RuNyx is a New York Times, USA Today and international bestselling author of romance. Her stories range across subgenres from dark contemporary to gothic to historical to fantasy and more, and are currently being translated into over 10 languages. Her pen name has a very special meaning to her. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, traveling, meditating, daydreaming, and most of all, procrastinating.
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To everyone who cannot find themselves in a world full of people. Being lost is a hard prologue, but a much beautiful story awaits you. Find the courage, and turn the page.
A uthor ’ s N ote
This is the fifth book in the Dark Verse series. Although the book deals with a new couple, there are characters and events from the previous books that heavily influence the plot in this. Reading the series in order (The Predator, The Reaper, The Emperor, The Finisher, in that order) is recommended for the best reading experience. This is NOT a standalone.
Please note that this book ends on a semi-cliffhanger, and the entire series will be wrapped up in the final book coming in 2022. More on that at the end.
If you have read the previous books, this one is the darkest of them. Truly, heed these trigger warnings. Being inside the head of these characters is a truly dark place to be in—one is borderline sociopathic/psychopathic and the other is intensely traumatized. This book includes graphic violence, foul language, and sexual content recommended only for 18+. Like a lot of sexual content. This might be the book I’ve written with most sex scenes. Sexual trauma is a part of this story, and so sex is also used in healing, and it works between these characters for development and growth.
Content warnings: This book contains scenes of light somnophilia, light breath play, light knife play, voyeurism, power play, light spanking, consensual non-consent, psychopathic behavior, stalking, blood, human trafficking, sexual slavery, sexual assault on a
minor, child abuse, skin trade, murder, arson, assassination, torture, rape, forced drug abuse, mentions of organ trade, mentions of suicide, suicide ideation, depressive episodes, post-traumatic stress disorder, Stockholm syndrome, BDSM .
If reading about any of these is in any way detrimental to your mental health, I sincerely urge you to pause.
If you continue with the book, I hope you enjoy the journey. Thank you.
B ook P l Aylist
Terrible Thing - AG
Play With Fire - Sam Tinnesz ft. Yatch Money
Gangsta - Kehlani
Guest Room - Echos
In Flames - Digital Daggers
I Want To - Rosenfeld
Devil’s Backbone - The Civil Wars
Devil’s Girl - Overnight ft. Melody Michalski
The Wolf in your Darkest Room - Matthew Mayfield
Dark In My Imagination - Of Verona
Light a Fire - Rachel Taylor
NFWMB - Hozier
Live Like Legends - Ruelle
Can’t Help Falling in Love (Dark Version) - Tommee Profitt
ft. Brooke
Heavy In Your Arms - Florence and The Machine
Arms - Christina Perri
Like Lovers Do - Hey Violet
Like U - Rosenfeld
Horns - Bryce Fox
Jekyll & Hyde - Bishop Briggs
Heaven - Julia Michaels
Not Your Baby - Cadmium
Rabbit Hole - Aviva
Play Dirty - Kevin McAllister ft. Sebell
Do It For Me - Rosenfeld
Castle of Glass (Acapella) - Linkin Park
Dark Nigths - Dorothy
Sanctified - Nine Inch Nails
Caught in the Fire - Klergy
Us vs. Them - Denmark + Winter
The Devil Within - Digital Daggers
Secret - Denmark + Winter
Mind Games - Sickick
Castle - Halsey
Vacant - Echos
Walk On Fire - RAIGN
Heavenly - Cigarettes After Sex
Let Me Out - Hidden Citizens
Darkside - Oshins feat. HAEL
25 - The Pretty Reckless
Pyrokinesis - 7Chariot
Toxic - 2WEI
Love and War - Fleurie
Heart Heart Head - Meg Myers
Daddy Issues - The Neighbourhood
I Wanna Be Your Slave - Måneskin
Dark Side - Ramsey
Fetish - Selena Gomez
OMG - Marian Hill
Blood + Water - Grandson
Saints - Echos
Trouble (Stripped) - Halsey
{ } x
Fire of Love - Jesse Jo Stark
Cherry - Lana Del Rey
Fallin’ - Sufle Ft. Gökcan Sanlıman
How Villains Are Made - Madalen Duke
Sick Thoughts - Lewis Blissett
Unholy - Hey Violet
Hurt Me Harder - ZOLITA
Middle of the Night - Elley Duhé
Battle Cry - Imagine Dragons
Arsonist’s Lullabye - Hozier
Blood on Your Hands - Veda
Animal - AG x MOONZ z
The Devil is a Gentleman - Merci Raines
Madness - Tribal Blood
Love into a Weapon - Madalen Duke
The Death of Peace of Mind - Bad Omens
I’m Losing Control - X-Ray Dog
Serial Killer - Moncrieff x Judge
See You Bleed - Ramsey
Real Boy - Lola Blanc
Flames - Tedy
Massacre - Kim Petras
Paint It Black - Hidden Citizens
Slave - Ramsey
One Way or Another - Until the Ribbon Breaks
Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby - Cigarettes After Sex
Lost in the Fire - The Weeknd ft. Gesaffelstein
This is War - Thirty Seconds to Mars
There’s a Hero in You - Tommee Profitt ft. Fleurie
Forever - Labrinth
Every Breath You Take - Chase Holfelder
{ } xi
Reflections - The Neighbourhood
Not Afraid Anymore - Halsey cover by Roniit I Wanna Be Yours - Arctic Monkeys
THE MOON
Alone. Silent. Locked in.
