The man's soulless black eyes glare into mine, promising pain and death.

Trembling, with muscles gripped in fear, I cower against the headboard of my bed. I can smell his foul breath, but there is no heat coming from his skin when his dirt-encrusted nails snag on my clothes and his arm brushes against the exposed skin of my leg.

I feel no fear, joy, sadness or any other human emotion coming from the monster clawing his way over the edge of the bed and onto the mattress. He struggles towards me, slithering over the tangled bedding, tearing strips from my nightgown each time he tries to grab me.

His world consists only of anger and an insatiable hunger.

I scream in pain as his nails find the skin of my shin, cutting deep into it. The pain jolts me into action, and I try to twist away out of his reach, but his nails have me trapped, tearing into my flesh. Desperate to free myself from his grasp, I kick out at him, but the angle is all wrong, and he has me cornered with no escape. He is too strong to fight off and adjusts his biting nails to pull me towards him.

I scream again when his head disappears in a spray of blood splattering over my face and colouring the silky drapes surrounding the bed in crimson. I gasp in horror when the mist of blood clears, and it's Ransford's blood-streaked face I'm suddenly staring into. He hovers over me, bracing himself on his hands on either side of my body, caging me between his powerful arms. His lips part as his black eyes burn into mine, and I shrink away from his sharp, blood-dripping fangs, terror filling my body with numbing toxins.

"Aubrey," he says in a broken voice, and my eyes fly open, my petrified body lying rigid as the dream dissolves to show me the beautiful ceiling high above me.

I woke up! It was all a dream!

It takes me a few seconds to relax enough for the blood to flow back into my extremities, allowing me to move my limbs. Along with the ability to breathe comes the ability to focus my eyes, and I realise that the grapevine pattern on the ceiling is not what I normally see when I wake up in my bed.

The ceiling of my room in London was featureless and much lower, and the one where I'd slept for the last week or so in Slatherty Manor hid behind a silky canopy. The bed I was given in the mansion is a vast space filled with a comfortable mattress, pillows and cushions. It is not a narrow hospital bed like the one I'm currently lying on.

Where am I?

I push myself up to sit, groggily looking at the IV stand beside my bed, where an empty sack indicates that it was probably used on me at some point. I close my eyes against waves of dizziness and nausea and lie down again, trying to make sense of my current situation.

The last thing I remember is lounging in Alaric's lap while Liam took my blood pressure. That clear memory brings others with it, and I shiver, dread and misery clogging my throat as reality settles in my heart, pushing out any hope that all of it had been a nasty dream like the one I just woke up from. I feel alone and cut off, terrified of what might lie in wait in the dusk beyond my bed.

Where is Alaric?

Liam brought me to this island... The knowledge breaks my heart. I trusted him almost more than I trusted Alaric and Billy. I've felt an increasing kinship with him; he seemed to understand me better than anybody I've ever known. He'd been so kind and gentle and earnest that I've fallen more than a little bit in love with him in some ways. He was my ally and well on the way to becoming a close friend. He was the one person in the mansion I truly felt I could rely on.

His betrayal stings and makes me feel utterly alone. If I cannot trust him, could I trust Billy? Is he false too? That thought hurts even more because I undoubtedly am in love with Billy Doyle. My feelings for him are pure and sweet and very different from what I feel for any of the men I'm considered bound to.

I struggle to believe that Liam was the one who ripped me from my normal life and dropped me into this sea of deception and danger where soulless creatures want to eat me and where nothing makes sense anymore. Was it he who bound me to all the Slatherty men?

Ransford...

I cannot even think about Ransford. Thinking about him conjures up memories of fangs, black eyes and spraying blood. My mind refuses to accept any of it. How could I forget that Alaric told me about the curse a few days ago?! I didn't fully understand what exactly he meant, though. Not until now. I didn't know the curse involved fangs, violence, and scary power.

No, I did know...

Deaglan tried to kill me. I saw his fangs, and I saw Alaric's too. It just didn't find a home in my mind. It made no sense, and my brain rejected it. I forgot all about it because I didn't want to know horrible, unrealistic things like that.

