The chains rattled as I pulled with everything I had left, a useless surge against iron that had taunted me since the first hour. Dread rose higher, filling every inch of me. I wasn’t ready to die, not while she still needed me.
Where are you, Viper?My mind scraped against where it had lived, reaching, pleading.
Ironic, really. When I had spent years praying to be free of it.
Nothing answered.
The curse was meant to be permanent,impossibleto cure, impossible to silence, and yet it had just vanished. I couldn’t make sense of it.
Iron shrieked as the door opened, letting silhouettes crawl through the space. I shrank back before I could think. A new instinct.
Maybe Reve had succeeded after all.
A voice came, smooth and settling warm against my skin. “Verena?” It was Elva’s, except unbroken.
A trick, of course.
Reve couldn’t splinter me with pain, so now he’d try hope. Feed me the hope of comfort, make me reach for it, then crush my fingers in the trap. That was his next game.
And gods, my shields—
They hadn’t been up this entire time. My mind had been an open gash. And he'd seen it all—the meadow where I hid, the chestnut-haired woman. Elva’s face when I dreamed of saving her. All of it laid bare while I focused on the ache of my spine.
No barricade. No venom. Just me.
“Verena?” Killian. That was his voice this time, deceptively gentle and too smooth to trust.
They’d brought the Angel back to finish the job, to scour my thoughts clean until nothing was left. Their last resort. Their perfect weapon. He would destroy me from the inside—
A low chuckle rose from the dark. “I would wager it’s the other way around, Viper.”
I stiffened. My heart kicked against bone, a frantic bird in a cage.
“Verena…” There it was again, the voice of melted gold.
Elva’s.
They were going to throw her in here, make her lie in my blood while they spilled hers.
I gagged, bile thick and sour rising into my mouth.
“I’m going to ignite a small light,” she said. “So, we can see. I don’t know how long you’ve been in the dark, so shield your eyes if you need to.”
No, that wasn’t Elva. It was Nezra. Her Liraern voice unraveled through the cell, enthralling and dangerous all at once. My palms pressed against the stone at my sides.
Nezra and Killian together—
If this was another game, I wouldnotplay it.
How had they turned her? What had they promised in exchange?
Nezra lit a flare between her fingers. It trembled once, then steadied, a sliver of gold in the cavernous pitch. I tried to lift a hand to shield my face, but the chains snapped taut before I even twitched.
“Gods…” Her breath caught, horrified. “What have they done to you?”
Killian lowered himself beside her, the gravity of his presence making the space seem smaller. His eyes were fused to some distant place, like he was staring straight through mine, toward a thought he’d rather remember instead. “You don’t want to know,” he said.
“Stay out of my head.” My words rasped up, barely there, my gaze shrinking from the flame.