Hands around her knees.
Shivers wracked her slight frame.
Locks of hair hanging limp over her shoulders.
She took a deep breath in, resisting the urge to look around herself.
She’d been shoved in the little closet for hours, each hour becoming more and more unbearable.
The dark, which had been oppressing her little mind, gradually became familiar. The blackness that had been a stranger, now a new friend, enfolding her in its arms.
Her own arms relaxed as her legs folded, crisscrossing on the cold ground, and her fingers started playing.
Playing with the locks of her hair, over and over, again and again.
To see, she stopped trying to blink. She just breathed easy now. Three was her age. Locked in. Silent. Alone.
THE SHADOW
Fire.
Heat, warmth, and light.
Heat, destruction, and death.
The nature of fire had always fascinated him, the colors even more so. He liked watching the blue flickering in the heart of a blaze, turning into a yellow so white it could blind a man, deepening into oranges and reds like the sun setting over the sky.
Yeah, he liked fire. He always had.
He remembered the first time he had become fascinated by the flames. A boy in the orphanage with him constantly complained about burning under his skin all the time. The idea of it had fascinated him. Then he had seen the flames, colors searing into his vision. The rest of the world, the rest of the colors, never appeared quite right to him. The caretaker of the orphanage had said it was because he
had demon eyes, because he was a demon child. He had named him after death too.
Maybe he was, because that very week he had set the man alight and smiled as the sparks danced over his body, the sound of his screams the only irritant in the picture. He didn’t like it when they screamed. The noise fell sharply on his ears, tasted sour on his tongue. He didn’t understand why he could taste sounds, but it wasn’t pleasant with the screams. No, he rather enjoyed they be quiet while he came out of nowhere, the split-second look of something visceral on their faces before he mastered their death.
He hadn’t always understood what that look had been. Emotions escaped him. He saw them, and could recognize them afterward, but he didn’t understand what that terror felt like, or how the pain was experience. How others laughed and cried and empathized and he felt nothing.
Perhaps that was why she caught his attention. Maybe it was because she emoted more than he had ever seen anyone emote. Maybe it was the flame in her hair. Or maybe it was because she had bound them with something she couldn’t take back. Whatever it was, from the moment her fire had found his, her fate was sealed.
He sat in the shadows watching her.
The strobing lights in the auction club went over the stage, three women in translucent robes standing in the center. He didn’t look at the ones on the sides, his heterochromatic eyes on the one in the middle. He studied her, the way she blinked at her feet, her face dead to the world. The only sign of her life remained her hair, hair that had grabbed his attention since that first time.
He pretended to sip on his drink, wondering who there was going to die by his hands tonight. They all knew never to bid on her, a trail of bodies of her suitors sending a loud message. Yet, someone always
did. Someone always tempted their fates. And someone always died. Last time, it had been a sniper bullet through the brain, the poor shit’s blood splattering across her pale skin. This time, he’d make it more personal. Maybe douse them in gasoline while she watched.
As though feeling his gaze, she looked up. Her eyes swept the crowd of well-dressed men, going straight to the shadowed corners, knowing that’s where he stayed. He liked that.
He saw the moment she saw his silhouette, a mix of hatred and betrayal etched on her face for everyone to see. Her hands fisted at her sides. His obsession deepened.
Though she wasn’t a blaze yet, only an ember, she was his.
He watched her, intently focused on the nuances of her face.
One day, she would be an inferno, and he would be the devil who controlled it.
