Pain detonated through me, and I cried out.
The faces around me screamed, silent and wide-mouthed, their agony vibrating through the grayness like a bell struck too hard.
“You should’ve given her to us,” Zyrra scoffed, her lips curling. “Now look at you.Useless. The great Wolfe Nightblade, heir to the kingdom of Galaythia. Useless and all alone.”
Blood filled my mouth. I tasted iron and ruin.
“No,” I rasped.
Her smile sharpened. “Always were so damn stubborn. You won’t even allow death to take you.”
“Get the fuck away from me.”
“Die, die now.” With a radiant smile, she placed her palm flat against the sword.
Andpushed.
I roared.
The blade drove deeper, and my body convulsed. The gray space shuddered, the faces scattering like ash on a wind that didn’t exist.
The sword pulsed, and the grayness tore me apart and stitched me back together in its cruel, endless cycle.
And through it all, through the breaking and reforming, through the faces and the pain, I held on to one thing.
My mage.
When the maddening pain eased, the name I’d given her, the one only I called her, slipped from me again and again.
“Ziyka.”
“Ziyka.”
“Ziyka…”
My voice fractured, but I kept reaching for her through every broken word.
If this was living… I would endure it.
I would fight my way back to her.
I would not die here.
Chapter 4
Elariya
“The Binding Beneath Bone”
The dining hall was huge, but it felt smaller with all of us gathered around the table.
Grandmother, Mother, Emabelle, Thayden, and me.
We’d just sat down for dinner.
The last rays of daylight bled through the tall windows in long, slanting bands, turning the polished oak the color of old honey. Grandmother had already lit the candles, and their flames trembled in the window glass like tiny, nervous hearts.
This room had always been a place of comfort. Laughter. Arguments that never lasted. Now it felt like a stage, and every one of us was playing a role we hadn’t chosen.