Liam said I'm the one who makes myself forget. Can I believe him? Can I believe anything he's ever said to me? Besides, how would I even be able to do that?

I'm remembering many things now, though.

Ransford was nothing like those monsters that tried to grab me in the woods. He is anything but soulless. When he doesn't guard them, his emotions enter the door before him and fill every fibre of my being until they saturate me. His heart is so full he might explode if he doesn't find a good outlet for his mental pain.

Love, heartache, hate, anger, and joy are all bundled together inside him, mixing into a thick broth of confusing and conflicting feelings. Love rules over them all, standing head and shoulders above all the other thoughts and emotions, with sorrow a close second. That love might be the one thing that keeps him sane.

I need to talk to him.

No! I cringe away from the idea of facing him. He terrifies me now, whether it is reasonable or not. What I need is to get out of here. I need to leave the Slatherties and their curse far behind me. Liam lied to me; he brought me into this. I could tell that Alaric was angry at him. He clearly had no idea, which is strange because he knows what others think and feel.

Or is it only me he reads like a comic strip?

I cannot read them unless they let me, and Liam is very closed off regarding his thoughts and feelings. Perhaps there are ways to block others from hearing my thoughts. Whenever I'm in Alaric's arms, he isolates us from the world. He becomes the calm eye of the storm. A safe haven for me to hide in.

"You were right to bring her here," he'd finally said to Liam after an argument I struggled to follow as sleep kept trying to take me. I was battling to keep my eyes open and my brain alert to follow their words while I constantly faded in and out of consciousness. "We've often debated it, and I always disagreed because I was desperate for her to have a normal life. I now see that I was being idealistic and unwise. Though I'm angry that you did this without my knowledge, I understand where you came from. Given her blood, this is the safest place for Aubrey to be. We should've brought her here long ago."

Those were the last words I heard before sleep finally conquered me, and now I'm here... wherever 'here' is.

Taking a deep breath, I sit up again, and I'm more successful this time, and manage to turn and sit on the edge of the bed with my feet almost touching the floor. Through the gloom, I see a glass of water standing on the nightstand, and I thirstily reach for it to rinse the dryness from my mouth and throat. The cool water is refreshing as it flows over my tongue, and once the glass is drained, I set it down, surprised when my fingers brush against small objects lying on the wooden surface.

My eyes are starting to grow accustomed to the low light, and outside, the sun is slowly rising, helping my vision by sending some pale first rays to break through the cloud cover and enter the room through gaps in the roughly drawn curtains. It traces the outlines of scant furniture in the featureless hospital-like room and sparks a faint glint of green in what I recognise as the emerald ring I wore yesterday. Lying beside the betrothal ring is a crude little bronze ring I cannot place at first.

Curiously picking it up, I lay it on my palm, bringing it closer to my face to make out the carvings on its surface. My throat closes up with dread when I suddenly realise what I'm holding in my hand. Yesterday - if it were yesterday and I didn't sleep for many days again - I grabbed Rach's necklace when I fell.

I vaguely recall struggling to open my cramped hands after the attack; all my muscles were tense like stones in my body, and I was barely able to open my right hand and use it. I kept my left hand in a fist, tucked against my body as if I could find comfort from it. This ring was on the delicate chain around Rach's neck; it must've become trapped in my hand.

Whoever bathed me and dressed me in the soft flannel nightgown I wear must've taken it from my hand and placed it there, thinking it belonged to me. I don't want to think about who washed and dressed me; that is a topic for when I feel more like myself. Right now, I have something more important to focus on...

This is Rach's ring!

Will he come for it? The thought disturbs me. I should throw it as far away from me as I can, but curiosity has always been my biggest weakness, and instead of tossing the ring, I take it between the tips of two fingers and hold it up to the weak, watery light glistening on the ring's rough surface.

