“This is just a dream,” I murmured, tearing my gaze from his. “I’m imagining this because it’s better than the alternative. That you’re dead, and I’m trapped in a torture room right now with Dante and his men. You aren’t really here.”
The hand on the back of my neck moved to grasp my chin, forcing me to look at him again. I sucked in a breath as Orion’s eyes flashed. “No one can kill the mate of a Queen.”
“But I’m not the Queen,” I whispered. “And he blocked our bonds. We don’t know what Dante is capable of.”
Orion shifted closer to me, his lips a breath away. I could forget this entire conversation and get lost in his embrace. Feel his lips against mine and pretend like none of it was fake. That this dream was more, like he said it was.
“I refuse to believe he could so easily tear us apart, my flower. I refuse to let him have so much power over us.”
The sting of tears grew harsher as I blinked. “You’re dead, Orion. You’re already gone.”
His lips quirked into a smile. “Or maybe, you don’t know how powerful our love truly is. Maybe, I slumber waiting for your kiss to wake me.”
“That would be a nice fairytale, but that’s all it’ll be.” A cold chill wrapped around me, burning my skin. I pulled away from Orion sharply, tearing my eyes from his to stare out over the landscape. “I need to go,” I whispered. “I won’t let him find us here.”
“You are so much stronger than you think,” Orion murmured. My eyes snapped back to his as he released me. “Finish what you started. Then, come find me again.”
I frowned, but the dreamscape darkened. I rose from the chaise and ran out of the pavilion as the sky turned black. The cold seeped into my skin, burrowing into my bones as I made my way to the tunnel. Around me, the flowers bowed to the ice.
When I made it to the mouth of darkness that would take me back to my waking world, I chanced a look back at Orion. Hestood in the pavilion with his hands in his pockets, eerily calm. Nothing like the male who had taken over my dreams before.
Something about this felt different. Strange.
I turned back to the dark tunnel and drew in a breath. I would not let Dante find this place.
So, I left the safety of the dream and returned to pain.
The icy burnwas quickly replaced by literal fire. The moment the dream fell away, delivering me back to whatever new hell Dante had in store for me, I felt the shift in the air. The different magic.
It wasn’t even subtle. Since losing my power to the collar, I hadn’t really felt the difference between what I knew was thewrongmagic and what was natural power.
But now, the dark, altered magic coiled around me, at war with what was natural, born within all creatures of Nyx.
Dante’s magic was ice. It was cold and painful, tearing through my body like shards of glass. I bit down on a cry as my entire body froze at the dark way it slithered through me.
But then there was the fire. It was something else entirely. Its warmth rushed through me in a different way; warm fingers brushed through my hair, dancing lightly across my skin.
It was like a war of which magic would win. And I feared what would happen if either did.
Orion’s words echoed in my ears as the pain became too much.Finish what you started. But what? There was too much left incomplete. The search for the crown meant nothing. And the skull was in Dante’s grasp. I wouldn’t be able to get it back while also being under his control.
The ice receded from my body, leaving pain behind. It burrowed into my bones until every muscle, every joint, ached. It was only then that the warmth also fled, leaving me feeling…
Nothing.
I opened my eyes. I wasn’t in my cell, but I wasn’t with the female doctor, either. The space was unfamiliar, but at least it wasn’t the cage from my vision.
I’d been placed on a slab in a room with tall ceilings and Roman styled pillars. There was no light, except for a few witch lights in the edges of my vision, though they didn’t give off enough of a glow to illuminate the space. If I had to guess, we were in what remained of a temple, though there were no remnants of Nyx anywhere. The only hint that it might have once been a place of worship was an engraving on the wall to my left of a male I didn’t recognise.
I tried to shift, but my arms and legs were trapped in what I assumed were chains. The collar seemed to tighten around my throat in warning.
“She’s awake,” a female sang, her voice high and grating. “My King, would you like her to sleep once more?”
Dante grunted. He was close to my ear, but I couldn’t turn my head to look at him. “No, it was useless.”
“Oh.” Somehow, I could imagine her pouting.
A chair scraped back, one I assumed Dante had been sitting on. My body locked up again despite the aches rushing through me. From the corner of my eye, I watched him round the side of the slab. I dug my fingers into the cold stone, like it could somehow anchor me—protect me from whatever he’d done.
