My hands were chained to the table above my head.
I took a breath and mist formed in the air. I shivered, blinking in rapid succession.
I was in the dungeons at Nightfall. The stone was the same. It was much colder than I ever knew it to be. I must’ve been much further underground than I’d been before. I tried to move my feet but they were also chained.
My heart raced as I summoned everi from within, forcing it to my wrists and into the cuffs. A ssharp, searing pain ran through my arms.
My scream echoed around me.
I lay there breathless, the pain still blazing up my arm.
“It would be best if you try to avoid using everi.”
His voice stopped my heart.
The memory flashed through my mind like a nightmare coming back to you in the middle of the day.
“Caelan,” I whispered, unable to muster anything louder.
Torches ignited into flame and the silhouette of my friend came into view.
“Why?”
He neared me, looking down at me from above. I was on a raised table at the center of the chamber. There were pillars around me, shadows shifting them in and out of view. Flashes of faces came to light, familiar pieces of clothing, shades of hair.
“No,” I cried.
They were all here. Bodies bound to the pillars like a sacrificial ceremony. Cody and Skylar were the mostdecomposed. Isaac’s face was still discernible. Reece… appeared to have struggled.
Cody.
Skylar.
Reece.
Isaac.
Their skin was pale and bloodless. Their bodies were bound to the pillars that surrounded the table that I was bound to. They hung, limp, lifeless. Reece’s body was beginning to decompose in places, and Isaac was losing patches of hair.
Silent tears slid down my cheeks.
They were helpless. Had they been bound here alive? Everything within me was screaming. My heart was bleeding and there were no tourniquets capable of slowing the flow. To take a breath here, in this tomb, would be an insult to their memory. I would suffocate before I accepted this fate for them.
I shut my eyes, choosing the darkness, but the sickening smell of death and Caelan’s cleaning solution twisted through me with painful clarity. It called upon a memory, bringing it vividly to the forefront of my mind. It was the night I’d found Reece in the catacombs with Malakai. I smelled it then too. We had been so near. It would’ve been Cody and Skylar in here at the time. This foul, metallic, and mint scent that he used to clean his blade was what he used to hide the smell of decay. If I’d just investigated further that night maybe I could have prevented Reece and Isaac from ending up here.
It had been all over him—an herb his grandmother used to grow.
A rush of bile forced me to heave over the side of the table as I recalled how he touched me before the ball, this sick scent all over him. I coughed until my chest hurt, finally resting my cheek on the cold table.
I was ready to die.
A painful grip on my jaw made me twist and jerk. I fought Caelan as best I could while restrained as he forced air into my mouth with his own but my body reacted.
I coughed, taking in the air that belonged to the dead, guilt wracking my senses.
“Get away from me!” I screamed, jerking against the chains.
I forced everi into the cuffs, all four this time, trying to flood them no matter the cost.
