Chapter 13
Adara jolted at the light graze on her lower back, but relaxed as she realized it was only Dominic’s hand gently guiding her forward.
Through the darkness, they walked, an eerie silence surrounding them.
An odd smell burned her nostrils. The deeper they ventured into the cave, the stronger the stench of carrion grew.
Adara scuffed her feet against the ground, feeling for anything she might trip over before taking another step.
Dominic—surely irritated with her slow movements and lack of trust in him—surprisingly never pushed her onward, letting her move at her own pace.
After a few agonizingly long minutes, he tugged at the back of her tunic, stopping her in her tracks.
His breath caressed her ear and she shuddered.
A sheet of cold enveloped her backside as Dominic pressed her against the cave wall.
Fingers trailed up her left forearm where her vambrace encircled her arm, and her breath caught in her throat.
Dominic’s fingers curled around hers, pressing her dagger firmly in her palm before falling away.
“Wait here. I’m going to take a look around,” he whispered. His voice was barely audible, but that didn’t stop it from echoing around the cave.
Afraid her voice would attract the Whisperer, Adara didn’t respond.
Only listened, ears straining as his footsteps left her.
The world was suddenly too quiet. Like she’d been cut off from everyone and everything.
Like the cell she was kept in after the Shadow Empire’s experiments, so they could monitor her without the influence of the others.
So still and silent and insufferable to be left alone with her own thoughts for days on end with no one and nothing but herself and the four walls that surrounded her, which could not be penetrated, not even by sound.
No one had ever heard her cries for help.
Dominic silently disappeared into the dark recesses of the cavern, but Adara felt the absence of his presence like a yawning chasm between them. One wrong step, and she’d plummet to her death.
Darkness. A deep, unending void that reeked of blood and grime.
The abyss suffocated her, sucking the breath right out of her lungs.
It swallowed her. Her breathing turned ragged, blood rushing through her ears, head pounding as she struggled to get enough air.
A dungeon. Dark and cold. Smelling of death and blood and sweat and waste. Could she really be back?
It was only a matter of time before they brought her out of the cell to be tortured again.
She didn’t know what was worse: anxiously waiting in the dark for the moment the monsters would jump out and take one of them, or the actual pain they endured.
Or even the aftermath of her friends trying to hold one another, comfort them, but being unable to see in their dim cell, Adara could only feel.
Feel the blood that pooled beneath her friends as she frantically checked for a pulse.
Feel the shallow rise and fall of their chests as she tried to blindly staunch their wounds.
The only hope she had was the hope not to feel one of them come back, utterly still, lifeless.
She could only hope they’d come back at all.
Gagging on the putrid smell, she closed her eyes against the darkness.
At least this way, she was in control. Even though she knew there was no possible way for her to be back in the dungeons of the Shadow Empire, she still rapidly sucked in shallow breaths through gritted teeth, fighting against the pressure in her head.
Something warm and wet slicked her fingers. Whose blood was on her hands now?
Callan, Alecsander, Fallon, Draven, Kiara—all of theirs were.
Gods, their blood was everywhere—hers included. It stained the filthy, cold stone floor, crusted on the twenty-seven shadow steel bars that held them captive, coated their tattered clothes, and scabbed on their skin, broken open day after day after day until there was almost nothing left to bleed.
She was supposed to save them. She was created by the gods to fix their mistakes. She was made with the fire of a thousand suns, meant to eradicate the darkness threatening to take over. And she could either save them or burn down the entire world.
The ground rocked and tilted. Adara’s head spun, suffocating in the darkness of that cell. In the blood pooling on the floor, dampening her clothes, her skin. She gasped and gasped, but there was no air to be found.
Just like there was no sign of her friends to help her this time.
Because they were dead. They were all dead because Adara’s plan of escape got them slaughtered. All except for her.
And now she was back in the dungeon. All alone.
No one was coming to save her.
She couldn’t move. Apprehension churned in her gut.
It felt as if her lungs had been strung up with a noose.
Adara clutched the hilt of her dagger with sweat-slick palms, holding it to her chest like a lifeline in this sea of madness.
Sweat coated her hands, not blood. Her fist clenched tighter around her dagger, a tether that brought her back to reality.
She would not have a weapon if she were in the dungeons.
The Whisperer, she reminded herself.
But she was still trapped. Trapped in the darkness with no way out. Alone with no hope of escape.
Her breathing intensified, shallow and heavy as she tried to calm her rapid heartbeat.
