Saela behind bars, then drenched in blood, face pale as a ghost.
Izabel’s glassy eyes, her body betraying her. Convulsing on the floor.
My mother, lost to the grip of visions she never got a chance to understand.
Anassa, alone for centuries, orphaned by the Siphons, waiting endlessly for a bond that might never come.
Alistair Brightbane’s cursed blue eyes on Killian’s beautiful, lying face.
Something cavernous opens inside me, a depth far beyond what I’ve realized before. I can sense, on the edges, Killian’s influence. If it weren’t for this bracelet on my wrist, I could cleave the world in two.
Still, it’s an overwhelming, terrifying amount of power.
And then… it’s as if the sunrise starts to reverse itself.
All across the camp, shadows twist and turn and dance as they meet and combine and turn into rivers of darkness. The pitch-black power comes from all around us, rushing and roaring over the farmlands and scarred battlefields and into the Siphon camp.
I reach out my arms, letting the magic fill me. The power is an icy bonfire inside my chest. Cold flames lick out into my arms, my hands, down to every fingertip.
It’s so easy, now that I’m not resisting. Too easy. I hear a half-crazed laugh and realize it’s me making the sound.
“Now, Meryn!” Anassa pulls me back to my task.
I flex my hands, ropes of darkness wreathing themselves around my body.
Suddenly, it’s too much.
A yawning black pit opens behind my eyes, and my vision blurs. My control starts to slip as more and more shadows gather themselves to me, streaming over the ground and the tents and the Siphons around us like water, and I can’t seem to—
“I’m here with you, Meryn!”It’s Stark this time, in my head. Stark’s voice, Stark’s strength holding me.
Lost in the darkness, I look toward the sound of his voice, reaching toward him with every piece of myself. Just like how I reached for him at the campsite.
Only this time, a shadow-spun link begins to form between us.
Finally, a piece of my soul sighs.
It’s beautiful.
A bridge of shining darkness arcs between us, made of glittering ropes of shadow. They braid and twist as they reach him.
And…connectus.
I don’t know what’s happening or how. All I know is that we’re suddenly bound—the shadows tie us together, wrapping around our souls and pulling tight. So tight we might never part.
His anger becomes my anger. My fury becomes his. Every breath brings us closer in our minds.
The river of our mental connection has contracted. There’s nodownstream. There justis. Stark and me, intimately connected in a way that shouldn’t be possible.
“Anassa, what is this?” I shout at her.“Is this your mate bond?”
“No,” she responds, her tone confused.“I do not understand this connection.”
I breathe in, and it’s his breath in my mouth. My eyes flutter open, and I see double: my vision and Stark’s intermingled.
It’s strange and overwhelming, but it’s also soright.
“Don’t dive into your darkness alone,” he says or he thinks—or I say it, or I think it. I can’t tell, anymore, where one of us begins and the other ends.
