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I felt the faint impact against my chest. I wrapped my arms tightly around her. :I’ve got you.:

Then I reached for Rik.

Stretching. A thin, winding strand of what had been our bond. Impossibly thin. So far.

The Screaming Madness wailed in a tearing, howling maelstrom of cutting blades and slashing teeth, eating away at that thin, delicate thread. Determined to break it. Tear me from my anchor. The Eleusinian Mysteries still held, but the veil felt as thin as my bond. As far away as home from this place beyond the universe. The cold, empty expanse of nothingness. Filled only with hunger.

I saw myself. Hunched over a body. My face covered in blood. My hands gripping flesh and strings of entrails I’d ripped loose in my desperate, all-consuming hunger. I didn’t want to look at his face. Terrified it might be Rik. He’d let me send him into the cursed blood circle with Tanza. He’d do it again. In a heartbeat. He certainly wouldn’t protect himself from me. If he thought he could satisfy my hunger…

He would let me do anything. Anything at all.

Gulping with huge, messy sobs, I looked at the face. Not Rik.

Warwick.

The accusing look of condemnation on his face made me cringe. “You promised.”

I promised not to feed on him. Not until he was willing.

Yet now I’d eaten a hole in him. Stealing not just his blood but also his flesh.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the sight. Not true. I would never. Not Rik. Not Warwick. No one. I would order Guillaume to take my head before I’d ever harm someone like that. Even at my worst. Even when I was mad with hunger…

Goddess. I shuddered. Please. Don’t let my hunger ever harm someone I love. Please. I would rather be dead.

:Shara!:

So faint, a bare whisper, slipping through the dissonance screaming all around me. But that single word rang like a clear, sweet bell inside me, aligning all the discordant agony. Wiping it from my memory.

Rik’s voice. Reaching for me. Calling me back. My anchor. My rock. Always.

I reached for him. Straining to pull myself free of the sludge in the portal. So close I could feel his fingers in my hair. The sensation of jaws wrapped around my midsection. The dragging pull of their strength threatened to tear me in half.

Triskeles. The Mother figurine’s head reaches the ceiling, a huge, giant totem adding Her weight to the table. To us. Trying to pull us back.

Our siblings. The weight of so much blood. So much power. Pouring into the table. Into us.

But Shara can’t break free.

It’s not enough.

62

SHARA

Ihovered above the Skolos table like a faint, wavering ghost. Undina and Nuri sat at their version of the Triune table, blue light flowing over their jellyfish blobs. Water and light flowed around them, mixed with the dark, sleek shapes of sharks and whales circling Undina’s coral nest. One seat empty, where Basilia was supposed to be.

Flash.

I hovered over the Triune figurine, the first one I had ever seen in Rome. Marne Ceresa’s table hadn’t been a table at all. Just a pedestal in the center of a sparkling geode cave beneath the sound of crashing, pounding waves. I could see the darkened impressions in the rocky floor where the three queens had once stood around the Great Mother.

Marne Ceresa. Jeanne Viennois. Desideria Modron. Three formidable queens who’d terrorized the Aima courts in their bloodthirsty rise to power.

Now their seats at the Mother’s table lay empty. The table barren, devoid of power. Devoid of blood.

If even one of its queens still lived, that might have been enough power to sway the balance. Tip the scales in my favor enough to break me free of the Screaming Madness.

Flash.