Chapter Thirty-One
The dream returned every time she closed her eyes. And every time it worsened.
This time she was back in the cavern, sprawled out, with water dripping somewhere beyond sight and vines creeping over the stone toward her. They caught her wrists and ankles, wound around her body, and pulled tighter when she fought them. Somewhere behind her, someone struggled for breath.
She lifted her head just enough that her princes came into view.
They were dying.
Pain struck her before she could scream for them. It hit harder than Zuri’s knife ever had, rolling through her body in waves that left her shaking against her bindings. Yet even as she clawed at air and struggled for breath, she knew one thing with sick certainty.
She had made the promise to love them both without letting either suffer for it.
That promise meant taking the pain. Taking it so they would live.
She would do anything, give anything, to save them. Anything the cavern demanded of her.
And it demanded this.
Ina clenched her teeth and endured the next wave tearing into her. Her sight blurred. Streaks of light crossed her closed eyes while the agony seared through her again. She forced them open.
A pair of blue eyes, clear as sapphires and just as cold, watched her from the depths of the black.
The voice came from the stone itself.
“So there’s a new barley queen.”
Ina tried to answer. Her throat refused to work.
“I should pay my respects.”
She pulled against the vines and fought for enough breath to speak.
“Yes, I should,” the voice went on. “It’s finally time.”
“Time for what?!” Ina gasped at last.
The blue eyes locked with hers, and something in them sent a freezing shiver down her spine more hateful than the pain.
“Time for me to be free.”