Chapter 8
Eight
Adelasia
I know this place. I hate this place.
Deep in the Blackwood lies the Well of Eternity. It’s the birthplace of magic and meant to be a reverent, silent place for worshippers of the Dark Goddess.
Instead, it’s chaotic. Thunder booms overhead. Wind sends naked trees scraping against each other like claws. Shadows stir at the edge of the water, twisting into the shapes of nightmares.
Standing opposite from me like a rotted reflection of a monster I’m slowly becoming, Yekaterina stands. Spine straight, hands boney, one eye a deep, malicious red and the other a hollow crevice where I pulled it from her skull.
Her broken headdress glistens with wet blood, and her mouth is stretched into a strong scowl of displeasure.
I let out a shaky breath. “You’re not real,” I say to her. “None of this is.”
Her frown twists into a smile. “Reality is whatever we choose to make it.”
I blink, and the other nine priestesses in their blackened veils stand in a line with their sister.
Amatisi is at Yekaterina’s side, holding the hand of a shaking figure dressed in pure white robes. She pushes the figure downward and rips the veil off.
On the ground, dirtied with mud and dried blood, is a woman with blue eyes that have always looked at me with nothing but love.
I fall to my knees, the very marrow of my bones losing their strength.
“Mother,” I whisper, crawling to her. As I reach for her, she disappears.
Yekaterina snickers. “Return the magic you stole from the Well. We wouldn’t want poor Mummy to suffer the consequences of your foolishness, would we?”
“I didn’t steal anything! Please–”
“Liar!” Yekaterina shouts, her voice cracking across the sky like thunder. “The Well is dry because you drank from it!”
The sky fractures as red lightning shoots down from the sky as it did when I was here before. The Well ripples and bends.
Then I blink, and I’m somewhere else this time. Another place I recognize, and another place I hate.
The Blackwood.
I’m on my knees in the forest, blood soaking my hands. At my feet, Saddiq’s body lies still, mauled and missing an arm. I wail like an animal as I throw myself over him, weeping for the friend I lost in that wretched place.
My voice splits the trees and the rocks and the soil around us, and I’m in another place.
My dance studio.
The mirrors are shattered and vines suffocate the walls.
My body is contorted into a shape my body doesn’t remember learning, and magic spills out of my fingers and toes with no direction.
No control. I can’t stop it. It grows and grows and I can’t move or think clearly.
I can only watch as it reaches for Kaius. Then Rowan. Then Kaius. Then Rowan.
Over and over, it slashes at them violently while I can do nothing but stare with hollow eyes.
My vision begins to go blurry, and one of them lies before me, but I can’t tell which.
No discerning features distinguish the body.
No wings. No white hair. No eye color begging me for mercy that I can remember.
Just a dead body.
And my hands are covered in the blood.