Chapter Forty-Three
D arkness trickles over my skin.
I try to make sense of my surroundings. I think I’m in Night’s prison. The hairs on my arms stand on end. The air feels colder, and it seems to move around me when in other dreams it felt stagnant.
I extend my arms and expect to touch the walls. There is nothing on either side of me. I gasp, and it echoes, as if I’m in a cavernous space. Fear prickles down my spine. I inch forward, searching for a wall to edge along so I can find the door.
There’s a scrape behind me, and my heart stops.
“Hello, little rabbit.” A whisper like silk, calm and smooth.
I turn. I release a breath as my eyes adjust. Blake strolls along the length of a wall I couldn’t see before. He seems to be inspecting something.
I swallow. “We’re in Night’s prison, aren’t we?” Even though I keep my voice soft, it echoes around us.
“Yes.”
I walk toward him. “What are you doing?”
“Look,” he whispers. He pats the wall, and as I get closer, I see what he’s looking at. There’s a hole in the black stone, big enough that either of us could walk through it. A current of cold air trickles through. “Something has escaped. It shouldn’t be possible. Only Ghealach ’s power could have caused this.”
“Does someone have the Heart of the Moon?” I ask. My blood turns colder.
“Doubtful. This doesn’t look like it was done intentionally. The moon shone brightly on the night you killed Sebastian. I’d warrant it happened then.”
“One of Night’s prisoners is on earth.”
“It seems so.”
My pulse quickens as I recall Kai’s account of the Dark Beast. “Do you think that the prisoner that has escaped is at the Grey Keep, with Alexander?”
Blake runs a hand along his jaw. “That seems likely.”
I think of my mother’s stories about dark monsters, soul-suckers, winged beasts. “Who do you think got out?”
Blake crouches and picks something up. Its thin, and black, and covered in scales. It looks like a piece of skin, shed by a serpent, and one of the images I saw in one of the books I found at Lowfell comes back to me. As he rubs it between his finger and thumb, it dissolves into a wisp of shadow.
Blake’s expression darkens. “Something I really wish was still here.”
The cell disintegrates around me and I fall through darkness.
I jolt onto my feet. I’m somewhere else. Pain screams through my body. My skin pulls taut on my arms, and there are hundreds of hooks piercing my skin and holding me upright. They’re in my legs, my feet, my shoulders. There are translucent strings attached to them that extend into a cloud of darkness above me.
My lips are sewn shut, so my scream cannot escape. Tears well in my eyes.
I’ve been here before. It’s my nightmare. I’m a marionette, controlled by an invisible hand in the palace’s moonlit throne room. Around me, courtiers dance. They don’t notice my anguish. They don’t notice my silent scream.
My father’s gold-adorned throne sits on the dais ahead. It’s embellished with suns that glint in the moonlight. Its shadow swallows me.
Music and merriment floods the space. My invisible puppeteer moves the control handle, and I start to spin. I try to free myself, but I’m trapped.
I’m jerked to a halt.
The music stops. The courtiers are frozen in time. My heart clenches, because this is new and I don’t know what happens next.
Loud footsteps click against the flagstones. The air stirs as Blake walks past me, up the steps to the dais, and he drops onto the throne as if it were made for him. He leans back and props an elbow on the arm.
“Isn’t this horrifying?” he says. Moonlight illuminates one side of his face. The other is cast in darkness.
I try to speak, and I taste my own blood.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” His gaze travels up the strings to the control bar, which is cloaked in shadow. “Who controls you? Who would I find, if I climbed to the top, I wonder? Your father? Brother? Callum? Me? Perhaps your mother, or something more abstract—like duty, or honor. Has it ever occurred to you that you are the one pulling the strings? That you are binding yourself? That you could break free, if you wished it?” He drums his fingers along the arm of the throne. “Probably not.”
I try to pull against the hooks, and warm blood dribbles down my arms.
“You looked like a queen tonight,” he muses. “You could be one, if you wished it. Philip sleeps in my infirmary. You could creep down there while the castle sleeps. There’s a beaker of water on the table beside him. A few drops of wolfsbane would do the trick. I would do it for you, if you asked me. Your father is old. He will die, eventually, and when he does, the throne would be yours.”
He stands and straightens his coat. He strolls down the dais and stops in front of me.
“It pains me to see you like this, darling.” I’m not sure if he’s telling the truth. “Think about what I said.”
He slips his hands into his pockets and walks away. His footsteps fade. The floor opens up.
I’m falling through endless darkness once more.
***
I jolt upright in my bed. My skin is clammy, and the sheets stick to me. I can’t control my wild pulse. The night is still dark, but I can’t go back to sleep. I was dreaming of Night’s prison. I was dreaming of Blake.
With shaky fingers, I light the candle beside the bed. I pull the book that has answers about our bond from beneath my pillow. I start to read.
The light of dawn is straining through my window when my eyes snag on a particular page in the book. Realization slams into me with brutal force. An emotion I can’t understand threatens to tear me apart.
I dress hurriedly. I grab the tome and earmark it at the appropriate page. I hurry out of my room—almost tripping over the male who sleeps against the wall. He has a bushy red beard and a blue kilt. I recognize him from when Callum first took me from the Borderlands. Fergus, I think his name is.
He doesn’t stir as I hurry down the stairs. So much for keeping guard.
I need to speak to Blake.