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The room was colder, the shadows long and stretched across the stone walls.

I opened my eyes, turning my head slightly on the pillow.

Soren was gone.

Standing in his place beside my cot, bathed in the deep, midnight shadows of the room, was Mal.

He stood motionless as a specter. He was clad in a dark, high-collared tunic, his eyes glowing in the dim light with an eerie intensity. In his right hand, Mal was holding a wad of thick, blood-soaked cotton gauze—the discarded dressing from my own head injury that the healer had left on the side tray.

I stilled, my heart giving a sudden, anxious thud against my ribs. “Mal...?”

Mal didn’t flinch. He slowly folded the blood-soaked gauze into his palm, sliding it into the deep pocket of his dark coat with a quiet, practiced motion that betrayed no guilt.

He raised his gaze, locking his eyes onto mine with a calm, dangerous tranquility that sent a cold shiver sliding down my spine.

“Rest, Princess,” Mal whispered smoothly, his voice a low, melodic purr that drifted through the quiet room. “I only came to check on you after I heard about your little accident in the armory. You have a grand performance at dawn.”

“What are you... what are you doing?” I rasped, trying to force my limbs to move, but my body felt heavy as lead, trapped in the lingering fog of the concussion.

“Preparing,” Mal murmured softly. He stepped back into the dark shadows of the alcove, his golden eyes lingering on my face for a final, suffocating second. “Sleep, Tauriel. The sun is rising.”

Before I could demand an answer, before I could scream for Caspian or Soren, my eyelids slammed shut once more, dragging me down into a deep, dreamless abyss.

Morning came with the violent, unforgiving strike of an iron bell.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

The heavy, resonant chime of the citadel’s death bell echoed through the stone walls, vibrating straight through the mattress, through my bones, and into my marrow.

I snapped my eyes open.

The cold, grey light of dawn was washing through the high lancet windows of the medical wing. My head still throbbed, but the fog had cleared, replaced by a sharp, icy adrenaline that froze the blood in my veins.

Sitting on the tray beside my bed was a single crystal goblet filled with a shimmering, iridescent silver liquid.

The Crescent Potion.

The day of the Dagda-Fae had arrived—and my executioner was waiting in the ring.

FIFTY

The bitter, metallic tang of the Crescent Potion coated my tongue like lead, burning a cold, unforgiving path down my throat as I drained the crystal goblet to its final drop.

The reaction inside my body was instant and agonizing.

It felt as though an iron grate had slammed shut within my ribcage. The roaring heat of my core sputtered, starved of oxygen, before dissolving into cold ash. Beside it, the writhing, midnight threads of my markings went completely inert, turning into nothing more than flat, lifeless black ink against my skin. Even the brand on my shoulder went utterly silent.

Little ember...

Nyxaroth’s deep, measured voice echoed in my mind, sounding impossibly faint, as if he were calling to me from across an ocean of dark water.

Nyx? I called back frantically in the silence of my own thoughts.

The thread... grows thin... the dragon rasped, his telepathic presence receding into a distant shadow as the potion’s anti-magic bound my blood. Trust... your steel...

Then, the connection severed entirely.

An overwhelming, suffocating silence dropped over my mind. For the first time since bonding the sovereign titan of the sky, I was completely, utterly alone inside my own skull. Stripped of magic, devoid of dragon fire, I was reduced to nothing more than muscle, bone, and willpower.