I’m so focused on anchoring the portal to Coban that I don’t feel the damnable prick at my neck or hear the soft whisper of apology from Clem until it’s much too late.
The portal dissolves into nothing as I surrender to the sting of betrayal and the bittersweet embrace of my most hated nemesis...
Jade.
Chapter Six
Child, what have you done?”
I blink my eyes open slowly. My bleary gaze lands on the Royal Star and my favorite crone sitting on the edge of my bed. “Vena?” I croak. “Where have you been?”
“My duties have kept me away,” she says. “Are you well?”
I shake my head, my mind feeling oddly fuzzy. “No. Everything is going wrong. Roshan doesn’t trust me. I’ve become a killer. I feel lost.”
“Then you must find yourself.”
My head throbs. Gods, this isnotthe time to decipher Vena’s ramblings. “Trust me, if it were that easy, I would have. I don’t know what to do.”
For a moment, she looks sad. “Perhaps I was wrong about the fluid bonds of akasha, about your destiny being chosen and not already written.”
The words ring faintly familiar—she’d said something like that to me after I’d died, when she’d waxed poetic about me having a possible soul-fated. “What do you mean?”
“Your destiny lies elsewhere,” she murmurs as my visions swims, and she starts to waver.
“Wait, Vena.Where?”
But she’s gone... and I’m left alone and more confused than ever.
Head pounding, I stare blankly at the ceiling. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, a sour taste lingering in my throat. I swallow what feels like a mouthful of sawdust and sit up, my memory patchy. Dizzily, I blink and push to my elbows. My chamber is dark with no light coming in from the windows or the balcony doors.
Breathing through my nose, I fist my aching temples. My mouth tastes suspiciously like the sour-sweet aftertaste of Jade, a dangerously addictive hallucinogenic drug made from jadu. Ashes below, have I been drugged?
A hazy feeling invades my brain on a cloud of fluffy endorphins.
Maker above, it’s definitely Jade.
I let out a curse. Clearing my mind as Aran had taught me, I will my magic to heal my impaired nervous system and purge the poison from my system. It takes several tries, and when it’s all gone, I should feel better, but instead, I feel curiously numb.
Blank... as if an integral part of me is missing.
Something’s not right.
“Vena?” I call out, but there’s no response. I wonder if I imagined her in the first place.
Before this, I’d been under the influence of Jade twice, each time without my consent. Once when I infiltrated a Scav den, and again when their leader, General Vogon, attempted to weaken me with a magical runic web. He’d failed. I’d been able to purge the poison both times.
But thisdearthin the middle of my chest feels nothing like that.
This happened after I’d visited the azdaha.Razulek.
The thought of the poor creature is like an explosion of blinding light, piercing through my unnatural brain fog, and all the recent events rush back in horrifying clarity. The azdaha. Roshan. Aran. The standoff. The king’s ruthlessness. The portal to Coban that never materialized.
An awful feeling invades my blood, paralyzing my racing thoughts.
No... hewouldn’thave.
But I rub my nape just below my ear, recalling Clem’s remorseful words as the Jade sank its hooks into my bloodstream, and then Roshan’s cold expression fills my mind. She wouldn’t have done a thing withouthisorder.
