“You forged your own path. You listened to no one and thought you knew best. In the end, your hands were covered in the blood of the one you were entrusted to protect.” The nymph’s icy breath was as cold as his words. “You continue on this path, history will repeat itself, and there will be no salvation for you. There will only be an eternity of retribution and vengeance.”

The nymph disappeared without sound or movement, leaving me standing there. Turning slowly, I looked around and there was no sign that the nymph had ever been there in the first place.

“Hell,” I muttered, rubbing my hand along my jaw.

I wasn’t sure what to think of the nymph, whether he was friend or foe, but in the end, what the nymph had said was mostly true. There was blood on my hands, and there was only retribution and vengeance in my future.

Josie

My face hurt.

So did my head and eyes. Actually, every part of me ached. My head was stuffy and eyes swollen from crying enough tears to fill the stupid room, and my stomach was brutally empty. I’d gone way past the stage of being hungry. It felt like I wouldn’t eat again.

At some point, I’d managed to pull myself off the floor and kick off my sneakers before face-planting my bed. That had turned out to be a major mistake, because the sheets, the pillows?—everything—smelled like Seth. Like the outdoors and the unique scent that reminded me of burning leaves. The tears had really started at that point, and it had been ugly. The big, fat sobs came from a deep place inside of me and they shook my entire body. I’d cried myself asleep, and when I woke up the tears started all over again. For a while, there seemed like there’d be no end in sight.

That had been Friday morning. I’d barely moved from the bed in two days, and my eyes were as dry as the desert. My hair was limp and greasy. Showering seemed like it required way too much effort.

I’d never been in love before.

I’d never had my heart broken by a guy before.

Yes, my heart had been wounded a time or two. There was this guy in high school who I had a pretty big crush on and he’d thought I was a freak. Then there’d been this dude in my history class my freshman year at Radford. I’d spent all semester crushing on him and working up the nerve to say more than a handful of sentences to him, only to find out that he was in a committed relationship, baby daughter included.