I spat up blood, stumbling back. I drifted downwards to the crimson blooming across silver down at my abdomen. Rich scarlet soaked through the silvery gown with the steady stream dripping onto the courtyard, staining the snow.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Silas’s horrid expression shook with gold flares drifting far beyond the hole.
“No . . . Valeria!”
I dropped to my knees, Silas catching in his arms. He held his hands over the wound, attempting to staunch the bleeding the best he could.
I removed his hand, the fire burning across my flesh, racing against the clock. “Don’t...”
Laughter pulled me to where William’s body lay, traveling to a familiar face holding the knife stained in blood.
“Miss me?”
Silas’s expression darkened.
“Narcisa.”
Ayla’s lips curled. “Glad you remembered me after all these years.”
Thirty-Three
Narcisa gracefully toyed with the knife, crimson dripping down cold steel. Silas attempted to stop the bleeding, going as far as to rip his own wrist open to force his blood into my lips. I only sputtered out more, the metallic taste coating my tongue. I pressed on the wound, the surrounding area burning and intensifying.
This time, no amount of Silas’s blood could fix me.
Silas glared at Narcisa, venom evident in his eyes. “I’m surprised your shadows are not doing your dirty work for you. If it’s my life you want, then take it. Leave her out of it.”
Narcisa howled with laughter. “Leave her out? Oh, honey, she is the reason this is all happening.” She glanced down at William’s dead body, her heel kickingthe poor corpse several feet into the grass. “Leading this idiot to the gates all because he couldn’t handle his little possession being used by another. But I have to hand it to him. He was able to pass through the barrier and essentially reduce it down to nothing.”
The grounds that used to be covered in thick rolling banks of fog were, as she said, nonexistent. Shattering the soft quiet into the chaos of screams unfolding between the living and the dead.
The fog.
The fog kept people walking in circles, the last defense barrier for Silas and the ghost.
“The fog,” I rasped, the words grating in my throat, “you are—talking about—the fog—aren’t you?” I coughed, bloody ribbons in the night as crimson dancing in the midnight garden.
“Ding, ding, ding!Wehave a winner! Slow on the uptake, though.” Narcisa grinned.
Coldness replaced the person I thought I knew. Ayla never existed. I was once more a pawn in someone else’s game.
“What is it that you want, Narcisa? I did not think you would have the gall to stick around after that night,” Silas growled.
“Tsk.” Narcisa grimaced. “You should have died that night. How was I to expect that Cecilia had contacts that planned to derail my attempts to take the throne? I got rid of one piece of trash, only for it to get replaced.” She pointed knife in our direction. “Won’t you be a dear and die?” Narcisa lunged, disappearing in a flurry of movement descending upon us.
Silas countered Narcisa, struggling for control as I registered the knife missing my head by a few inches., their struggle blurring across the garden.
I clutched at my abdomen, scorching dulling in tides. Panting, I needed to move, to get help—mind raced as a pain shot upward, setting fire to my body.
Narcisa kicked Silas, throwing him several yards into the rose bushes. “I have had enough! One iteration of you was enough, but now twice, obscene.”
I stumbled to my feet, adrenaline coursing through my veins.
Narcisa stepped forward, unhindered, toward me. “Goodbye, Val—”
Silas rammed into her, both of their bodies becoming a blur as they disappeared into the night.
