Page 9 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

The second came almost two decades later, when I met Bellamy on her sidewalk. A prickle of familiarity danced down my neck as I took in his bottomless, nearly onyx eyes and the shimmering black thread woven between us. It was knotted and frayed within his web of innumerable tethers.

So many promises made.

So many souls he’d tied himself to. I’d never seen a soul so wrapped in lines that its light had dwindled… until him.

It made sense in retrospect, given who the traitor was.

But the day the portals opened was the day I should’ve noticed the third.

I didn’t.

Couldn’t.

Bone-weary numbness had settled into every inch of my body when the man I’d called a friend turned his back on us.

Bellamy. Adrastos. Betrayer.

Whatever the prince was, he wasn’t a friend.

The first day passed in a panic as I poured every scrap of power I had left into keeping Ally breathing.

The second passed in mind-numbing silence while I relived the horrors of the siege on my city—and the news the betrayer had brought with him.

Alvara was critical but stable, and I worked to repair her endless wounds with every spark of magic that crept back into my system.

On the third day, Captain Bartholomew Hadrianna arrived at our dungeon cell. He passed a still-sleeping Alvara and stopped in front of me, his eyes full of pity.

I wanted to shatter the glass window behind us and gouge out his eyes with the shards.

This was the man I’d trusted Jaycee with. The man who’d drunk himself stupid when she died but now had the audacity to stand in the enemy’s dungeon with a sword on his hip, looking unaffected. He deserved to suffer as we had—to hurt like the chasm his betrayal had torn from my chest.

Only the thought of exposing my feeble patient to the elements of whatever cell they’d undoubtedly leave her trapped in kept me from trying.

“Come on, witchling,” he said, jerking his head over his shoulder.

That voice. Smooth. Baritone. English. Why was it always the fucking English?

I glared, wrapping desperate fingers around the reality that every aspect of these men had been a carefully curated lie. Right down to the way they spoke.

He sighed. “You’re being moved, Briar.”

“Is she coming with me?” I’d been tapping my magic like a keg to keep Ally breathing and didn’t bother looking in her direction.

“I’m afraid the Angel of Death stays put.”

“Then no. I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere, thanks.”

I would not leave Ally. I would not leave Aren’s second alone in this moldy, damp hellhole. The golden Commander had plucked me from that rigid brutality and brought me to my family. Magnolia’s beautiful mate.

No. Over my dead body would they torment Aren’s calling down here alone.

“I’m afraid you have little choice in the matter, sunspot.”

“Wanna bet?” I deadpanned, the first spark of anger igniting in my gut.

Empty. For three days, I’d sat here empty, eating only the scraps they shoved between the bars so I could replenish enough magic to aid Ally. All the while, I’d tried to make sense of the tangle of threads as they settled. Tried to make sense of the third anomaly as it glowed against my chest, refusing to dwindle.

Bartholomew smiled. Cheeky and crooked, as though we were in Mags’ living room, surrounded by laughter, rather than trapped in a dank hellscape I couldn’t wake from.