“Chad!”
I don’t look back. Ican’t.
I burst through the shattered northeastern doors of the academy and into the forest. Branches tear at my new, hardenedskin, and I don’t even feel them. The roar of battle is replaced by the roar in my own blood.
This demon wants to possess her, to mark her, to make her writhe beneath me. Not gently. Not temporarily. It wants to carve the claim into flesh and soul.
Her touch—careless, human, warm—cracked something ancient open. A seal I didn’t even know was there.
Now it wants to finish the claim. It wants to take her apart with it.
Something fragile wouldn’t survive that. Something human definitely wouldn’t.
I plunge deeper into the dark, letting the trees swallow me, close around me. Every step away from her is a war. My pulse hammersturn back turn back turn backin time with my heart. Her scent still clings to me, sweet, alive, intoxicating.
But the need to protect her is the last command of a dying man.
And I obey.
Her name drifts through my consciousness, a ghost on the wind, then fractures, then dissolves?—
until there is only hunger.
Only rage.
Only the dark.
43
ESME
The darknessshatters and I gasp for air. I’m somehow on my knees, my palms flat against the cold, gritty floor of Merlin’s chamber. My fatigues are soaked through with a sweat so cold it feels like a layer of ice against my skin. My throat feels thick, heavy, like I've swallowed something that doesn't quite fit. When I try to swallow, the sensation intensifies—not painful, exactly, but present. Like something is lodged there, stubborn. Maybe I’ve been screaming for hours… or something spectral has been crushing my windpipe.
I see a glass of water on the floor beside me, and my collar is too wet—like someone poured water into my mouth while I was out.
“Good. You're awake.”
Warden Blythe's face swims into focus above me. She looks older than I remember, the lines around her eyes deeper, her mouth a grim slash. But there's something else in her expression too. Something that looks like triumph.
My head feels like a vortex of fractured images. A towering bookshelf of memories. My father’s smile trapped behind glass.The impossible gold of Dayn’s eyes. My grandmother’s rage. Then…
“What...” My voice comes out as a croak. “What happened?”
“You completed the trial,” Blythe says, but her tone is clipped, rushed. “That's all that matters now.”
The chamber trembles around us, a low, constant vibration that rattles my teeth. Through the stone, I hear roars, screams.
I try to get up, but my muscles feel disconnected, my bones filled with sand. Blythe’s hand closes around my wrist with surprising strength.
“It’s time,” she says.
“Time for what?” I'm still trying to piece together the shattered remnants of the trial. There was something important. Something I was supposed to remember. But it slips away like smoke every time I reach for it.
“To finish what you started.”
She hauls me upright, and I stumble, my legs weak and uncooperative. The chamber is different now—the candles burn with an eerie blue flame, and the runes carved into the floor pulse with a rhythm that seems to match my own heartbeat. Too fast. Too urgent.
And Merlin's tomb... the granite seems to breathe, the veins within it glowing with a light, ash-white edged in blue, that wasn't there before.
