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The Dark is everywhere—I put it there, and now I can’t call it back. I wasn’t ready for what was so eager to burst from my veins. I keep those shadows in check, the pain that is etched deep in me. My soul is entirely scar tissue, and my teacher has taught me to wield that pain as well as my sword.

I am a honed weapon. And somehow, I still wasn’t able to protect her.

She’s gone, in the arms of my brother, leaving me to deal with the trail of blood he left behind him. I can hardly think—my mind flooded with what he might be doing to her . . . or with her. She’s a smart girl. And a hell of a fighter. But she has no idea what he is, no idea what we’re standing against. With every blink I see her hazel eyes frozen in death, that white dress stained with her blood, that impish smirk vanished from her lips.

I have to find her.

I tell myself it’s duty, allegiance to my teacher. But really, who am I kidding? I know what she is to my brother, and still my heart is stupid enough to follow her like a lovesick pup. I will die wanting her. I will die protecting her. If she perishes tonight, I will chase her into the afterlife. Life for life, death for death.

Chapter Seventeen

Ithought I knew the Dark. I thought I knew what monsters were. But lying in the coffin of my bloodmate, the box too small for me to extend my arms or lift my feet, I know a better, truer definition of darkness.

This is my fate. This is what choosing the onyx stone and making that bargain with Saint Nona have secured for me. I have always been an expert maker of poor decisions, but this might’ve been my worst.

That, and ever dancing with Galvin.

I don’t know what magic is on the coffin, but nothing I do can seem to budge its lid. I even tried to use my Dark magic, clasping the timepiece around my neck and whispering verses—some old, their scars long dulled, and some newly created. But it’s like my magic doesn’t exist here, like this is some inert dead space.

So there is nothing to do but think. And wait. And worry. My mind has always been painfully visual, and I try to ignore the images flashing through my thoughts—Poppy and Hugo, and what they could be enduring at the hands of the spirits of Gossemort. Orla and Ollinde too. I wonder if they managed to slip away from the horrors of the first trial. I never saw them after the feast. And, Saints, even Lonan. Whatever tonight brings, I want him to live. Imagining Gossemort without him is like trying to think of the night without stars.

My thoughts rattle in my head, like they’re bouncing chaotically off the walls of this coffin. And with every passing moment, it’s more difficult to stay calm, even with my broken heart, even with the coolness under pressure that I’ve always been so proud of. Because here, in this small, dark box, there’s nothing I can do—no action I can pour myself into.

I’ve never done well in small spaces, never done well with restraints. Rules, direction, orders—I want to break them as soon as they’re issued. I’m a person who runs into forbidden woods and climbs haunted clock-towers. The coffin is suffocating.

I tell myself to breathe slowly, to save oxygen, but the more I think it, the harsher my breaths come. How much time has passed? A minute? An hour? There is no light, no sound, and the absence of something to see, touch, do. My body begins shaking. I clench my fists tight, hold them against my chest. My breaths come quick and harsh.

And then I feel the brush of something against my ankle. I jerk my leg, my breaths coming in quick, panicked pants. Did I imagine it? But then I feel another brush under the back of my thigh—something small and crawling. I gasp and squeal, squirming to get away, to squish it, to kill it. The backs of my arms are flat against the bottom of the coffin, and I feel the next one crawl from the wood itself. Something like a centipede latches on to my sleeve with small, featherlight legs and crawls up my body.

I tear at the lid of the coffin till the wood rips my nails back from the beds of my fingers. I welcome the pain that comes like hot needles. It anchors me, gives my thoughts something to hold on to in the chaos. This is the secret truth of the scars that mar my body, the verses I carved there myself with my Dark magic. I say I loathe the Dark I’m forced to use, and in some sense that’s true.

But the feel of it? The loosening of my feelings, the defrosting of my frigid heart, the sweet release of the chaos and pent-up everything I keep tightly wound within—I fucking love that.

Tiny legs tickle the back of my neck.

Please stop. Please stop. Breathe.

I can’t.

My whole body tenses and vibrates. And then I’m screaming. In the meager space I have to move my limbs, I thrash and pound against the lid of the coffin. I can feel them by the dozens now, finding their way around my ankles, brushing over the arches of my feet, crawling up my neck into my hair, around my ears. Their tiny bodies squish beneath me. My hands are sticky with the juice of their mangled forms.

I flatten one with my palm, feeling its soft body break against my chest. But then I feel a sharp sting in the back of my hand, the pierce of small razorlike teeth. I gasp at the blinding pain. My hand throbs as venom quickly attacks my veins.

Not this. Not this. Anything but this.

Legs and soft underbellies cover my face. A body twists between my toes. When I curl them on reflex, the cretin hisses and sinks its teeth into the bottom of my foot. I kick and struggle, and small pincer teeth stab at my calf, my neck, my cheek. They’re bigger now—like snakes with many legs. I close my eyes and mouth, screaming with lips sealed tight. My throat is raw.

This is madness and drowning and chaos.

Chaos. For a sliver of a moment, one clear thought breaks through my panic. This is still the Ridding. The chaos trial is still going. I’m imprisoned in a coffin, trapped here by the prince. But the spirits of Gossemort use even that to test me.

Order. I need order. I need self-control. Breathebreathebreathe.

It takes every ounce of training, all the mental strength I have, to stop fighting. I lie still as a corpse and allow the multiped creatures to slither over me. A bite beneath my jaw. One to my shoulder. I’m still stiff as a board, but I don’t cry out.

Order. Order. Order.

I breathe out through my nose, and slowly, muscle by muscle, I force my body to relax. And finally, I feel their bodies curl back, slip away, wriggle back into the darkness till I am alone again.