Frowning, I run a fingertip over the carvings on one side of the ring, trying to figure out what it is. The craftsmanship was amateurish at best, and the ring has seen its share of wear and tear, making the pattern even less clear.

Slipping the ring onto a finger - the way it would be worn - might make it clearer, as I'll have the perspective right. Though a little tight, it slides quite easily onto my left-hand ring finger, taking the place of the betrothal ring I wore yesterday. I'll need soap to get it off again, though.

One moment, I'm gazing at the ring on my finger, squinting at the carvings, and the next, it feels like I'm hit by lightning flashing brightly in my head. At first, I'm sure I was shot or burst a vein in my brain, or something equally horrible happened. I'm not in pain, though; I'm just gasping for breath, falling backwards onto the mattress, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

The blinding white light dissipates, fading away until I can see trees and flowers around me. A sheepdog puppy is yapping near me, playing chase with a pretty calico cat. Back and forth they go, taking turns to be the one doing the chasing. The air smells fresh after the light rain earlier. It is sweet with jasmine and lily-of-the-valley, and I can clearly feel the short grass poking at my toes through the perforated pattern on my favourite Sunday shoes.

I feel almost pretty in my special yellow dress with the tiny white and pink flowers and a flowy skirt... at least, I used to. I'm uncertain today, thinking I'll never be as pretty as the other girls I know. I'll always be dorky and awkward with unruly hair and no breasts, despite my mother assuring me that it's quite normal to be flat-chested at 11 years old, but I'll be 12 soon...

However, those aren't my toes being poked by grass, and the pretty shoes don't belong to me. This is not my memory. I'm lying on the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling where grapevines that look carved in cream form lovely squares. I have no idea how I'm feeling the breeze against my skin, hearing the birds chirping in the trees, and the pets playing with each other. While I'm lying on the firm mattress and aware that I am doing so, I'm also standing at the same well where I stood with Billy... was it only yesterday?

What is happening to me?!

Every detail of this living vision is as clear as if I'm there and I'm the one experiencing it. The emotions I feel are as real as my own while I look up at 13-year-old Billy Doyle's bright blue eyes and his thatch of messy red hair, much redder than it is now.

I'm upset with him... no, not me... the girl in the vision is upset with him.

"Ahhh, g'wan, Muir," Billy says, tilting his head, looking like a scolded puppy. "Ye canno' still be mad at me? 'Tis been over a week. I said I'm sorry too many times already. Won't ye forgive me now? Ye're me best friend."

Why am I experiencing another one of Muireann Sullivan's memories?!

She looks down at her hands, where I can see three fat, red strawberries nestling together, their fragrance hanging enticingly in the air, promising sweetness. Billy gave her those strawberries in an attempt to make up. He often brings her the best fruit he can find, and then she makes him his favourite onion omelette with lots of cheese in it. He always says that her omelettes are the best in the world.

Muir doubts that he's tasted all that many omelettes from other people, but the compliment still warms her heart, making her feel giddy whenever he says it. Still, if he brought her strawberries to bribe her so she would not be mad at him anymore and cook for him, he could just go make it himself.

He is wrong. Muireann is not angry at him. She is deeply hurt by what he'd said to her.

"I'm yer best friend now, am I?" she scoffs, glaring at him, clenching her free hand to stop herself from crying. "I thought Callum was yer best mate."

"To be sure, to be sure," Billy agrees since he cannot argue with facts. He hangs out with Callum every chance he gets, doing all kinds of crazy things Muireann would rather not be a part of. Some things boys should just do by themselves without traumatising their female friends by making them witness their attempts to self-destruct. "I'm best mates with all five yer brothers, but aye, Callum is me anam cara... but it's different."

"Oh! I'll say!" Muireann snaps, giving a cute little snort. "Ye would never tell him that he cannot marry yer sister because he's too skinny and ugly and smells bad."

