Tears pricked at my eyes as my fists clenched on empty air.
Kaden was gone. Or perhaps he’d never been here at all, though he’d felt too real to have been a dream.
“Put these on,” said Adriel gruffly, tossing me a heap of fabric. “You’re hypothermic.”
Still shaken from my hallucination, I reached for thebundle at my feet. My hands were numb, and I dropped it twice before peeling the fabric apart.
There was a pair of woolen trousers at least two sizes too big, a stained linen shirt, and a pair of boots that looked as though they’d been gnawed by rodents. There was also a leather belt, a worn bandolier, and a couple of rusted short swords.
The clothes smelled like someone had died in them. Someone probably had. But they were better than the ripped evening gown I wore, even if the stench turned my stomach.
“You all right?” Adriel asked, looking me up and down. I noticed he’d traded his formal tunic and trousers for clothes of a similar style to mine, and he had several more weapons tucked under his arm.
I swallowed, though it did nothing to clear the stubborn lump in my throat. “I . . . had a dream.” I shook my head. “Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.”
The royal guard stiffened, a muscle flexing in his jaw as he waited for me to continue.
“I saw Kaden. He told me . . .” I shuddered. “He told me not to come.”
“I’d expect he’d say that,” Adriel grumbled, tossing a second bundle at Sorsha. “Martyr that he is.”
“You think it was real?”
Adriel shrugged. “Hard to say with the in-between being a fold in the veil between realms. And since the two of you are mates . . .” He trailed off. “It doesn’t seem impossible.”
Hope tingled in my chest at the knowledge that it might really have been him, but it was quickly overtaken by horror.
What were they doing to Kaden that had him so afraid? What was so bad that he’d beg me to stay away?
I shoved my worries aside. I couldn’t think about that now. Not if I was to survive the Tower of Souls and travel back to the Otherworld to rescue him from Dorthus.
Fear was a luxury I could not afford.
Chapter
Seven
LYRA
Dread coiled in my stomach as the old dinghy bumped against the slimy black rock. We’d navigated the eerie ship graveyard through an unabating drizzle to reach the miserable spit of land where the Watchman’s stronghold stood.
Carved from the same black stone as the island itself, the fortress loomed over the raging sea like a specter in the night.
Bile rose in my throat as I stared up at the crumbling tower along the side of the structure — the Watchman’s seaside prison where Kaden and I had nearly died.
Small caves pitted the tower’s exterior, illuminated by angry bolts of lightning that lashed down from the rippling sky. Each cave was an individual cell, which filled with water when the tide came in.
Climbing out onto the lichen-encrusted rock, I wondered how Adriel planned to infiltrate the prison. Kaden and I had entered the fortress through what I’dassumed were the sewers, but that had been on the other side of the island.
Then the royal guard shucked off his borrowed shirt and tied it around his waist, and my dread mounted.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“There’s only one way in if we want to avoid the Watchman,” he said. “We have to swim under the tower and come in through the bottom.”
“You can’t be serious,” Sorsha choked, staring down at the churning black water that hungered for our demise.
Adriel arched an eyebrow. “We’ll have to be quick. If we don’t get back out before the tide comes in . . .”
