Not by her. Not by anyone.
So, I chose something else.
I never spoke it aloud. I buried it where only stone and darkness could hear.
If I cannot be loved, then I will take love from them.
I will leave behind the same silence that lives inside me—and they will learn what it means to be empty.
The thoughts burned as they took shape. I felt them sink into the air, into the stone, into me. Something in my chest cracked open—slow, quiet, irreversible.
The pain didn’t fade. It changed.
It twisted into something colder, crueler.
And in that silence, I felt it spreading.
The poison of it.
The beginning of what I would be.
Chapter16
Salvatore
Two nights had passed since the last trial—two nights of silence and death. The Dreadhold never slept, but it felt as though it had been holding its breath, waiting to see which of us would break first.
I hadn’t spoken to Lazarus since that night—since Amara. I’d made a fool of myself reaching for something that was never mine. He hadn’t looked at me since. He’d found comfort elsewhere—Orin, Tarek, Rian, those fucking prison rats.
They worked together now. Ate together. Whispered in corners like brothers.
He used to be my brother.
Now he barely met my eyes.
Every time I saw them, something twisted inside me. Jealousy. Rage. The kind that burned cold. He had thrown away years of friendship for scraps with the damned. I told myself I didn’t care—but I did. I cared enough to want them all dead.
Then the bell tolled.
The sound rolled through the stone like thunder trapped underground. The next trial had come.
Only twelve of us stumbled into the corridor at midnight—twelve half-dead men wrapped in skin that barely clung. We moved like shadows, not prisoners. The floor was slick with damp, torch smoke clung to the ceiling like old ghosts. We looked less like survivors and more like what the earth had already claimed.
It sickened me that Orin and his pack of rats still drew breath. Their voices scraped through my skull like whetstones. They clung to Lazarus—hovering, whispering, feeding off his light as if he owed them pieces of himself. I watched the way he let them near, how he didn’t flinch when their filthy hands brushed his shoulder.
He used to stand beside me.
Now he stood among them.
One day soon, I’d peel that little nest apart and remind them who he belonged to.
The passage swallowed us whole. The air turned colder, heavy with mildew and sweat. Feet dragged across limestone, breath hissed from the condemned—thin, ragged sounds swallowed by the gloom. And beneath it all was a quiet so dense it pressed against my ears, as if it were alive.
They herded us into a low chamber where the walls closed in like ribs. A pale glow leaked from a crack above—weak, almost colorless. It wasn’t light. It was the ghost of light, too thin to warm, too frail to comfort. Dust floated in it like the remnants of burnt souls.
“Circle up, filth,” a guard barked, his club tapping against the floor.
We obeyed. Bare feet shuffled. Shoulders slumped. The smell of unwashed flesh filled the air.