PART 1 ASHES
“Into this wild abyss, the wary fiend stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while.”
John Milton, Paradise Lost
CHAPTER
1
LYLA, 5 YEARS AGO
It was her first time in a sex club. Though she had heard about them, she knew many girls who were taken into them, she had somehow never found herself there.
And Moonflame was as upscale as it could get. Her buyer for the night, a gray-haired man with an expensive watch and a nice suit, held her waist as he led her down the corridor and into the wide open hall. It was dripping with luxury, from the chandeliers on the high ceilings to the velvety red couches to the gleaming wood. It was luxury she glimpsed in her darkest moments, only to return to nothingness.
Lyla watched people in various stages of undress sitting around the lounge areas, simply talking and sipping their drinks, some men and women wearing masks while some of the girls and boys remained bare-faced. It was a party for those who could afford it, and Lyla could feel the power pushing at her from all sides.
Swallowing down her nerves, unprepared, she followed the man as he guided her to a door at the other end of the luxurious hall. He had been a smart one—he hadn’t bid on her at the auction. Instead, he’d come straight to the complex she lived at and purchased her for a year, and Lyla was terrified because she didn’t like the sadistic look in his eyes, and she didn’t know if he even knew about her new contract. He usually just watched the auctions, so she didn’t know how he could know of a deal that went through during the day.
Dressed in a black gauzy chiffon dress that tied at her waist, without any underwear, she dreaded what was to come of the night as the gray-haired man led her into an auditorium of some kind. There was a stadium-like arena with couches on elevated levels at her back, people on them watching. But instead of an empty middle area, there were tall red walls lining it up, only one opening in the middle for entrance.
It was a maze.
Before she could even grasp the full sight, the monster at her side turned her to the audience, tugging her dress open so her breasts popped out to their lecherous gazes.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “Whoever catches my slave tonight gets a chance to play with her.”
Horror ripped into her, her eyes flying over the masked and unmasked people. They were sick. Every single one of them. So sick.
“No.” The word escaped her before she could control it, and she felt a large hand strike her cheek.
“You don’t speak, girl!”
Skin burning, she looked down at his feet, her brain warring with anger and pain and disgust, knowing she was helpless to stop this. The monster pulled her hands tightly behind her back, tying her wrists up with some kind of rope that abraded her skin.
“Run,” the monster slapped her burning cheek lightly. “Save yourself for a few minutes before we find you.”
Adrenaline filling her veins, she didn’t wait a moment before darting into the maze, escaping the eyes on everyone. The walls closed in around her, a head higher than she was, enough to keep her hidden from the watching eyes. She took a deep breath, looking both ways, before darting to her right and running full speed until she came to a dead end. Chest heaving, half her dress undone, she pivoted to the left, with no clue where she was going, just wanting to run and escape, but the powerlessness of knowing there was no escape made her eyes burn.
She hated them.
She hated every single one of them for making her feel inhuman. The tears stung her burning cheek, going down her jaw and falling, as she turned and ran.
She heard the laughter around her, heard some of the voices closer than they should have been, and the walls closed in on her even more. She couldn’t even stop and hide herself, knowing they could see her from their seats above, and god she wanted to kill them all, completely destroy them for treating her like this. She’d done nothing to deserve this. Nothing.
After a minute or an hour, she didn’t know, she turned left and came to a stop, looking at a little opening in the middle of the maze. From where she stood, she could see around the entire auditorium, and she realized she was in the dead center, in the visibility of others. There were five men on the couches above, one of them getting his dick sucked by a girl, two of them fucking a girl, the other two jerking each other off. A masked woman sat on another side, watching the scene and getting eaten out by a girl.
So many people watching her be helpless, and none of them willing to find a shred of humanity to help.
Two men emerged from the other end of the maze, their masks keeping their faces hidden, and she braced herself as they came toward her.
Heart in her throat, she watched as they grabbed her arms and dragged her to the middle of the room even as she struggled to get away, her struggles futile. Seconds passed, the men talking to each other in a foreign language, their hands tight on her biceps.
Defeated, she closed her eyes, and prepared herself to lose.
And suddenly she heard it.
Gasps and screams rang out in the air, and she opened her eyes, blinking, unable to understand why everyone who’d been watching seemed to be rushing out.
Her buyer, the gray-haired monster, sat on a couch, his throat slit open, red drenching his white shirt. Lyla watched, aghast, as the others ran out from an exit just as a blade flew and embedded itself into the neck of one of the men holding her. Something warm splattering on her breasts, the grip on her arms loosening, Lyla looked down at the blood on her body in shock. The other man holding her left and began to run, only to have a blade embedded in his back.
