I try to wriggle my arms, mainly to make sure they aren’t broken like my neck apparently was, but also to test the snugness of my restraints. Although white-hot pain flares through my bones and cramps my muscles, my arms work. As do my legs.
My wonderful, miraculous body not only survived but also healed.
As I relax into my nest of fetters, the chain squeaks and clicks against my metal armor, digging into the bruises that must mottle the skin beneath my turtleneck’s sleeves. How I wish I were still wrapped in that soft pelt Lore gave me, for it would’ve provided warmth and padding.
Oh, Lore. . .
I shudder as my mind replays the horror of feeling his body harden to iron. Of plummeting hundreds of meters through thin air. Of watching my friends and my family free-fall alongside me, faces painted with dread.
I close my eyes and breathe. Just breathe. Instead of pushing away the terror, I let it drench me . . . let it haunt and hone me, transform me from prisoner into warrior.
My pulse slows, my breathing quiets, and my blood, it thickens until it feels laced with the same ice that surrounds me.
“Should’ve listened to yours truly and kissed her sooner, Dee.”
I turn my head in the direction of the idiot general I haven’t seen since the night I was shot with a poisoned arrow.
Except . . .
Except the man ambling toward me isn’t Tavo.
I whirl my gaze back toward the face hovering over mine, sopping up the brown skin, the full, pink mouth, the mismatched irises—one blue, one white.
How hard did I bang my head?
I blink between the simpering man and the scowling one, realizing it’s no trick of the mind but a trick of blood.
That’s the reason Lore rushed out of the cave without slaughtering anyone. Because every single man here shares Dante Regio’s appearance.
Meriam must’ve cast this illusion since Dante has no knowledge of sigils and no access to my blood. I fathom it was her circuitous way of deterring the Crows from attacking and inadvertently ending Dante’s life.
A realization hits me so hard and fast that I gasp. The only reason Dante would accept to enact this plot is because he knows that Crows cannot kill him.
I grow so fucking furious with Meriam for having divulged that secret that I almost decide to murder everyone in this ice cavesavefor Dante so that her manipulative ass never lifts from her godsdamn throne.
My nostrils flare.
If I wasn’t so desperate to access the Cauldron to break Lore’s curse and free my mother of her scales, I would’ve reduced Dante to a limbless stump, chained him to Meriam’s lap, and sank both of them to the very bottom of Filiaserpens.
Oh, Meriam, you are . . . one . . . lucky . . . witch.
Or rather, one conniving bitch.
Eighty
Dante—the scowling one—straightens, a nerve agitating the skin at his temple. “Welcome back to the world of the living, moya.”
Oh, that hateful title . . .
“Fallon?” Bronwen’s raucous whisper carries my gaze away from the skeeve who stole days of my life and beats of my heart.
She sits inside one of the five wooden sleighs parked in the ice temple. If it weren’t for the chains binding her wrists behind her back, she could almost pass for a passenger awaiting her air-Fae conductor.
“I’m here, Bronwen.” My jaw is so tight that my teeth grind down the words to a mere whisper.
“Can you see Meriam?” Her eyes are wide and white, gleaming like my mother’s tusk.
“No.” I sweep my gaze left and right. When I don’t catch sight of a throne, I roll my eyeballs as far back as they can reach and get rewarded with the glint of bloodied gold and auburn hair.
