“Is love a weakness to you?”
Kazh looks down her nose at me. “Loving the wrong person is.”
I press my lips into a thin line and nod again.
“When it’s time to face your weakness, remember the destruction that will follow if you give in to it.”
She grunts, taps her cane on the ground once, turns around, and walks away without saying another word to me. As I watchher disappear inside Vera’s studio, eerie calm settles in my bones.
Any moment now my life will change forever.
The snake tattoo starts to burn.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
PHOENIX
When I open my eyes, pitch-black darkness welcomes me.
My heart flutters in my chest, and my throat is so dry I can’t even swallow. I grab my throat and cough, trying to ease the discomfort. After blinking a few times, I realize I can’t see a single thing.
My lungs seize as panic grips me. Once again, I’m back in that room where time and the world don’t exist, with the presence of Lorca. A light chuckle echoes at the back of my mind.
How can that be? I passed the second trial.
I flex my hands and move my feet. Okay. All my limbs are intact. I’m alive. I can move. I try to sit down. The moment I pull myself up into a seated position, a splitting headache threatens to tear my mind apart.
“Fuck,” I curse, rubbing my right temple where it hurts the most. The curse comes out more like a croak because my throat is dry as a Wetran desert. I cough again.
The longer I sit there in the darkness, the more my eyes adjust to it. Finally, I start making out the shapes of stone wallsaround me. At least I know I’m not in a spirit world. I’m inside of a…cave of some sort.
“What the fuck,” I breathe.
I’m so confused. The last thing I remember was going to bed in my bedroom at Vera’s studio. How did I get here? And where for the love of the gods am I?
Slowly, I get on my feet. I almost lose my balance because my head spins. I feel as if I have been?—
Drugged.
Nothing makes sense. We had dinner at Vera’s place with her crew. All of them ate the same food and drank the same drinks as I?—
Oh dear gods. What if Daegel found a way to harm Vera and this is some sort of twisted torture chamber I’m stuck in?
I’m too lightheaded. I lean my back against one of the stone walls, breathing heavily. It’s damp here, and the air is musty.Shit, shit, shit.I need to find my way out of here. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Are you here?I ask, hoping the trickster god didn’t leave me just yet. I can’t feel their presence.
Yes, Phoenix Wildarrow. Always.
Well, that’s definitely not a comforting thought. But that’s a problem for another time.
Do you know where I am?
I do,they purr. Iknow everything.
Tell me,I say.
Everything?The trickster god chuckles.The whole eternity might not be enough for a conversation like that.
