The snake tilted its head as though it shrugged. “A priccce twassss asssked. The debt twassss paid.”
Sadie lunged forward, making to grab her axe. She missed the handle by millimeters and collapsed on the ground on her hands and knees.
“Fuck!” she screamed. “It’s happening again! I can’t see. I can’t—” She broke off. A deep, full body shudder ran through her. “No, no, no,” she muttered in strangled gasps. “This can’t be happening.”
“What? What is it?”
“The price is what you hold most dear,” Sadie murmured, her voice quivering. “Most dear ... no ...” She sank back on her haunches into a kneeling position. I could tell the minute her vision came back because she turned to me, tears filling her eyes.
“I can’t do it,” she whispered, her hands shaking as she looked down at them.
“Can’t do what?”
Her response was little more than a breath. I wouldn’t have heard it if I hadn’t been straining to listen.
“Fight.”
Behind me, the serpent waited, silent and poised, tongue flicking out before retracting it yet again. It didn’t need to speak.
The seed was already planted.
And gods help me ... it was starting to grow.
Chapter 29
Meera
I dreamed of a floating island.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had strange dreams, but this one felt different. Weightless, lucid, and painfully real.
The sky above stretched in an endless canvas of cobalt, painted with swirls of cloud. Beneath my feet, a bed of impossibly soft grass tickled my bare soles, vivid green and almost glowing. A low breeze whispered across the terrain, though nothing moved with it. The air smelled faintly of autumn.
In the center of the island, purple water cascaded down from a shallow pool, flowing like silk over smooth, dark stone. Each level of the waterfall spilled into another, forming perfect, concentric pools that spiraled out toward the edge before tumbling into infinity. The whole island hovered above a vast nothingness. No land. Just the sky below and an endless, terrifying void.
It was beautiful in a way that didn’t exist anywhere else. Majestic and haunting all at once. Enchanting and ethereal. It felt as old as time itself.
What appeared to be a place of calm and comfort, I felt nothing of the sort. Trepidation tiptoed through my psyche.
I stepped forward, drawn by a sound I couldn’t quite name—until it hit me with crystal clarity.
Vareck’s voice was low. Strained. Each word carried a heavy burden, the cause of which I didn’t understand yet. But gods, I felt it. I felt his pain before I saw him, and it tore at my very soul.
Kneeling on the grass, shoulders hunched, he looked like a man defeated. In front of him loomed a massive serpent; golden, beautiful, and dangerous. It coiled like liquid sunlight and towered over him, its scales catching the light of both the sun and moon as they existed simultaneously on opposite sides of the sky.
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t real.
“You musssst not truly feel it,”the serpent hissed. “Or you would doanythingto regain the bond.”
My chest squeezed tight, an invisible fist closing around my lungs. Each word it spoke slid over my body like oil, coating me, trying to suffocate my skin.
“Ican’tbring it back,”Vareck said. His voice cracked. “The ley line took it. There’s no going back.”
“But there issss,”the snake whispered, slithering forward. Its movement was hypnotic in the same way fire and flames captivated and held our attention .“Thereissssa way to bring it back.”It slithered closer to him.“The amulet. You sssstill have it, don’t you?”
I didn’t know how I’d gotten here. Whether this was a memory, a vision, a dream, or something far stranger I couldn’t yet comprehend. I felt the pull of his soul like a thread tied to mine, taut and trembling. Something deep and old, fraying in ways I hadn’t noticed until now. Tension coiled, low in my belly, nausea forming and taking hold.
The serpent laughed and hissed, “Liessss.” It tightened its body and flicked its tongue to taste the air. “Lying doessss not become you, curssssed king. You know where it issss. Even ifyou don’t carry the piecessss, they are sssstill yourssss. Hidden. Bound. Massssked by blood magic. Forever your burden to bear.”
