Dulcamar has her. And we’re going to tear the place apart until she’s free.
ChApter
Fifty-One
Celeste
My mother is bleeding.
The room is dark when the door is thrown open. My mother stands there, panting, holding a hand to her side as blood seeps through her fingers. She has a dagger in her grip as she sweeps her deep-brown hair out of her face.
I sit up, unable to slow the thrashing of my heart. “Mother?” My voice is from my past, when I was a child.
My mother slams the door and presses her back against it, panic twisting her features. Moonlight illuminates the tears running down her face.
She hurries closer in the darkness. “I’m sorry.” She reaches out to me. “I’m sorry.”
I think she means to embrace me, but I flinch from the sight of the bloodon her hands.
The dagger is firm in her grasp. “I’m sorry. I can’t let him take it from you.”
“Mother, no!”
The dagger pierces my chest, and I let out a scream. I clutch the hilt, but my mother’s hand is still holding it firm. Blood pools around the blade, and I’m in so much pain, I cannot move. I look up at my mother to see her eyes closed. She mumbles something in whispers too quiet to hear.
A vibration moves through me, pulling from every part of my body and compressing to the place where the dagger is embedded. I feel my veins tremble as if I’m being drained of my blood. My sobs are silent as I continue to stare at my mother.
Her red-rimmed eyes open, tears continuing to spill. She places a hand over my wound, her fingers flanking the blade as she slips it out of my chest. My jaw hangs open as a warm, tingling sensation fills my chest.
“He’s dangerous,” my mother whispers. “You don’t know what he’s capable of. He’s already betrayed me.”
My pain dissipates, but my mother’s hand is still flush against my chest. “Mother?”
“I don’t want to leave you without your powers, Celeste. But if he finds a way to take them, it would have dire consequences.”
“Dahlia!” My father’s voice roars through the castle, making my mother flinch.
“Quickly,” she whispers to me, “change into a fresh nightgown. Hide this one. Go back to bed, and forget this ever happened.”
She hurries from the room.
When the door slams behind her, I jerk forward and call for her. “Mother!”
But I’m no longer in my room. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness I find myself in.
The walls curve around me, smooth, damp, and glistening in the dim light. I blink, trying to force my eyes to adjust. I’m in… a tunnel.
The air bites at my lungs, thick with the scent of wet stone and something sharper, stranger, beneath it. Every inhale feels weighted,every exhale a pale ribbon in the darkness.
Somewhere ahead, water drips in slow, deliberate intervals.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Each sound ricochets off the stone like the echo of a clock, counting down to something unseen.
