I collapse to my knees roughly, my palms smacking against the cold floor. The crown slips from my head and clatters against the stone. The full weight of what just happened, what Idid, crashes over me.
I killed a dozen people without even touching them. With a strange power I don’t understand.
Am I becoming the very thing Killian accused me of being? Dangerous, unstable, and not to be trusted?
I can’t stop crying. It goes on and on. And the longer it lasts, the worse it gets.
Every ragged, painful inhale I manage to suck in leaves my lungs in sobs that sound like screams. I’m dimly aware that I’m losing more air than I’m taking in. I’ll suffocate from this.
Anassa tries to help. Her insistent care nudges at the edge of my mind. She’s trying to soothe me again. When her nose presses closer, I’m briefly tempted to cling to her and let her quiet humming lull me.
But then the horror strikes me all over again. I’mfilthyfor even wanting comfort. I don’t deserve it.
Saela’s transformation. Killian’s betrayal. ThelivesI just took. All these things are my failures. It’s pain I could have prevented if I was onlybetter.
The spiral sucks me under and into the dark, and I push Anassa away. Hard.
She growls, her concern escalating. I try to ignore it. I don’t want it.
The spiraling builds in me, and my fist strikes out, knuckles cracking against the stone floor. Physical pain immediately overtakes my senses, blotting out the panic.
Relieving me.
I punch again, deliberately, harder this time. My skin splits.
Again, and I leave a bloody smear on the floor.
The pain clears pathways in my brain, freeing me from the thoughts pushing in from the outside. It grounds me, bringing me back to myself, my body, this moment—and into a sort of sharpness.
It feelsawful, but less awful than the agonized twisting of my own mind.
I strike the ground again and again and again until all that’s left is me and the pain.
It consumes me so entirely that I don’t even hear the door when it slams open.
4
STARK
Well, that was a fucking disaster.
The arena is quiet after Meryn departs, people staring after her in shocked silence. I let them gape for a moment, two.
Then I get tired of looking at their ignorant, confused faces. Did they not understand their instructions?
“You heard your queen,” I snap loudly, my voice carrying across the crowd from where I still sit astride Cratos. “Phlyax, grab the perished wolves. Daemos, help the servants with the bodies. Any recent graduates of the Trials are still shipping out tomorrow, so Strategos and Kryptos, go prepare. If you’re not a recent graduate—”
Skimming the crowd, I pick out several older Bonded who were here for the ceremonies, making eye contact with them.
“Get the fuck out of here. Bonded instructors, to me.”
People startle on their wolves and break into motion. Through it all come the three instructors who oversaw the Trials with me and Aldrich: ElinorGardiner, Phylax Gamma; Samson Whyte, Kryptos Gamma; and Daegan Prak, Strategos Gamma.
Samson reaches me and Cratos first, astride his sleek, dappled gray wolf. Daegan and Elinor are close behind him.
“Quite a way to wrap up the Trials this year.” He raises a pale eyebrow at me, nonplussed. How Kryptos of him. I’ve never liked this sly asshole much.
“You need to keep your packs in line,” I tell the three of them, my voice a low growl. “Everything she showed you was real.”
