“Deimos,” I whispered.
The ruler of Hel. This washismountain.
And if that didn’t just damn us all.
My glare met Ronan’s again. “Why would you bring us here?”
“It’s the only way,” he answered.
Callum moved ahead, eyes scanning every shadow, toward a tomb with two figures with vast wings stretched wide. One raised a sword against an unseen enemy. The other reached for him, no weapon, no defense, only his arm. As if to stop him. To hold him back.
Killian slipped closer, falling into step beside him, an unlit torch gripped in his hand. He didn’t speak. Neither of them did as they stood there, only watching.
I took a few steps back, wondering what it was about this grave that bound them both in such stillness.
Hungrily, Callum’s palm swelled, building into itself until it became a pyre within his grasp. The light spilled on the stone, shadows sprawling as the silhouettes of the stone wings painted the wall before them.
For a moment they did not crown the statues, but Killian and Callum—haloing them as if the dead had lent them their ghost.
It was hauntingly beautiful.
Until Callum’s fire guttered out and only his eyes burned, liquid amber in the dark.
That darkness liked to play tricks, but from the corner of my vision I saw it—movement. It was cold. The kind so bone-shattering even the Viper shivered in its wake.
My chest locked, my body betraying me as the room spun, my vision collapsing. Not to the curse, but to blindness.
And then I was suffocating.
I couldn’t get air. Couldn’t feel anything but the prickles of my skin.
Something waswrong.
This place—we weren’t meant to be here. It was as if breathing in the air reminded my body of something my mind had forgotten.
I felt myself slipping back, back into the walls made of blood, back into that empty well I had been trapped in—
Until strong, warm hands caught me, guiding my body away from the chokehold of dread.
“Breathe, love,” he urged.
I tried. But gods, it hurt. My lungs were like stones, refusing to expand. My legs became weightless, then my body.
“Deeper.” Fingers swept stray curls from my eyes, his form taking shape as the blur receded and he carried me toward the cave opening.
“That’s it. Slow. I’m with you.” His inhale was sharp, pulling air, in hopes I would follow the rhythm. His exhale brushed across my face, cinnamon and flame. “Now let it go.” The words sank into me. “Good girl.”
I hadn’t even realized I was obeying him, hadn’t realized breath had already found my lungs.
There was a voice in my head, not his, not the Viper’s, but another—filling my throat, filling my mouth.
“Again, Verena. Life in. Death out.”
My stomach soured when I rushed through it, breathing too rapidly too soon. I bent forward, lurching from his hands and falling to cold stone, retching until nothing remained.
It didn’t burn up my throat, I could barely feel it, could barely feel anything. Not the bite of the mountain, or the shock of fresh air.
He held my hair back, tucking strands behind my ears.
