Read Descent07 - Paradise Damned for Free Online Page A

running for a very long time.
    “Why?”
    “I like to run,” she said.
    “You scared me. I thought you had left again, just when you got back.”
    “Again?” Elise echoed with a frown. Disjointed memories drifted together, clashing and crashing. They had just been eating breakfast together. Hadn’t they? Adam had brought her favorite meal to her: a piece of toast with strawberry jam, a piece of bacon, black coffee.
    Then how had it become morning again? Why had she been running? Why would she want to leave His side in the first place, even if it were only to exercise?
    A sense of unease crept over her.
    Something is wrong .
    His anger melted to sympathy.
    “You’re so confused,” Adam murmured, stroking a hand down her cheek, as though she were a dog to be petted. “Look at you. You haven’t gotten over the shock of coming back to me at all, have you? Well, it will all begin to fall into place soon. It will all make sense. We will be happy.” The last sentence was said firmly, as if to convince Himself as much as her.
    But Elise was already happy. She was home, at Motion and Dance, with the man that had saved her from… What?
    She pressed her fingers to her temples. The thoughts slipped from her skull as soon as she had them.
    “Everything will come together if you give it time,” He said soothingly.
    Elise shook her head again. “I don’t need time. I’m fine,” she said. “I’m fine .”
    “Yes, you are. Come. Let’s walk.”
    He led her outside the gate. Elise thought about protesting—she had just been running; she didn’t need to go outside again—but when they stepped through the white picket fence, it wasn’t the same jungle that she had been jogging through. Where the dirt path had been moments before, there was a street paved with white cobblestone.
    But the trail soon slipped from her memory, too, until she was certain that the cobblestone had always been there.
    “Where are we going?” Elise asked, entwining her fingers with His.
    “You will see,” He said.
    They walked down the road together, hand in hand. The ground was warm beneath her bare feet.
    The trees soon opened, revealing a city that she had somehow missed while jogging.
    Elise thought that she had never seen anything quite so beautiful before. The city was a place of marble arches and white gazebos. The buildings looked ancient, yet new.
    The jungle canopy was a shimmering ocean of green, heavy with ripe fruit; the perfume of citrus reached her on the breeze. Roofs peeked through the branches like river stones peeking from moss. There was a cliff to her right, and a waterfall misted over the side before being channeled through aqueducts around the Tree on the far end of the valley.
    The Tree itself was big enough to house another city, but even though Elise could almost summon faint memories of windows set into the trunk, she couldn’t make out any detail at that distance.
    The roads between Elise and the Tree were empty. There were no lights inside the gleaming temples, no sound of voices beyond the river’s whisper.
    Nothing lived in this city.
    Her jaw hung open as she stood on top of the hill to look down upon it. Her hands were locked tight on Adam’s arm.
    “You look surprised,” He said. “Have you already forgotten what it’s like here? You weren’t gone that long.”
    She glanced over her shoulder at the road that they had been traveling. Even though they had only seemed to walk for a few seconds, Motion and Dance was so far away. It looked so plain in comparison to the stone structures. It was just a brick box with rickety, wooden stairs on the side and a sign in front.
    “I feel…strange,” Elise said.
    Adam wasn’t listening. He walked down the road, and she felt empty the moment that his arm pulled away. He was the warmth and the sun.
    She hurried to follow. He gave her an indulgent smile that she felt rather than saw. “Where is everyone?” she asked.
    “Who?” Adam asked.
    Elise frowned as