Chapter 38
Seren
I barely noticed the approach of booted feet as I rested on the ground, tears seeping from the corners of my eyes into the dust below me.
A hand grasped my throat, and the bolt was yanked from me, ripping my flesh further.
My eyes flew open, startled. I gasped for air, unable to draw it into my lungs as the damage on my chest blistered to life.
Seth loomed over me, every inch of his face filled with hatred. “You and Westhaven are finally going to die, Seren. Dragon’s blood has no antidote and that bolt was drenched in it.”
My brow furrowed together, my body quivered uncontrollably.
But then I saw it.
Deep inside his pupils, a glowing yellow light.
What the hell?
Before I could answer, Seth stalked away, leaving me in the dark space. The barest flicker of torchlight glowed in the distance.
Where was I?
A dungeon of Emberstone?
My thoughts were clearer now, despite the excruciating pain.
I had no idea how long had passed or where Rykr, Tara, or my friends were.
Whatever magic Rykr had used in the alley must have kept me alive, for now—maybe he’d even found a way to pass some of his ability to heal to me through the bond. I should be dead, shouldn’t I?
But that wouldn’t save me from dragon’s blood.
Seth had betrayed us. He’d gone to Haldron. Who knew what he’d told him, but it might mean that my father and Thorne would be walking into a trap. That Esme might never be found.
Tears slipped down my cheeks, and I wiped them away with trembling hands, sitting. Each breath was agony, the metallic tang of blood in the back of my throat. I had no spell powder to heal myself with.
Maybe if I froze the wound from the bolt, to keep it from bleeding …
I set my fingertips against the hole in my vest, gasping and swallowing a scream. Closing my eyes, I tried to conjure the magic that had been a part of me since birth.
The tingle in my hands, that sign that my powers were failing, rushed into my palms instead.
Dammit.
“Rykr,” I croaked out into the bond. The doorway to his mind was firmly shut, though. He couldn’t hear me, or he wasn’t letting me in. Gods knew why.
I was alone here—wherever the hell I was—and I was dying.
I struggled to my feet, the pain nearly unbearable. I needed to get my bearings, figure out what options I had, if any.
Heading toward the distant glow of light, I hunched over, keeping one arm tight against my wound. The only hope I had lay in the fact that they hadn’t killed me yet … at least not outright. But Seth had bragged about hitting me with a dragon’s blood bolt, which meant that death would be imminent.
Not yet, though.
Maybe Haldron wanted to torment me for a while longer.
But what had that glow in Seth’s eyes meant?
Seth wasn’t a skinwraith. And the vuk hadn’t been either—even though I had jumped to that conclusion after Giulia.
Which meant this had to be something else. Something I hadn’t considered.
My head ached so severely that it felt as though a spike had gone through my skull.
I appeared to be in some sort of narrow corridor chiseled out of stone. Each step toward the light made me wonder if this wasn’t all just part of Haldron’s plan—to lure me into something else. But what choice did I have? Curl up and die?
Another step took me past a doorway, and I trembled as I went past. The stone door groaned shut behind me, and the sound echoed through the narrow corridor like the final toll of a death knell.
I flinched, not at the sound itself, but at the silence that followed—a stifling, unnatural stillness that pressed against my ears, my skin, my very bones.
I was alone.
The quivering torchlight ahead of me died with the closing of the doors, leaving only a dim, shifting glow from some unseen source—I could barely see.
I reached out toward the wall, using it to guide myself forward. It was slick with moisture, the rough surface veined with roots that pulsed faintly beneath the stone, like veins in a corpse. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of damp earth, moss … and blood.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, loud enough to drown out my thoughts.
I forced a breath through clenched teeth, willing myself forward.
I know what this is. The first of the Skorn trials.
The Hall of Echoes. A place designed to strip you bare, to drag your deepest fears into the light and watch you bleed beneath their weight.
“You should have let him die.”
The voice slithered through the darkness, soft and cold, like frost creeping over glass. I froze mid-step, my pulse leaping into my throat. I turned, scanning the shadows behind me.
Nothing. Just the oppressive dark, the flicker of distant, failing light.
“You should have let him die.”
Closer this time, almost brushing against my ear. I spun again, my heart pounding so hard it hurt.
“Who’s there?” The sound was brittle in the vast, empty space.
Silence answered.