"Naw, I would never say that," Billy agrees, laughing at the ludicrous suggestion. "Callum is a savage beast with more muscles than even Conor. He's not skinny at all at all. I'm not sure about the rest, but all the cailíní seem to like him a lot, so he canno' be all that ugly. I don't generally go around smellin' him, so..." he shrugs, and he's right; girls are always trying to catch Callum's eye. They're always trying to catch Billy's eye too, but he is usually too busy being an idiot to notice.

"I was lyin'," he mutters, rubbing his hand over the back of his head, looking almost shy now. "Ye must know that."

"Must I?" Muir isn't even entirely sure what he is referring to right now. Are they even talking about the same incident? Billy doesn't generally lie to her. She trusts him most of all the boys she knows... even more than her five brothers.

"Aye, I was lyin' when I said ye canno' marry Conor because yer skinny and ugly and smell bad," he tells her, causing her frown to grow deeper. The last thing she wanted was to hear him say those words again. It broke her heart the last time he'd said that to her, and he had a bit of a brawl with Callum while she fled to her room. "Yer the prettiest of all the feeks on the island, Muir, but ye already know that."

Muir's heart flutters in surprise, happy to hear Billy call her pretty. "I know nothing of the sort, Billy Doyle," she hisses, flattered by his words but mostly confused about what is happening now. She is definitely never referred to as a feek as she is not pretty by any standard, at least not by any standard she uses to determine beauty. As far as Muireann is concerned, she is quite plain. She only feels marginally pretty when she wears this special Sunday dress to church.

For almost her entire life, Billy had been just another brother to her, always hanging out with her siblings, but recently, looking at him started to make her heart beat faster. She suddenly began to notice just how blue his eyes were and how strong his arms had gotten. She increasingly felt like an awkward mouse in his presence.

A few days ago, Billy and Callum were playing a console game in the living room where Merry was reading. He agreed with her brother's idle remark that Sarah McKenna was turning into a beauty, and something inside Muir boiled over. Before she could stop herself, she started talking nonsense about marrying Billy's older brother, Conor, when she grew up. It wasn't even relevant to their discussion, and she'd been mortified to hear her own words. That was when Billy told her she was too skinny, ugly and smelly to marry his brother, and Callum punched him for making her cry.

Billy seemed really angry that she could dare think of doing that to his precious brother.

"Well, I'm tellin' ye now," he states, digging in the back pocket of his cut-off jeans. "Ye canno' marry Conor when ye grow up because yer marryin' me."

What?!

Muireann gasps, her heart racing and her eyes widening when he pulls his hand from his pocket, grabs her free hand and shoves something into it, closing her fist around it.

"Besides, Con will be marryin' Moira one day. How can ye be stealin' yer best friend's man?" he asks, his eyes boring into hers while he still holds onto her hand, stopping her from opening it to see what he put in there. He's blushing wildly, and the sight always causes Muir to giggle happily, but not right now. She is too confused by his behaviour to laugh.

She is fully aware that Moira is Conor's mot. The two of them have been inseparable for the last two years. Moira is a little more than a year older than Muireann and the closest thing to a sister the girl has ever had. They share all their secrets with each other and often spend time planning Moira's future wedding to 15-year-old Conor Doyle. Muir's best friend cannot wait to be old enough to marry the love of her life.

"18!" she's always saying. "That's old enough for me. Con will be almost 20 by then... that is practically an oul fella. I don't want to marry an oul fella, I tell ya! Besides, he needs me by his side, or he'll turn into a ruffian. How can a ruffian be the father of me children?"

In Muir's opinion, Conor was already a ruffian... at least when it came to dealing with his brother and his mates. In truth, they are all a bunch of wild animals. The only time Billy isn't doing something rash and irresponsible is when he sleeps beside her in the grass while she sits, reading under her favourite tree.

Those moments have become her favourite.

She tries again to yank her fist free of his hand, and he finally lets her, looking extremely uncomfortable, while she uncurls her fingers and frowns at the object he'd placed in her palm. It resembles a slice of an old, thin copper pipe, smoothed and buffed to a shine.

"What is this?" she asks, giving Billy a baffled look while his face grows an even deeper scarlet.

