Page 66 of The Darkest Hour

Spirits bound to this deserted place. Their cries for justice and peace echoing through the trees and across the shore.

None of that brought me any comfort.

In fact, the very thought made my skin crawl.

Were they watching me now, the ghosts?

Those tiny restless souls?

I’m losing my mind.

Still, the world was full of mysteries, and the afterlife was no exception.

I remembered the tales my grandmother used to tell me, stories passed down through my family’s generations about spirits that roamed the earth, seeking closure, seeking peace. If these children had died in such a cruel and unjust way, wouldn't they have every reason to linger?

Their souls unable to rest?

A pang of sorrow for them hit me as well as a surge of anger toward the adult whose skeleton I had kicked into the ocean. That monster had deserved far worse than a watery grave. He had deserved to be haunted by the very children he had tormented.

But, what about me?

I looked at the grave.

Will this island be the place where I die?

One day in the future, would another person get shipwrecked here, find my bones, and dig me a grave too, wondering about what might have happened to my skeletal soul?

A sudden rustle sounded from the trees behind me.

My heart skipped a beat.

What is that?

I spun around, only to find Havoc standing there, with two cut-open coconuts in his hands. And. . .he didn’t look like he’d just walked up. Instead. . .it seemed like he’d been there for a while.

I tensed.

How long had he been quietly watching me?

Friends or Enemies?

Onyx

Havoc’s gaze was intense, dark pools that seemed to completely absorb me.

I couldn't read his expression—was it curiosity or something else entirely? I steadied my breath. “You scared me.”

He glanced at the grave I had just made. “You buried bones.”

“Three dead kids.”

“Do you know how they died?”

“I just know that their wrists were handcuffed and an adult set of bones was with them with a rotted out gun.”

“A scumbag trafficker making a delivery to one of these islands, as one would deliver pizza to a house on a Friday night.”

I frowned. “That’s what happens around here?”