To Marry A Monster (by Brey Mitchell) novel Chapter 187

Chapter 187

ATASHA’S POV

“No,” I hissed under my breath. “How could he be corrupted? How?”

I didn’t wait for Kaelith to explain. I didn’t have the strength to listen as I pressed both palms harder against Cassian’s chest and pushed everything I had into him. Every bit of warmth. Every last thread of healing. Every breath I could spare.

My vision started to blur almost immediately. The courtyard tilted at the edges. My head felt light, too light, as if something inside me had been scooped out and thrown into the snow. My fingers trembled so badly I could barely keep them on his

skin.

“Stay with me,” I whispered, though even I could barely hear my own voice. “Cassian, please. Stay.”

The dizziness grew sharper and pulled at me like a rope tied around my throat. My sight dimmed. My knees wobbled. A cold heaviness crept up my arms, slow at first and then fast enough to make my stomach twist.

I was going to pass out.

I could feel it. The darkness at the edge of my vision pushed closer with every heartbeat Cassian lost.

Then suddenly, something changed.

My ability slipped deeper into him. It was so fast I jerked forward, my breath catching as if I had fallen through a hole I didn’t know was there. It didn’t slide across the surface of the corruption this time. It cut through it. It went past it. It reached something inside him I hadn’t been able to touch before.

My body reacted on instinct. I gasped and tried to pull back, but I couldn’t. Something in him grabbed onto me, not physically, but through that thin thread of healing I had forced into his body.

Kaelith stepped forward sharply when he felt it. I saw his eyes widen as if someone had hit him across the face.

“Impossible!” he snapped, voice cracking in shock. “How is this possible?”

I didn’t get the chance to ask what he meant as the darkness pulled faster.

My muscles gave out before I could resist, and the last thing I felt was my hand slipping from Cassian’s chest as the ground rushed up to meet me.

There was no impact beneath me, no cold snow catching my body, no distant sound of fighting, and no air biting at my skin.

Everything I had been holding onto, Cassian’s voice, the courtyard, the blood on the snow, disappeared all at once. I was falling, and the drop felt endless, as if gravity had forgotten to stop pulling me down.

I had no sense of time in that place. I didn’t know if I had been falling for seconds or hours when something finally brushed against my ankle.

It wasn’t a strike or a violent pull. It felt like fingers closing around me in a slow, deliberate grip, as if someone had reached into the dark only to check if I was really there.

I tried to pull my foot away, but nothing in my body responded. My legs hung motionless. My arms stayed fixed at my sides. Even my voice refused to rise from my throat. I hung suspended in whatever this place was, held still by something I couldn’t see.

Then, the hand disappeared just as quietly as it had appeared.

Suddenly, a sound broke through the darkness. A single drop hit what sounded like a distant surface, clear enough that it cut through the silence like a blade. Another drop followed it. Then another, each one heavier than the last, as if the air around me had begun to thicken

I tried to take a breath, needing to fill my lungs just to steady myself, but the moment I did, something cold pushed down my throat. It wasn’t air. It was thicker, heavier, and it slid deeper into my chest before I could stop it.

I knew the feeling immediately. Water. It moved into my lungs too fast, filling them before I could force any of it back out. My chest tried to contract. My ribs strained to expand. But nothing worked. I tried again to move my arms and legs, to turn my head, to scream for help, but everything stayed locked in place while the water kept rising.

My pulse hammered in my ears. Every instinct screamed at me to fight, to thrash, to claw out of whatever this was, but my body wouldn’t move. I choked inside the darkness.

I tried again to move my hands, but nothing responded. The water seemed to lock every joint in my body, filling spaces where breath should have been and turning them into dead weight. My lungs strained against the pressure building inside them, and a dull ache spread across my ribs as if the water was forcing them inward. Even my heartbeat slowed beneath the heaviness flooding through me, each thump weaker than the last.

The water kept rising.

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