Pain shot through his side before he knew what was happening. Claws sank deep into him, targeting the same lacerations it had given him earlier. His wounds that had been slowly healing when the Whisperer was distant enough for his magic to settle back in were torn open once more, wringing an agonized cry from his throat as the Whisperer threw him to the ground. Raising his dagger, Dominic plunged the knife deep into what he assumed was its shoulder. The thing screamed, writhing in pain. It scrambled away from him as he ripped the knife out of its skin with a wet squelching noise.
The Whisperer retreated far enough for Dominic to sense his magic again. A spark lit up in his hand, then shot to one of the sconces on the wall, illuminating the cavern. Still lying on his back, he released a breath, grateful for the light.
Adara’s screams pierced the silence. Dominic jolted up, head turning to see the Whisperer’s jagged teeth clenched around her right forearm. Her sword clattered to the ground, blood following it. She pounded her elbow against its face over and over again. Strong, deadly blows that bashed in its frail bones but did nothing to harm the ancient creature. It only clamped those sharp teeth harder around her arm and kicked her weaponacross the cavern. She groaned through gritted teeth. The muscles in her arm flexed, veins bulging as she wrapped a hand around its neck and squeezed as hard as she could, but it was to no avail. She scratched its face, fingernails tearing its thin skin that mended with every wound she made. Adara went for its eyes, trying to gouge them out with her left hand.
Her pained cry echoed through the cave as it wrenched its head away from Adara’s prying nails. Blood gushed from her arm, its jaw still firmly anchored around her limb. “Look at it!” Adara shouted. Crimson poured down her arm, dripping onto her boots. She couldn’t pull away, not without those fangs tearing through more muscle.
But even in her danger, Dominic couldn’t fathom why she would tell him to do such a thing. Did she think he was that stupid—to look at it and get himself killed? “Are youcrazy?” he yelled. Placing a hand on the wound at his side, he pressed firmly, stanching the blood as he stood on shaky legs.
“Look it in the eyes!” Her voice rose, gathering a sense of urgency. Panic no longer filled her words, but certainty. “I trusted you to lead me in here blind. Now, you have to trust me,” Adara urged when he didn’t reply.
Dominic stood there for a moment, hunched over with a hand to his side, all too aware of the warm blood slipping through his fingers. He didn’t want the rest of his blood to paint the walls like the Whisperer’s past victims. Adara wouldn’t lead him to his death, would she? She had no chance of forging the Realm Fracturer without him. No chance of gaining more power without his key.
They’d promised to protect each other—at least, until someone won their war of hearts. It sounded ridiculous to think that a war was the only thing keeping them from killing one another. Yet, it was the only thing that he could trust: their dire need for power.
“Fine,” Dominic finally replied. “But if I die—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll drag me down to Helfarrow with you. I’d probably be on my way shortly after,” Adara intervened.
He didn’t know how she sounded so calm saying that with the Whisperer’s fangs buried in her arm.
With her good hand, Adara grabbed the Whisperer’s jaw, angling herself so its face was toward Dominic, and jerked its head to the side. Teeth tearing from her flesh, she forced the creature to meet his gaze.
The Whisperer stared at him with one depthless, milky white eye. When his eyes met its one, Dominic realized their plan was doomed. Or rather, Adara’s was now. The Realm Fracturer could only be used once to tear through the fabric of the universe. Whether Adara knew this or not, he had no clue. He’d planned on taking both eyes, taking two of each relic so they could forge two Realm Fracturers—one for Adara and one for himself. With there only being one eye of the Whisperer, only one of them could use the Fracturing Sword.
Those thoughts tumbled into an abyss as that murky eye stared into his soul. White filled his vision, blinding and painful, until Dominic was staring at visions of his past, waiting for the moment the Whisperer would find his name and use it to kill him.
Chapter 15
Painful,all-consumingmemoriesthathad a scream ripping from his throat flashed through his mind. Dominic squeezed his eyes shut and crumpled to the floor, the chill of stone biting his knees. He had believed the Whisperer could see someone’s past and future, not force the victim to see it too. Yet Dominic was staring through the eyes of his eleven-year-old self, watching helplessly as his drunken father beat his older sister. Over and over and over again until she was a bruised, lifeless heap on the floor, and Dominic couldn’t scream anylonger. Blood. So much blood pooled beneath her broken body, staining the wooden floors, his hands. He lunged for her—
Saige’s body crumpled to ash in his hands, the old dilapidated cottage around him morphing into Andreilia’s shore.
Valen lay in the sand, black blood pooling beneath him. “Traitor!” Damon screamed in Dominic’s face, so loud and full of anguish that it rattled his bones. “You did this! We could have saved him!” Damon spat, pulling his cutlass from its scabbard. It was all he could do while the light faded from Valen’s eyes. When Dominic stepped closer, wishing to hold Valen in his dying breath, Damon lashed out with his weapon. Blood dribbled down the shallow slice on Dominic’s cheek. Damon screamed that word at him again and again and again.Traitor.Traitor. Traitor.
Squeezing his eyes closed against the tears pooling in them, Dominic pressed his hands to his ears, trying to block out Damon’s tortured screams, the sound of his loved ones’ breaths ceasing, the Whisperer’s taunting words.
Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
Damon and Valen faded away, and Dominic finally thought the torment was over. He stood in the middle of a grassy plain illuminated by the full moon that hung in the night sky above. Stars twinkled brightly overhead, illuminating a figure in the distance.
A beautiful girl stood surrounded by living shadows that strayed from her as if she were a beacon that would extinguish them. As if she were a flame that would drive away the dark. He suddenly recognized the long, silky brown hair cascading down the girl’s back in a braid. And when she turned, he met her gaze. Those eyes. How could he ever forget those piercing blue eyes that shimmered like dancing firelight? He hadn’t. Not entirely. Dominic knew there was something about Adara when he first met her. Always felt a calm sense of familiarity around her.
Because this was him staring at her, albeit younger. This was him knowing her in his past.
He took a step toward her. “A—” Her warning cut him off.
“Run!” she yelled. “Save yourself!” The shadows swallowed her, swallowed everything.
When the light returned, Dominic faced her again. Something was different this time—wrong. She stood before him, shoulders hunched, an invisible burden weighing her down. Usually, she carried herself with such arrogant swagger, eyes full of fierce confidence. None of that was there now. Her hands trembled at her sides. She balled them into fists to hide it. Even if he hadn’t seen her shaking hands, he’d have known something was wrong by looking at her. Clothes that usually hugged her lean, muscular figure hung limply on her, as if she’d fallen ill and had been starved for months. Sunken cheeks shadowed her face and dark circles stained the skin beneath her eyes.
If her body wasn’t any indicator that something was off, one look into her eyes was. The fiery blue gaze that usually burned so feral, so inhuman, had faded to a dull, lifeless blue. The thing that worried him most was how strongly he saw one single emotion flickering in her eyes. An emotion he rarely saw, as she always masked it with lethal tranquility. She did not have the strength to hide that emotion now.
Pure, undiluted terror.
He drew closer, realizing this was an event in the future, for he had never seen Adara like this. He needed to ask her what was wrong, but the words stuck in his throat.
“Dominic,” she practically sobbed, taking a step closer. She collapsed into his arms. He caught her against his chest. “Dom, I don’t want to—”