The sound echoed in her ears like a war drum.
She couldn’t tell if it was the cave playing tricks on her, or if her panic was truly as thunderous as she believed it to be.
She prayed the Whisperer could not hear her hammering heart.
Tendrils of darkness wrapped around her lungs like a serpent, constricting tighter and tighter until she was gasping for breath. One hand still clutched her knife tightly to her chest while the other blindly stretched out in front of her, searching wildly for anything to grasp onto—anyone.
But Dominic was no longer around. And neither was Cal—the one who always lit up the dark when she couldn’t find a way out.
She missed Cal’s forest green eyes that had seen the good in everything.
But her last memory of those eyes—of the boy that had given them all hope—was tainted with hopelessness in the face of death.
If he had lost all hope in humanity, that meant there was nothing left to put faith in.
For if Callan could not find the good in the world, then there must be none left.
But his death, along with Kiara’s, Draven’s, Fallon’s, and Alecsander’s, was what kept revenge burning like a beacon in her heart.
She had been foolish to believe they could all make it out alive. Everyone she grew close to died on her, like she was a plague that sucked the life out of everything she touched.
Adara knew that one of them wasn’t going to make it out alive in this war of broken hearts.
And it certainly wasn’t going to be her who ended up dead.
Breathe, she told herself through the dizziness sweeping through her mind. Through the bile rising in her throat and the memories threatening to take her back to that cell.
She had no idea how large the cave was, and if Dominic had sensed any indication of her trepidation, he clearly didn’t care enough to soothe her worries.
What if he left her? Guided her into the cave, lied in order to leave her, then went back out to the safety of the forest. How utterly stupid she had been to trust him.
Out of spite, she almost whispered his name, deeming him the Whisperer’s next victim.
The only thing stopping her was his knowledge of how to forge the Realm Fracturer and the need for the power his key possessed.
She lifted a hand, tempted to rip the blindfold off and run back out into the forest. Refraining, her hand lowered, fists clenched at her side, nails digging in deep enough to draw blood as she tried not to fall back into the past.
Heat flared beneath her skin, but whatever immunity the Whisperer had to magic kept it suppressed beneath the surface, which meant it could be near, ready to slaughter her while she stood by, unaware, waiting for Dominic to return.
She doubted he would.
“Itryla al rone yi mon taka,” Adara whispered, drawing Infinova from its scabbard at her side.
She held the sword in one hand, dagger in the other, poised to strike, listening intently for anything that would give away the Whisperer’s position.
With or without Dominic, Adara would fight blindly if she had to.
A noise sounded to her left. Adara pivoted toward it, weapons raised.
A whisper to her right. A footstep behind her—wait, her back was to a wall.
A breath of air that reeked of death on her cheeks.
She thrust her sword forward, but was met with air, still moving steadily against her skin like someone’s breathing.
Whispers resounded all around the cave, unintelligible, even as they crescendoed louder and louder until Adara could no longer hear the beating of her own fear-stricken heart.
Something sharp ran up her arm, the familiar sting of a blade threatening to break skin.
A claw, she noted as it traveled up higher, taunting, but not enough to make her bleed—yet.
Adara whirled, sword slashing for the creature, connecting with nothing once again. She felt a whoosh of air to her right.
Come now, little flame, its raspy voice whispered in her ear. Time to be doused.
All the heat beneath her skin, the familiar warmth of her flames, turned to ice. Chills ran across her bones, like a blanket of snow had been dumped over her as the creature circled her, whispering threats in her ear.
She wildly swung her sword and dagger, trying to find its body in the darkness and slice it to ribbons. That was, if the Whisperer even had skin and could bleed. It felt like nothing but a figment of her imagination. A demon in her mind she could do nothing against.
A singular claw scraped down her spine. Adara froze, took a deep breath, letting it think she’d been paralyzed with fear. Then she spun on her heel, plunging her sword deep into the darkness.
There was no familiar resistance of her blade breaking through skin, slicing through innards, but the air stilled. Warmth flooded back to her as the Whisperer’s presence disappeared. She let out a shaky breath and stood up straighter, rolling her shoulders back.
Though her weapons struck nothing, Adara wondered if she’d somehow killed it. But she still needed the eye, and if it was dead, there was only one way to find out. Sword dangling from one hand, her other sheathed her dagger then reached to pull the blindfold off.
“Look out!” a shout reverberated across the cavern. A warning from Dominic—panicked and breathless.
Before Adara could lift her sword to defend herself, something slammed into her.