“Music?” She chuckled. “We’re rebels on the run. We don’t get such luxuries.” Her grin stretched across her face as she stood from our spot by the campfire and held out a hand. “Dance with me.”
“As you wish.” I pulled her into my arms. The wind whistled through the trees surrounding our tent, blowing her mass of black curls over her shoulder. Her sleeve had slipped down her arm, and I couldn’t resist the urge to kiss her soft skin, my lips trailing up her shoulder and to the base of her neck.
Her head rested against my chest as we swayed to the sound of wind and leaves, buzzing insects and the distant river lapping at its banks. “Where are we going after this?” she asked softly.
I swallowed, thinking of Scarven’s anger if he discovered what I’d done. The lengths he might go to in order to get me back.
“I don’t know.” I leaned away, cupping her face in my hands. “But I promise you, Sage, it will be a better life than the one we left behind.”
She blinked once, long lashes brushing against dark cheeks. “I love you, Nox.”
“I love you, darling.”
I bent to kiss her. When my lips met hers, I tasted something salty. Metallic.
The vision wavered. Her skin went ashen, and crimson blood pooled at the corner of her mouth. She choked and inhaled sharply, eyes filling with dread. I let out a strangled yell at the blood coating my hands.
A slit appeared at her neck, long and gaping. She collapsed in my arms as we both fell to the ground.
“Sage! Sage—no—” I cried out, struggling to keep her in my grasp. Everything was covered in blood.
I scrambled back on my knees with shaking gasps and clutched my hair in my bloody hands. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t have found us so quickly.
In the blink of an eye, the scene changed. Our moonlit campsite was replaced by sunny cliffs overlooking the Sea of Scarab. Ahead of me at the edge of the cliffs stood two figures I recognized in a heartbeat.
Mother twirled Vera in a circle, my sister’s high-pitched giggles breaking the quiet air. They both shared the same blonde hair as me, but Vera’s held a hint of rust.
“Noxy! Come play!” my little sister called, her voice rising above the waves crashing below.
My heart lurched in my chest. I stepped forward, reaching out to touch them. I hadn’t seen them in five years. I was so close?—
The cliffside began to shake. Rocks dislodged and crumbled into the sea below. With my next breath, my family disappeared.
I glanced around in a panic, then ran to the edge of the drop-off, my pulse pounding in my ears. When I blinked, I saw my father flying off the cliff.
I shouted for him, lunging forward as his body fell into thin air, his hand outstretched as if to grab mine. Before I could shift and catch him, the scene changed once more.
My body slammed into metal bars.
The sunlight vanished, and I was staring at familiar cold, dark walls, with the sound of water dripping from cracks in the ceiling. But this time, it wasn’t me inside the cell.
I glanced up to find my sister—no longerthe bright, giggling five-year-old but a hardened teenager. She looked like she did the last time I saw her, when she was almost sixteen. Her cheeks were pale and gaunt, those golden eyes now lifeless and dull. Her dirty-blonde hair was tangled and matted, mixed with so much dirt and sweat that it appeared brown. My stomach hollowed when I saw how emaciated she was—her arms and legs were practically skeletons, the bones jutting out as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.
I reached through the cell bars to grab her hand when the shadow of a lion formed on the floor before me.
A dark chuckle echoed off the walls. “Hello, brother.”
My eyes burst open with a gasp as I sat upright in bed, my fingers already shifted into talons. Moonlight from the window dripped off my claws, sharp as steel. Chest heaving, I took several deep breaths to calm my racing heart. I couldn’t stop the tremor in my arms. The panic from seeing all of them was sorealand visceral.
I hadn’t dreamed of Sage in years. She had died a decade ago, after Scarven caught us trying to leave Drakorum. He’d given me a small taste of freedom, a blessed reprieve after nine years in his house, and I bolted the first chance I got.
It was all a test. He knew I’d run. And he made sure I paid for it.
Sage was a girl I’d met in captivity, an orphan they’d found on the streets of Drakorum and snatched up in one of their first batch of test subjects. She kept her radiance and light even when Scarven’s men did everything in their power to dim her. My first love—myonlylove. The girl I’d given everything for.
He made me watch when he killed her.
“The price,” he said, “for thinking you could be rid of me.”
