“Well, worthy or not, you’re stuck with me,” I grumble. “And I’m stuck with you.”
“For now,”she drawls.
I sigh heavily. “Right. I get it. You could rip my throat out at any moment—if one of the others doesn’t do me in first. But you know damn well I won’t give up—not while there’s any chance of finding Saela. I will fight to the fucking death to save her, Anassa. I’ll jump through all the fucking hoops, alright? I don’t give a fuck about mates or anything else.”
Anassa is silent, apparently unmoved. But she’s listening. Assessing.
The last of the anger drains out of me, replaced by something like resignation. “I will try to let you sense my emotions when I’m with Killian, but I need some privacy and I also need you to be okay with that. Promise me we’ll be okay for the Purge Trial,” I say quietly. “Please.”
Another lengthy silence ensues. Anassa stares me down, her yellow gaze weighing me carefully.
Finally, in a tone of both warning and promise, her words echo in my mind.“We’ll be okay.”
That night,terror follows me into my dreams.
I’m in the castle, lost in its maze-like corridors. The shadows dance like living things and the walls change every time I look away.
I can hear my mother’s voice calling me. It echoes strangely, coming from every direction. There’s something wrong about it. A distortion that chills me to my bones.
“Meryn… Meryn! I’m here!”
It feels like I’m following her voice for hours, getting more and more lost. More and more afraid.
Until I find myself standing before a wide, familiar archway. Towering doors open into a massive arena, the web of gutters in the dirt floor flowing with blood.
My mother stands at the arena’s center, her back turned. She’s dressed in a crimson gown, her head adorned in a twisting crown slick with blood.
“Mom…” My voice comes out weak and childlike. But it reaches her.
She turns.
Icy terror surges in my veins.
Her eyes are black as pitch—no whites, no pupils. Just pure, demonic black.
I stumble back as she opens her mouth to speak.
No words come. Black blood pours from her lips and streams from her unseeing eyes.
An echoing, disembodied voice thunders through the arena, filling me with terror unlike any I’ve known before.
“Nocturn is calling. Are you listening?”
I joltawake with those awful words still booming in my ears.
Fresh terror awaits. My vision is blurred, my senses spinning. Something presses my face so hard I can barely take in a breath. I taste blood and dirt and the acrid tang of my own fear.
I realize I’m lying on the ground, my face in the dirt. I lift my head, overwhelmed by the familiar scent of death.
The dark arena looms above me, the stands encased in shadow. Moonlight filters down from the glass ceilings in the dome. Just enough that I can see my hands on the ground as I lift myself onto my knees.
My fingers meet with gritty dirt and cold metal.
A drain, I realize, still dazed.
Slowly, my vision adjusts to the darkness. Moonlight plucks details from the shadows, tracing the web of gutters in the floor. Highlighting the angles where they meet. The metal grates set into those junctures make dark dimples in the earth.
With slow-darning horror, I realize I’m lying at the convergence of all those gutters. The place where the blood and gore are drained away after every battle.
