Dangerous Dream: A Beautiful Creatures Story(14)

I always knew my incarceration in the sanitarium that my Uncle Macon called Ravenwood Manor was a temporary pit stop on the way to bigger and better, my two favorite words. Actually, that’s a lie.

My two favorite words are my name, Ridley Duchannes.

Why wouldn’t they be?

Sure, Lena gets all the credit, being the most powerful Caster of all time—aka Queen of Perfectland. It doesn’t make me any less excellent. Neither does her too-good-to-be-true Mortal boyfriend, Ethan “the Wayward” Wate, who, like, defeats Darkness in the name of true love every day of the week.

There’s a shocker.

They should have their own Caster talk show. They could cohost interventions and turn Dark hearts to good instead of evil, and they’d be every bit as popular as Oprah.

And that gag-fest is why my name is my favorite two words in the whole language.

So what?

I was never going for perfect. I think that should be clear by now.

Crystal.

I’ve done my part, played the game, even thrown in my hand when I had to. I’ve bet what I didn’t have and bluffed until I had it. Link once said, Ridley Duchannes is always playing a game. I never told him, but he was right.

What’s so bad about that? I always knew I’d rather play than watch from the sidelines.

Except once.

There was one game I regretted. At least, one that I regretted losing. And one Dark Caster I regretted losing to.

Lennox Gates.

Two markers.

That’s all I owed him, and it was enough to change everything. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Everything started long before that, with a pair of gardening shears stuck halfway through an Incubus’ chest. There were blood debts to be paid—though this time it wasn’t up to a Caster or a Mortal to pay them.

Ethan and Lena? Liv and John? Macon and Marian? Whatever. This wasn’t about them anymore.

This was about us.

I should’ve known we wouldn’t get off easy. No Caster goes down without a fight, even when you think the fight is over. No Caster lets you ride off into the sunset on some lame white unicorn or in your boyfriend’s beat-up excuse for a car.

What’s a Caster fairy-tale ending?

I don’t know, because Casters don’t get to have fairy tales—especially not Dark Casters. Forget the sunset. I’ll tell you how the whole castle burned to the ground, taking Prince Charming down with it.

I’ll tell you how to turn that prince into a frog and spin a little gold into straw—just in time for the Seven Dwarfs to go all ninja and drop-kick your butt straight out of the kingdom.

That’s what a Dark Caster fairy tale looks like.

What can I say? Payback’s a bitch.

But here’s the thing:

So am I.