Terrified, filled with a deep-rooted instinct for survival, she jumped back into the maze, and pressed herself into the wall, running toward relative safety. Whoever had issues with her buyer, she didn’t want any part of it. Knowing she was visible from the elevated ground, she somehow managed to crouch and run, making herself as small as possible, her breaths heavy as her arms strained behind her back in the restraints.
Finding a corner away from the direct line of sight of the seating area, she straightened, catching her breath, her eyes wildly scanning for any danger.
And she felt a blade touch the nape of her neck.
Stilling, her body fraught with tension and her heart fraught with fear, she froze.
The blade traveled down the line of her spine, the sharp point just on the surface of the skin. A little pressure and it would rip her open. She closed her eyes, the sensation inducing fear and something else inside her, hoping against hope the killer didn’t torture her.
She felt a warm, tall body press into her front as the blade kept traveling over her back, and she clenched her eyes shut, her arms shaking.
A breath on the side of her neck, the scent of something familiar in her nose, and the voice of death in her ear.
“Eyes, flamma.”
Her eyes flew open, shock, something else filling her system as she tilted her head back.
Devilish, mismatched eyes locked with hers through a mask, and her breath caught.
He’d come.
He’d come for her.
He’d killed for her.
Lyla began to sob, intense, acute relief flooding her body.
As his blade ripped through the restraints holding her wrists, she launched herself into his chest, feeling his body freeze and she clung to him, her tears wetting his shirt, his scent ensconcing her, his warmth chasing the chill from her bones.
She felt one of his hands hold her wrists behind her—similar to the restraints but somehow she didn’t feel bound—the other hand coming to grip her jaw. His thumb traced her lips before tracking the tears on her cheek, his gaze watching her cry in something akin to fascination.
His lips came to her cheek, his tongue darting out to lick her tears, before he pulled back, watching her with such innate possession she felt it in her marrows.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she whispered in the space between their lips, her body overcome with the emotions she’d felt in the last few minutes.
His gaze intensified, and he leaned down, speaking right against her mouth, his words brushing her lips but barely, so close she felt them on her skin, a promise and the threat all in one sentence both claiming and capturing her.
“I’ll always come for you.”
CHAPTER 2
LYLA PRESENT DAY
The monster was going to die. She sighed inwardly, watching the middle-aged man old enough to be her father walking toward her in the auction room after winning his bid. The dark ambiance amplified by the strobes of light didn’t hide either his good looks or his dripping wealth. Well, he had to be wealthy to get a foot in the auction door, and his looks didn’t mean a thing. She’d been with worse. More importantly, she knew better than most how the worst monsters lurked beneath a pretty face. They came below to this hellhole to live out their most detestable fantasies, ripped and shredded and went back to their facades above of being upstanding, moral citizens with wives and families and picket fences. She hated those kind the most. It was easier to deal with a monster who was a monster upfront and not a snake in the grass. The man’s eyes took in her form on display in the translucent robe,
going from her neck down her ample breasts down to her waxed mound down to her painted toes, and even after so many times, she barely controlled her flinch at the lecherous perusal.
She knew why they bid on her. She was a rarity, an exotic natural redheaded delight in a sea of blondes and brunettes, and she was attractive. She brought in good fucking money at every bid, which was exactly why the organizers kept putting her up on the stage and the idiots kept risking their lives. They all thought they’d be the one to get away with it, blinded by their power and arrogance.
They were wrong. For six years, they had been wrong, every single one of them, and there were over a dozen corpses to speak for it.
Before she could fall into her thoughts, she schooled her expression to the one of serene calmness that her early handlers had taught her.
“You are soft, inviting. Look pretty, lower your chin, and stay silent.”
The man—she was calling him Fifteen in her head since he was the fifteenth man to buy her at the auction—stepped close to her, taking a lock of her long, wavy hair in his hands.
Oh, he shouldn’t have touched the hair.
She didn’t voice the thought.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked with a smooth grin, the lasciviousness in his eyes naked enough for her to know exactly what he was thinking.
“Lyla,” she spoke quietly, exactly at the volume she had been trained to talk at.
Every girl got trained in a way that suited their looks to make them seem most appealing. For Lyla, everything was supposed to be soft, docile, meek—her voice, her mannerisms, her demeanor. She had to give off sexy siren and sweet submissive vibes all at once.
