The guards drove us forward, spears jabbing, the rattle of our chains echoing down the corridor. Behind us, shadows trailed close, whispering like a thousand unseen mouths.
Salvatore stumbled beside me—bloodied, silent for once. Silent like the guilty.
I leaned close enough that he could feel my breath on his ear. My voice came out low, shaking with what I refused to call grief.
“It’ll be me who kills you in the next trial,” I said. “I will rise, and you will fall. You’re fucking dead to me, Salvatore—for bringing me into this nightmare. Our friendship, our brotherhood, every goddamn memory we ever had—dead. I’ll never forgive you.”
His eyes found mine—wide, hollow, desperate to speak—but I didn’t let him. I didn’t want his excuses.
I turned away. The chains bit deep into my wrists as the guards dragged me on.
Behind us, Severen’s laughter followed, winding through the corridor like smoke through a tomb. But beneath it, under the rattle of chains and the groan of ancient stone, I heard the shadows whisper back?—
You will rise together.
You will fall together.
You will die together.
Chapter18
Salvatore
It had been days since the last trial.
Days since Severen’s laughter had rattled the chains and sent the shadows writhing through that cursed throne room.
Lazarus hadn’t spoken to me since.
Not a word. Not even a glance that wasn’t filled with hate.
Whatever fragile thread had once bound us had been cut clean. Severen’s poison had seen to that, and my betrayal had finished the job. We walked the same halls, ate the same mold-crusted bread, slept against the same damp walls, but between us now, yawned a canyon wide enough to bury us both.
He had said I was dead to him.
That he would rise, become a Shadow Lord, and I would die here.
Those words still echoed in my skull, as steady as a heartbeat.
But it wasn’t Lazarus’ hatred that haunted me most.
It was my mother.
Her voice still lingered from that chamber, seeping into my thoughts like smoke through cracks in stone. Words I had never known. Whispers I hadn’t realized I’d been starving for. She had called herself the Mistress of Shadows. The mother I had never known.
When I threw those words in Severen’s face, when I defied him, it hadn’t been me speaking.
It had been her, moving through me. Guiding me.
And now I couldn’t stop thinking. Couldn’t stop wondering.
Was she truly what she claimed?
Did Severen fear her?
Did she still exist somewhere in the dark, trapped, waiting for me to find her?
Every whisper dug deeper, twisting through my chest until breathing itself became pain. I needed answers, even if those answers destroyed me.
