heartbreak wraps around me. “That’s the worst betrayal.”

I wait for her to continue. While I’m not so patient, I do understand Halen. I know what she needs, and how she has to logically digest her reality. I can take her lashings for a while.

But then it’s my turn.

I continue to spool the tie around my hand, tighter and tighter. “It’s only betrayal when you don’t have all the pieces.”

Her laugh is sharp and derisive. “I’ll never have all the pieces with you, Kallum.”

Her responses are becoming shorter, her voice coming from farther away. My runner is trying to creep around the clearing.

“Somehow, from the very first moment, I knew you had a hand in it. God, Devyn even quoted Chaucer to me. I mean, she misquoted it…but now I think she did so on purpose not to appear obvious.” There’s anger, but there’s also raw hurt and vulnerability leaking through. “Then the eyes. Of course you orchestrated the scene. You took your own father’s eyes. The scene has you all over it.”

I breathe through the constriction in my chest as I flex my hand, tightening the ligature. “Devyn was already on her course. She didn’t need much of a push from me.”

“Bullshit. For five years, she harmed no one. Then she interacts with you, and in less than four months, there are blood rites and organs and⁠—”

“Her situation was already taking place,” I shout, unable to curb the increasingly impatient edge in my tone. “The outcome was unavoidable. I know how you just love to revel in your guilt, Halen. But Devyn is better because of us, because of you. Where would she be right now otherwise? Strung up in that room by chains? Locked in that cage?”

The silence prickles my nerves, and I clench my jaw. “Will a confession satisfy my fuming little muse? Then yes, the eyes were me. Because I knew the scene had to be something unique. It had to draw you there. But even then, I didn’t think it would be enough. So I made sure your director gave you the case.”

And for good measure, I charged a sigil using a thumbtack, of all lame things. My desire to have Halen on the case got every piece of metal removed from my room. A small sacrifice.

Paying a ridiculous sum of money to have CrimeTech hacked and ensure their problematic criminologist was assigned to Hollow’s Row should have been what got me caught. But damn Torres and those emails. Having access to exchange email was the only reason I agreed to his fucking case study and let him wade around in my head.

Not only was he a risk, he was a liability. It was only a matter of time before he lost the last of his faculties.

“Unbelievable.” She’s barely audible beneath the insects stirring to life, their habitat disturbed. A rumble of thunder rolls in the distance, and the vibration flows along the ground.

“The whole theory around the case…your obsession with the duality and Dionysus.” Her breaths come faster, and I lock on to her general location in the reeds. “Every bit of it was you.”

“While my ego enjoys being stroked, I’m not omniscient. I didn’t create the circumstance, I only seized the opportunity.” I tear a hand through my hair in frustration. “I told you, it’s the universe, little Halen. Nearly every philosophy is steeped in paradox.” I push off the tree and stealthily creep through the reeds, staying hidden behind the tree line. “All schools of thought adopt some form of ‘opposites attract.’ If not Nietzsche’s doctrines, it could have been Nicholas of Cusa’s coincidentia oppositorum, or Logos, or hell, there’s no limit with Jung. Take your pick. History repeats itself, remember? It’s just our turn to observe it.”

After I was remanded to Briar, I pored over emails for weeks in search of very specific qualifiers I could utilize on the outside. As an authority in the occult, who has a somewhat notorious reputation, I receive all kinds of interesting messages.

One such anonymous message with an encrypted address held promise. The author had reached out to establish a foundation for explorative shamanic rituals in connection to the higher self through alchemical practice. Again, this could have been any philosophy at play. The options are limitless.

After three emails, I provided a starting point for their experimental pursuit, steering them toward an awakening with a specific sacrifice. But it wasn’t until the news aired of a ritual crime scene involving eyes that I knew this person was committed to their pursuit. Then Halen walked into Briar, and our fate took over. When I discovered the symbols carved in a tree near the hemlock, my exhilaration was legitimate.