"Are ye blind, Muir? Can't ye see 'tis a ring?" he asks a little testily. "I made it for ye in the shop class at school."

"Ye made me a ring?" she gasps, certain she must've heard him wrong.

"Aye," he huffs. "I know me skills on the lathe are still rough, but... Ah, shite, if ye don't want it..."

"No!" Muir exclaims, closing her hand over the ring and holding it to her chest where her heart is galloping like a happy foal when he tries to take it. "Ye canno' have it back! Of course, I want it."

Was he just jealous when he said those horrible things to her?

Billy's smile returns, melting Muir's heart, clearing it of all the hurt she'd been carrying with her for almost a week. She finally gives him her first tentative smile, not quite sure he's not pulling some kind of cruel prank on her. Billy's been quite uncharacteristically mean recently, running away from her, teasing her... and then there was the thing he said about her wedding plans with his brother.

She hates it when he's mean because, despite his roughness and lack of tact, Billy has an extremely kind soul. He found the cat - now playing with the sleepy puppy's ears - alone and malnourished in the forest and gave it to her, and he often carries Muireann on his back when she gets tired walking home from school, even when her brothers tease him about it... mostly because he won't let them carry her instead.

"What are these carvings?" she asks him, trying to find a finger on which the ring will fit. It is too wide for most of them, but it finally stays on her thumb. She could wear it there or on a cord around her neck until she grows into it.

"It's our initials," he grumbles, glaring at her, and now she battles not to laugh at his forlorn expression, making him look even more like an imp than usual. "The tools kept slippin' when I engraved the ring, but it's supposed to be this," he explains, plucking his ever-present multitool from his pocket. Among all the screwdrivers and other things useful to farm boys, it has a sturdy, short blade. Muir watches with sparkling eyes while he uses it to carve an equally rough 'BD ♥ MS' into a section of the intact stone border of the ancient, filled-up well in her family's backyard.

When he turns to look at her again, she smiles widely and takes a big bite from one of the juicy strawberries he stole for her from his mother's small patch.

"I'll always love ye, Muir. Even if ye are an eejit!" he says, causing her heart to flutter joyfully. 

She can see in his eyes that he's not teasing her right now. Billy only gets this specific look on his face when he is dead serious. Usually, when he tells Callum his fantastical theories on how aeroplanes stay in the air and why steel boats don't sink and other engineering wonders. His lectures often end in him tickling Muir when she inevitably starts to laugh. Billy has a brilliant mind, but he enjoys veering off into pure fiction with all the earnestness of an inspired scientist.

"I love ye too, Billy Doyle," she grins, handing him one of her treasured strawberries. "Even if ye are a complete melter."

The vision - or whatever it was - dissolves as suddenly as it hit me, leaving me breathless with tears running down the sides of my face and into my hair. Muireann loved Billy so much, and for a moment, her feelings were intimately woven with my own and virtually impossible to extricate. The residue of the memory associated with the ring on my finger cuts deeply into my heart.

The day the Sullivan family's house burned to the ground, Billy not only lost the love of his life, but he also lost five of his best friends, one of them closer to him even than the brother he adores. I now feel worse about dragging him out there, making him relive the day he gave Muireann this ring. I need to keep it safe and return it to him as soon as possible.

Why did Rach have it?

The possibilities scare me, as they all range in the area of arson, murder and other horrors. Surely the family wasn't murdered, and Rach had something to do with it?! The bonding ceremony that caused me to be linked with every Slatherty male is messing with my sense of what is true because the idea of Rach having a hand in the death of an entire family hurts me deeply, and I refuse to accept it.

Perhaps he picked it up somewhere or found it in the ashes and thought it was pretty.

When my heart finally slows to a normal beat, and my tears stop flowing as the heartache ebbs away, I can function in the real world again. I wipe the residual tears from my eyes and sit up, startled when I realise the sun is fully up, bathing the room in a golden glow. The fact that I'd been out of it for such a long time is not the only shocking piece of information I'm met with.

I'm not alone in the room.

~~~