This close to Kallum, his bare skin humming with an electric current, our eyes fused on each other despite the watchful gazes all around, we’re always connected. The only two people in existence as the rest of the world falls away.

I raise my hand to his face and trace the arresting contours, the chalk smudged beneath the press of my fingertips. How lost has Kallum gotten in his own obsession?

“Don’t do anything reckless for me,” I tell him again, stressing my desire to keep him safe.

He lowers his mouth to my ear. “I will bathe this ground in blood, sweetness,” he whispers, eliciting a shiver over my skin. “Every star in my universe burns in the silvery pools of your eyes. An infinity of wishes cast there, and I only desire one thing, lunam deam.” He presses his forehead to mine, his voice a coarse plea as he says, “Stay with me.”

I seal my eyes closed, feeling only the heat of his body against mine despite the raging flames, hearing only his shallow breaths as the drum fades into the background, just like the night of his ritual when he implored me to remember, to face the fear pressing at me from the shadows.

In analytical psychology, Jung states there is nothing more terrifyingly frightening than the mind. Repression of the id’s desires is where our shadow is fashioned. When an internal struggle is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. The world is forced to act out the conflict, and thus we’re torn into opposing halves.

Our shadow side is born.

Once only the dark, destructive grief remained, my shadow was a raging monster. The night I set off after a killer, it took mass.

And like in the cautionary tale, when Jekyll realizes he’s losing the battle to his monster, he makes the choice to end his own life in order to stop the fiend from taking over. Not only did I crave that escape, I pursued it. I wasn’t supposed to survive that night. I leapt into the void and never planned to resurface.

It’s never been the question of whether or not I killed—it’s whether I can stop.

Can I know without fail that I will never take another life? I can’t—because I felt it in my blood when Kallum kissed me during the ritual. I felt it when I fought Landry, and when Alister attacked me.

I feel it now as I pull back and stare into Kallum’s captivating eyes, the pain I want to unleash, the punishment I want to deliver as I caress his chest with my wounded palm, gently touching his battered skin.

Vengeance.

My shadow archetype craves retribution.

The pit of the fire burns hotter, and I have the compulsion to reach into the coals, to feel the soot. It’s a part of me.

Pushing up onto my toes, I capture Kallum’s full lips in a tender kiss, sealing the promise I made months ago before a crackling fire to stay with him.

He brushes his thumb along the nape of my neck, then his form tenses, and I sense the threat behind me like a resinous sludge traveling through the veins of the marsh.

Emmons splashes the blackened, boiling organs with a clear substance, and a noxious gas releases into the air. A crazed gleam flashes in his eyes as he looks at Devyn. “Lead them,” he commands her.

I tighten my hold on Kallum as Devyn sways toward us, her hips rolling in sync to the rhythm, her hands sweeping through the air as if she’s weaving a pattern through the atmosphere. The antler spine in my pocket digs into my hip in reminder. This time, I can’t hesitate.

As she comes to a halt near our locked bodies, Devyn reaches up and unfastens one of the slender antlers from the implant on her scalp, then she removes the other.

“Sex is the most potent energy source,” she declares, raising her arms, the antlers casting trembling shadows against the ground. “The bestial craving for blood and sex is our primal desire, and it must be fed.”

Dread floods my bloodstream as I tip my head back to search Kallum’s fierce gaze, those intense flames burning with a truth he can’t hide.

“Oh, god.” The words fall from my mouth as I latch on to his forearms resting along my shoulders. He remains silent, his features a hardened mask.

Devyn pitches the antlers into the fire. “Ekstasis commands us, rules us,” she cries. “We submit to the divine pleasure.”

My heart thrashes the cage of my chest as realization dawns. Before we’re to become one with the elements in a madman’s alchemy dish, we’re first required to reach ekstasis, the height of ecstasy.

From my periphery, I see Devyn dancing. The corset of bones moves with the flicker of firelight, the sheer material follows her elegant movements. She weaves around Riddick, and I feel his tarry eyes on me. His sick lust crawls beneath my skin.

As Devyn returns, she walks a slow circle around us, now holding Riddick’s dagger in one hand. She reaches with her other to touch us, prompting. “As they looked upon her, she lectured on the great work, and they declared they’d fallen into ecstasy at her revelations.”

Kallum clenches his teeth, a muscle tics against his tight jawline. “Misinterpreting seems to be your only specialty,” he admonishes her.

Devyn stops her progression, coming to a halt at his side. “Fuck her, sorcerer, or I’ll let Riddick do the honors.”

A dangerous growl rumbles from deep within Kallum’s chest. His body vibrates with the strike of the drum as it rises in unison with the chanting. His hold on me tightens painfully, as if he can feel my desire to flee.

“This can’t be happening.” I shake my head against his forearms, then I look up to find the sky. The gnarled trees climb within a helmet of branches and moss like gods overseeing their offering, the moonlight their seduction.

The masks once again cover their faces, and the figures move like the reeds sway. The people are shadows in the marsh, taking on the elements themselves, the bones of stags that tramp the ground like bloodthirsty animals, awaiting the kill.

“Say the words,” Devyn commands of Kallum. “Speak Cleopatra’s words and transmute the elements to the divine substance.”

Savage fury lit within the depths of his eyes, Kallum slowly removes his arms from around my neck. He drops his bound wrists between us, where he gently takes my face between his splayed fingers. “For he who fled entered into the one who did not flee, and he who controlled entered into the one who did not control, and they were united with each other.”

An ache burns at the back of my throat, my body trembles uncontrollably. I feel the vulgar press of their eyes on us as their chant climbs into an urgent entreaty, calling for ekstasis, rapture, frenzy.

I curl my fingers against the solidness of Kallum’s chest, trying to fight the fear as it becomes tangible, suffocating. I turn to escape, immediately caught as Kallum drops his bound arms around me, welding my back to his chest.

“You can’t run yet,” he whispers in my ear.

“They’re watching us…”

He captures my jaw with rough fingers and tilts my face up, forcing me to stare into the fierce intensity of his eyes. “Don’t look at any of them,” he says, his voice gravel. “Eyes on me—look only at me, sweetness.”

He lowers his hands, his thumb traveling down the center of my body until he reaches the clasp of my jeans. He flicks it open, summoning a hard shiver from my body. Then his descent resumes, his hands roving below my pelvis and pushing between my thighs.

A dizzying sensation sweeps over me, and I shut my eyes against the onslaught.

“Stay with me,” Kallum commands. “I need you to stay with me, Halen.” His fingers touch the sigil on my inner thigh, snatching my breath. Compelling my eyes back on him, he anchors me with the seductive cadence of his voice.

Emmons breaks the protective haze with a command to drink from the cups.

As I sink into Kallum’s strong embrace, I feel myself tunnel under, losing equilibrium like I’m in that torture chamber all over again, hearing the flutter of the moth’s wings, seeing the flicker of the firelight like the swaying bulb against my eyelids. Then the erotic feel of Kallum’s hand stroking between my thighs envelops me in torrid heat to tempt me to the surface.