No answering warmth. No flicker of connection.
Only silence.
“Please. Hear me. I’m still trying. I’m still fighting.”
We round a final bend, and the corridor narrows. I stop when Torbin does, facing a tall, iron-banded door. Its surface is pitted with rust and age, frost masking its hinges.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until I’m forced to draw in a sharp gasp.
This is it.
My fingers twitch at my sides. My body wants to turn around, to flee. But my mind won’t let me.
My father could be alive.
He could be something worse.
The chamber beyond is wide but feels close, as if the walls themselves lean in to listen. Heavy drapes of deep-wine and moss-green velvet spill from the high windows, their fringes brushing warped floorboards the color of old blood. The air is thick—humid and sweet—with the scent of decaying roses and beeswax clogging to the back of my throat. Candles crowd every surface, balanced in iron candelabras, cradled in glass hurricane lamps, clustered on warped tables, each flame swaying in the sluggish draft, painting the room in swaths of molten gold and deep shadow. The walls disappear into darkness above, where the glimmer of a chandelier’s crystal teardrops hangs like captured rain. Somewhere, faint and almost hidden, the slow drip of water marks the silence.
And in the center, a cloaked figure stands, facing away from me. As the figure turns, my breath hitches.
ChApter
Forty-Nine
This was not whom I expected. A woman stands before me, still as carved stone. A deep-red cloak pools at her feet, its hood casting her face in shadow. When she lifts her chin, candlelight skims over an intricate silver mask that hides everything from her brow to the tip of her nose, leaving only her mouth bare. Below it, full lips are painted the shade of fresh blood. Her presence is a tangible weight in the air, confident, deliberate, as if every movement has already been decided before she makes it.
“You’re the seer,” I say.
It feels as if her gaze were piercing straight through me.
“You can call me ‘Ella.’ We’ve been expecting you, Princess.” Her voice is smooth, certain, and threaded with something that makes the fine hairs on my arms lift.
The words don’t settleoverme as much as they settleintome, making them impossible to shake off.
“Have you?” I manage, though my voice sounds smaller than I’d like it to.
The corner of her mouth lifts, not quite a smile, not quite a sneer. “You’ve taken your time getting here.”
I straighten my shoulders. “I’ve been busy.”
A low, lilting hum slips past her lips—barely audible, but it slides under my skin like warm oil, coaxing my pulse into a slower rhythm. “The things you’ve been occupying yourself with are trivial. You are a special being with special purpose. And you belong here.”
“I belong at the head of my regiment, protecting Terre Ferique from your monsters.”
And I belong with Dante. At his side. Forever.
She doesn’t answer right away, simply staring, as if measuring me. “The prophecy speaks of one with great power—power to change the tides of fate itself. I see that power in you. And I am going to help you use it… to change the world.”
A chill ripples through me, not from fear of her words, but from the certainty that her idea of change is twisted. “Then it seems,” I say evenly, “that our visions of the world are vastly different.”
Her smile deepens, slow and knowing. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you simply haven’t seen clearly yet.”
“Or maybe you’re not as good a seer as the rumors say you are. Because if you were any good at it, you wouldseeI’m not going to cooperate.”
The corner of her lips quirks upward. “Though you are a clever girl, there are some things you simply don’t understand.”
Before I can retort, footfalls echo behind me, measured and purposeful.
