“Misses,” Ollie pleads, wings fluttering in agitation.
“Not now, Ollie. Later.” Even as I press ahead to the urgent matter at hand, his agitation twists my stomach into a pit of knots.
“Misses, I must tell you something!” His voice pitches into a frantic screech, but we’re already through the door.
Cage’s stride quickens as the antidote works through his system.
“What is the damage?” he asks sharply as we descend the stairs.
“Mutated crows. A lot dead. Iris, Kalix, and Tyran are in the ballroom holding the line. I baited Vyraxis in to assist.”
“Good.”
His silence lingers for a moment until we reach a turn in the hall. He stumbles occasionally, but I manage to keep him steady. “Vyraxis says the crows keep coming, but Felix, Iris, and Kalix are safe.”
Ahead, another wave of crows swoops toward us. I raise my hand, summoning fire. Blue and black flames roar from my palmreducing them to charred ash. The heat licks my skin. Beads of sweat prickle the back of my neck.
“How long have you been fighting?” he asks, shadows slithering around him like living smoke. “How is your energy level?” Tendrils whip upward and lash out, catching crows midair. Their bodies burst against the walls in a network of sheared wings and torn limbs.
“I am starting to feel it,” I admit. “It’s manageable.”
“You’ve lied to me enough. Not now.” His voice is hard steel. “If you begin to falter, I will feed you. Are we clear?” he commands. His words are not soft and tender. No. He is a leader, a commander. This is the first mage of the king
I nod quickly. “Yes.” I hate how much I mean it, but I can’t afford to have my magic go out on me. If my magic depletes, it will then turn to my life force until I shut down and enter stasis.
We reach the artifact room. The air is dense with the sound of screeching crows. These ones remain unmutated and normal sized, for now at least.
Cage releases me and takes my hand instead. His shadows tear across the room, dragging the crows down in knots of black. Dead birds crunch and squelch under our feet, smearing blood across the floor.
“If you care for Felix, Iris, or Kalix,” he says, reaching for the golden box with the faded inscriptionbound box of Morpheus, “you will bring me back.”
I freeze, staring. “Bring you back?”
He drops my hand. In one palm, he summons a strange, ceremonial blade. Its curved edge and obsidian hilt are carved from black stone instead of steel. Etching of an unfamiliar language pulses faintly across its surface.
Without hesitation, he pulls the blade across his own hand. Blood wells and drips from his fingers. He presses his palm to the golden box.
The incantation he speaks is foreign and guttural. As the words leave his mouth, the room darkens. The air thins, each breath becoming harder to draw.
Images flash in my mind—red, black, a four-armed creature tearing through flesh. The whispers return, layered and overlapping, voices too numerous to separate.
The chill that enters the air causes frost to spread across the floor beneath Cage. My breath fogs, and a deep-rooted wrongness slithers into the space…and into him.
Every crow drops dead, their bodies hitting the floor in unison. Beyond the door, the sounds of slaughter and screaming vanish. I rush to the hall—blood, bodies, silence. And indeed, they’re all dead.
“You did it,” I murmur, turning toward the box, toward Cage. The moment I look at him, something primal in me recoils. Then I remember his warning.
“Cage?” I step inside cautiously, approaching him from behind. He still doesn’t respond. I raise a trembling hand and press it to his shoulder. It’s ice cold. The wrongness of it sends nausea spinning through me.
A deep, unfamiliar chuckle rolls from his throat.
“There’s my special girl.”
He rises. When he turns, I freeze.
His eyes are bottomless black. The smile on his lips is carved in sadism.
“Cage?” I whisper.