I forced my feet to move. The corridor narrowed as I pressed forward, the walls closing in until my shoulders nearly brushed the slick, pulsing stone. My fingers itched to reach for a weapon, but mine had been taken away. And this wasn’t a battle of blades. It was a battle of the soul.
“You can’t save them.”
I clenched my jaw, pushing the voice aside. It wasn’t real. None of this was real.
Up ahead, a faint glow became brighter, as though moonlight spilled through a window cut into the tunnel. Silvery, cold, and eerie.
Illuminating her.
Esme.
She stood at the edge of the dim light, her small figure fragile and still.
Her clothes—the Vangar leathers that had been too big for her the first night of her training—were torn, the fabric stained dark with dirt and …
blood. Her hair hung in tangled clumps around her face, and her eyes—gods, her eyes—were too wide, too empty.
My breath hitched. My legs moved without permission, carrying me forward as my heart clawed against my ribs.
“Esme?” I whispered, the word tasting like ash in my mouth.
She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stood there, staring at me with that hollow, soulless gaze.
“Why didn’t you save me?”
Her voice filled the air around me, seeped into my skin like poison.
“I—I tried,” I gasped, my voice shaking. “I tried, Esme.”
“But you failed.”
The corridor trembled with the words. The shadows stretched, lengthened, and bled into the space around her. I stumbled forward, reaching like I could pull her from this nightmare, from my failure. My heart screamed at me to move faster, to do something, but my legs felt like stone.
“No, listen to me, Esme. I wanted to save you. I wanted to go with Father.”
“I’ve been in Emberstone this whole time, Seren. I was in the keep, watching when you came in with your lover. But you were too distracted to see me. Too worried about him. Too busy fucking to look for me.”
I was only inches from her now and the impact of her words seared me. Was it true? Had she been there? I swallowed back thick saliva. Is that what she really believed? That I’d been thinking of Rykr—of myself—more than her?
With a struggled breath, I set my hands on her frail shoulders as tears left her eyes. “No, Esme. No. I just didn’t know—I-I had no idea that Haldron had taken you.”
I lifted my hand to her cheek and swiped the tear from her skin.
Ice-cold skin. Scaly.
A smile on her face spread, too wide, too horrifying to be human.
My heart froze with terror. This wasn’t Esme.
The Nyxwraiths.
The hands wrapped around my wrists, sharp, long claws biting into my skin. I’d made the creature more real by believing its poisoned lies and now it had grabbed hold of me.
“Let me go,” I screamed, trying desperately to pull my hands away.
The grip tightened. “I am you. I am a part of you. You share your soul with mine.”
In the blink of an eye, Esme’s small form morphed, her body elongating, her skin rippling as if something inside her struggled to break free. My breath came in ragged gasps as her human teeth sharpened to jagged points.
No, no, no.
My feet sank into the floor like it had turned to tar.
“You could have saved her,” she whispered, her voice warping, splitting into two voices—one Esme’s, one Rykr’s.
The walls pulled away, stretching infinitely in all directions—no ceiling, no floor, just endless dark. Rykr stood where she had been. His face was carved in cold stone, his blue-green eyes void of the warmth I’d come to rely on.
“You chose wrong,” he said. “You should have let me die.”
The veins of my arms had turned a horrifying blue, from where the Nyxwraith clung to me, as though feeding off my body as it became more corporeal.
“You’re nothing to me. I’ll choose my kingdom over you.”
I staggered back, the breath ripped from my lungs. “No,” I whispered, but the word felt thin, fragile, like it could shatter under his gaze.
“You could have saved her,” he continued, stepping closer, his expression hardening into something cruel, unfamiliar.
“But you chose me. You bound yourself to me.” His lips curled into a bitter smile.
“And I will betray you. I will never choose you in the end, Seren. I have a duty to something bigger, more important, than you. You’re frail.
My weakest link. Not strong enough to be my queen.
If I survive tonight, it won’t be because of you. ”
The words hit deeper than I wanted to admit. Because, beneath the surface, a part of me—the part I tried to bury, to smother—believed him.
He was going to leave me. I knew that. He’d told me he had to leave.
But I didn’t want that. I wanted him to choose me, however impossible that was. However selfish that was.
“You’re weak.”
“You can’t save anyone.”
“Why would I ever choose you?”
The whispers merged with his voice, rising in a chorus that drowned out reason, smothered me under the weight of my own guilt. The shadows thickened, and from within them, more shapes began to emerge.
More Nyxwraiths.