Kael swears under his breath. “There’s another way?—”
He doesn’t finish.
Because the air shifts.
Heavy. Wet. Metallic.
A smell I know too well—rot wrapped in perfume.
I freeze. The hum of my power falters.
From the haze of smoke and debris, a figure steps forward, limping slightly, her hair matted and her mouth twisted in a grin that should’ve died with her. Those deep-brown eyes I stared into for mercy find mine once again.
“You thought you could be rid of me in death, Gutter Rat?”
The voice spears through me.
And my stomach lurches into my throat.
Vessira.
“I feed on death.” She drags her blade along the wall, the metal singing. “I’m Marked, remember?”
A revenant.
My body has already locked. The blade in her hand catches the light—black glass and memory. I see chains, the dungeon floor slick with my own blood, Kael’s hands carving fatalwounds into my loved ones, her laughter echoing against the walls.
The castle trembles again; the ceiling cracks open.
“Elyssara—” Kael’s shout cuts off as a beam collapses between us as he reaches for me, a rain of fire and stone separating me from him.
Smoke. Screaming stone. And Vessira stepping through it all like she’s walking home.
I try to steady myself, to find the quiet place inside myself to find my Lightborne magic. I claw for Duskae, for the hum in my bones, but my hands shake too hard. My breaths come too fast. The noise in my head is louder than any god’s voice.
Not again.
Not again.
Phantom chains of lillath snap around my wrists—manifestations of my own fear—and Vessira laughs, low and delighted.
Kael limps into my line of sight.
He stumbles from the rubble, a fragment of wood splintering through his shoulder, blood already oozing from the wound.
His palm grips around it, and a muffled grunt is the only noise he makes as he rips it free from his shredded skin.
“This will not end well for you, Vessira,” he growls in warning.
Fear squeezes like a serpent coiling around my neck—and Vessira uses my paralysis for her gain. She’s on me.
Her blade of nightmares presses to my throat, the edge meeting my skin so my pulse thuds against it.
“Love is such a weakness, Kael,” Vessira taunts, ignoring his threats. “You suffer the same affliction as your father—on your knees and still unwilling to make sacrifices,” she lilts in a mocking, sinister tone.
“I bow for no one,” Kael growls, “but her.”
I hunger for power. To do something.Anything. But I’m frozen in place, terror gripping my throat.
