His voice flooded my mind like warm honey and velvet. Deep. Melodic. Too smooth to be real. Everything around him slowed to a crawl—Caspian’s arrows hanging mid-air, Athanasius mid-strike, like someone had hit pause on the world.
“He’s a primordial,”the mage purred.“With a human. How much could he possibly need you? Aside from fucking you when he gets the chance?”
I flinched. “You’re trying to trick me.”
His mouth curled into a sneer. "Am I?”he whispered, stepping closer.“You probably offer yourself to him whenever you can." He holds up his hands. " I’m trying not to judge.”
My face burned with fury and shame. “Shut up—”
“I can explain. Even better—”he extended a hand toward me, those long fingers so deceptively gentle, soinviting.“I canshowyou why they belong bound. Whyhe’sthe lie.”
My feet moved without permission.
Something in mewantedto believe him. To hear the rest. To follow. He could prove it. Prove he was innocent. That Athanasius had twisted the truth. ThatI had been the fool.
His voice whispered directly into my bones. “Come with me, Ione.”
I stepped forward. Something was pulling me towards him. He was right. I could trust him.
Then Caspian tackled me. We hit the ground hard, and I barely noticed the pain because I was gasping, reeling from how close I’d come tostepping off into nothing.
Caspian holds me tight. “You were going towalk off the edge,what the hell was that?”
“A mage,” I stammer, my vision still swimming. “He—he spoke to me. He said he could show me—he said Athanasius was lying.”
Athanasius appears beside us in a blur, pulling me to him, scanning me for damage. “I told you to stay put.”
His hands feel familiar. My heart starts to calm down, as I lean into him. “Idid!He foundme!”
Caspian is already drawing another arrow. “He’s lying. Whatever that was, it’s not real. It’s bait.”
My fingers curl around the dagger Caspian gave me, still slick with someone else’s blood. My stomach turns again.
“We have to go,” Athanasius says. His voice is clipped now, harder than before. “The last floor waits.”
And as we began to climb, I couldn’t stop thinking about what that mage said, how he said he could show me. How? A sliver of doubt crept into my heart. Why did his voice feel sotrue?
Chapter twenty-seven
Gotcha?
Ione
Weweren'tevenhalfwayup the stairs when the mage met us halfway.
"Athanasius Necrothys, the Veil between world, The Withering, Harbinger of the Final Silence—"
"Just call him Athy," I wave dismissively. "No one has time to say all of that."
Caspian chuckles. "You know what we're here for nerd, just give it up already."
The mage sneers, but that does nothing to mar his beauty. "Ione, your Primordial and I are acquainted, isn't it tempting to think of what I can tell you about him? What he refuses to tell you, or what he's been hiding?"
Athanasius growls, and the tendrils of shadow begin to creep up the stairs.
"I'll be waiting." The mage disappears once more just as a door appears to the left and we watch as Chronomir and Rose step through.
She's still in her jaguar skin, there's blood dripping from her mouth. "He has human followers." Chronomir sighs. "This isn't the path I wanted this to take."
