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Lavender’s eyes shudder and Delilah looks elsewhere.

‘Of course. You should talk to him,’ Lavender says in a strained voice that makes me want to cry all over again. I nod, not trusting myself to speak.

In the treeline, I can see Walker’s silhouette lingering, pacing back and forth, back where we’d almost been taken. I suppose he’s replenished enough of his reserves to linger where the first star fell.

My heart pinches at the sight.

Does it make me weak, that even now, pissed and irreparably damaged, I’m relieved we won’t be set apart in the afterlife.

I take a single step into the forest. From my left I hear a sharp squawk.

Close.

Far too close.

I look ahead at Walker, our eyes lock.

‘Miller, run!’ I hear him shout.

But before I can, I feel that same hot breath on my face, those same sinewy claws have gripped me. And before I have a chance to fight, I’m taken.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Dungeon

When I come to, it’s in a decrepit dungeon that looks like it’s been transferred from the middle ages. Everything looks and feels dark. The lighting is scant, flames cast the dungeon in a crimson hue; they flicker in sconces lining the walls. There’s some sort of fatty substance that slicks every surface, and the straw beneath me smells like it’s gone through the digestive tract of a donkey with IBS. Believe it or not, not the worst place I’ve woken up.

‘Miller, wake up.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ I groan as I push myself up onto an elbow. Stars, this place sucks. Literally. I feel like every breath I take is being sucked from my mouth.

Walker lets out a sigh of relief. ‘You’re alright.’

I wouldn’t go that far. ‘Yes. I’ve been stabbed, kidnapped, imprisoned, but in a relative sense, sure. I’m alright.’

He sighs through the bars. The bars look like they’re made of some sort of solid smoke. They confine and separate us from one another. ‘I’m so—’ he starts.

‘So deceptive? So misleading? So untrustworthy?’ I list off with my fingers.

‘Will you continue to catalogue my synonyms, or will I be permitted to apologise?’

‘You have no right bringing that kind of sass into this conversation right now,’ I snap. ‘And I don’t want your useless apology, I want some fucking answers. I am so fucking confused. Where the heck even are we?’

‘The Black Star,’ he says. ‘Well, in the bowels of the Black Star, more accurately.’ Ah. So that’s what that smell is. Wait a minute⁠—

‘Are we in the literal…?’

Walker looks at the walls with distaste and nods.

‘I don’t suppose you control these shadows.’

‘Obviously not, or we wouldn’t be in here.’

He runs his hand through his hair, and I see that same glowing tattoo on his wrist. ‘What’s that thing on your wrist?’ Fuck, I should have been more inquisitive earlier in the game. As it turns out, curiosity is only an instigator – ignorance is the thing that kills the cat nine times out of ten.

Walker looks down at it with an unholy fury burning in his eyes. ‘It’s the reason I can’t do anything to get us out of here. It’s a leash. It keeps me tied to here.’

‘How?’