Copyright © 2020 by Rebel Hart
www.RebelHart.net
Photo by Regina Wamba
Cover by Robin Harper of Wicked by Design
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Cherri
2. Cherri
3. Cherri
4. Deon
5. Deon
6. Cherri
7. Deon
8. Cherri
9. Deon
10. Cherri
11. Deon
12. Deon
13. Cherri
14. Deon
15. Cherri
16. Cherri
17. Deon
18. Deon
19. Cherri
20. Cherri
21. Deon
22. Cherri
23. Deon
24. Cherri
25. Deon
26. Deon
27. Cherri
28. Deon
29. Cherri
30. Deon
31. Cherri
32. Cherri
33. Deon
34. Cherri
35. Deon
36. Cherri
37. Cherri
About the Author
Also by Rebel Hart
EVIL KING
The Royal Court - Book One
Rebel Hart
1
Cherri
“Hurry up! Keep going! We just have to get back home, and we’ll be fine!”
My chest burned as the familiar voice screamed from behind me. We raced through shrubs and trees, the leaves and branches slicing against my skin as we fled. Getting a few cuts or scrapes was better than the alternative, so I pushed past the pressure in my legs and the shortening of my breath and just kept running.
My home wasn’t far from where we were, a mile or so maybe. The trip to the park had been a relaxing stroll. My heart raced then, too, but only because I was finally going on my first date with the guy I was crazy about. After years of just being friends, he finally packed up a picnic and invited me out to a park in the nice part of town, complete with candlelight and the sunset. We were finally moving forward, and then everything went wrong in the blink of an eye.
“Deon!” I shouted.
“Keep running, Cherri.” His hand found my back in the encroaching darkness. “Go straight from here, and when you get to Clearview Avenue, take a left and go around the long way. It’ll take more time, but hopefully, he won’t know to chase you that way.”
“Wait.” I came to a stop and turned around. Deon’s normally slicked-back red hair and budding facial hair looked disheveled, and his dark gray eyes were wild with panic. “What do you mean, chase me? Where are you going?”
He put his hands on my shoulders. I could hear the sounds of footsteps crunching in the leaves, getting closer with each step. “We’re gonna split up.”
My whole body prickled at the words. “What? No. I’m not leaving you.”
One of his hands combed into my blond hair to pull my head toward him. For a brief moment, I thought he might kiss me, but he just set his forehead on mine. “We have to. We’re too loud together. I’ll meet you at home, okay? In our spot, in twenty minutes. I promise.”
My throat burned, and my eyes started to water. Nevermind the fact that I was afraid. I didn’t want to leave Deon’s side. “Okay.”
“Go.” He pulled away from me. “Go!”
With one final look at Deon’s face, I turned my back to him and rushed off. His words rang through my mind as I followed the instructions he laid out for me. I got to Clearview Avenue, bursting through the manicured shrubs, and took a left. This way was one I’d taken many times on my way home from school, though it wasn’t the quickest route home. Clearview was a one-way with no turnoffs until nearly the highway when it bumped into a frontage road that led all the way down into the slums where I lived. When I was on the frontage road, I could no longer hear the steps of my pursuer and slowed my pace. It took nearly the entire mile-long stretch down the frontage road to catch my breath, and when I was finally turning into the run-down neighborhood that I lived in, I’d never been so happy to see the peeling paint and condensed homes.
My house was way at the end of the block. It was a small, green-slatted house with two bedrooms and one bathroom. I imagined my twin-sized bed inside and how nice it would be to just flop down onto it, but instead of going home, I walked to the tall oak tree on the abandoned lot halfway between Deon’s house and mine and slid down to sit beneath it. The sun, which was meant to be the backdrop for my date, was nearly set, and I sat in silence while it crawled closer and closer to the horizon, eventually dipping behind it an hour or so later.
Deon never arrived, and the longer I sat beneath the tree—our tree—the less and less of the neighborhood I was able to make out. My green house blotted out from existence, turning into a shadow first, then just disappearing as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and cut it out of the picture. The old cars parked along the street started to disappear, darkening to voids, then just falling out of view. I sat up straight, and my stomach twisted into knots as I watched the houses, one by one, fade away. People who’d still been sitting on their stoops, watching the night sky and chatting with their neighbors, turned to dust before my eyes and blew off in a wind I couldn’t feel. Darkness surrounded me, an endless sea of nothingness, and I was alone apart from our tree.
“Deon?” I called out, but there was no response. “Deon?”
I stood up, and the second I pulled away from the tree, it, too, disappeared into the darkness, and I was left standing alone with nothing and no one.
“Deon!”
“Cherri!”
I sat straight up in my bed. I was shaking, and for a second, I was afraid I’d been taken to an unfamiliar place. I wasn’t in my ratty, old twin bed, but in a magnificent four-poster queen with a comfortable white down blanket draped over me. The sun spilled in through ceiling-to-floor windows with
