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Without the light of the silver river or the glow of the dragon fire, the woods were a black pit. We navigated by feel, boots crunching over frozen ash, hands outstretched to avoid iron-thorns.

The isolation hit me hard.

For the last three days, Caspian had been an anchor—a heavy, protective presence that kept the court and the cold at bay. Now, stripped of his shadow and Dax’s swagger, the wilderness felt impossibly vast.

My pulse hammered in my ears.

Find your feet, Trouble. His voice echoed in my mind, making the brand on my shoulder pulse with a cold sting.

Then the true terror started.

An intense itching flared under the skin of my forearms, turning into a violent heat.

I gasped, stumbling over a petrified root, my hands flying to my chest.

“Tauriel?” Mal called out softly from a few paces ahead, pausing in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I wheezed, my voice strained. “Just lost my footing.”

I looked down at my hands in the dark, and my blood went cold.

The black ink of my tattoos, the dark swirls etched into my body was moving.

The ink was writhing, rising from my skin in fluid tendrils. The volatile magic—ignited by the dragon fire, the stress, and the gaze of the emerald beast—was tearing through my internal seals.

A thin, wispy plume of living darkness bled from my fingertips, curling into the freezing air like ink in water. The shadows reached outward toward the petrified trees, drawn to the island’s dark.

No. No, no, no.

Panic seized my throat. If Mal saw this, if he realized I carried the darkness of the Remnikai, he would be bound to report it to the Crown. Or worse, the sudden eruption of high magic would act as a beacon for every dragon in the peaks.

“Tauriel?” Mal took a step toward me in the dark. “You’re bleeding smoke.”

“Stay back!” I hissed, my voice dropping to a harsh rasp.

I clamped my right hand over my left wrist, my fingers digging into my flesh. I forced every ounce of my willpower onto the rising darkness, visualizing an iron door slamming shut inside my chest.

“Get back inside,” I growled through my teeth, clenching my jaw hard. “Get back in.”

The living shadows thrashing around my hands resisted, dragging a quiet whimper from my throat as they fought to break free. The brand on my shoulder flared in response, searing my skin with a spike of agony that brought me to my knees in the ash.

With a sharp snapping sensation inside my skull, the darkness was dragged back beneath my skin. The black ink snapped back into place.

I lay on my hands and knees in the cold ash, forehead pressed to the ground, chest heaving. Sweat covered my body, my hands shaking uncontrollably.

Mal crouched beside me in the dark. He didn’t touch me, but his eyes were wide, scanning me with sharp focus. He had seen the darkness. He had felt the sudden drop in temperature.

“What was that?” Mal asked, his voice low and measured.

I forced myself to sit up, dragging the back of my hand across my mouth, locking my gaze onto his.

“That,” I rasped, forcing my guarded tone back into place, “was me keeping us alive. Now keep walking, Mal, before whatever is hunting us catches the scent.”

I pushed myself to my feet, legs shaking, daggers drawn, and stepped past him into the pitch-black heart of the dragon wilds—praying to whatever ancient gods were listening that Caspian was still breathing on the other side of the fire.

THIRTY-TWO

We put nearly two miles of dense, petrified woods between ourselves and the roaring wall of fire before the blistering heat finally faded from our backs.