Somewhere distant, Amryssa began to scream. A cry bubbled up my throat, too, but I sealed it behind pursed lips. The prince couldn’t possibly reach safety now, and I wanted to see my triumph. I wanted to watch him fall apart.
But he only raised a hand in—what? Threat? Acknowledgment? Each finger narrowed to a point. Toxic violet light gleamed on wicked claws.
Another mirage, like the burrowing shadows, but this one mirrored the truth. Kyven was a monster. The letter in my armoire drawer proved it.
Pain ripped through my chest, and I glanced down to find my fingernails gouging furrows into my flesh. I forced the offending hand back to the railing. Time to go.
I leaned out. Hot blood seeped into my neckline while my hair thrashed around my face like cracking whips. “Die screaming,” I shouted, then staggered inside and threw myself onto the bed. I fastened my chains with desperate urgency.
And not a moment too soon, because the storm broke over the manor. Double-jointed creatures streamed from the corners, their mouths and eyes in all the wrong places, their limbs too spindly to make sense. They snatched at my clothes while black thoughts billowed through my mind.
You are nothing. You are worthless.
I screamed. I didn’t want to know. I wanted to rake the corrosive truths from my body with curled fingers, and I tried. Pain brightened in my wrists as I thrashed.
Anything to make it stop.
Only it went on. Shadows boiled in my bloodstream while the storm’s vastness pressed me to a paper-thin shard. I was nobody. Nothing. Just a water droplet flung at a conflagration, so meaningless I exploded into vapor before even touching the flame.
The mutant creatures cackled and danced.
And I screamed, until my voice faded to a rasp and scalding tears coursed down my cheeks.
Then, when it still didn’t end, I went right on screaming.
3.
In the morning, I awoke to silence.
A groan crept from my cracked lips as I pried my lashes apart. Across the room, my balcony doors hung askew, admitting sunlight so cheerful it threatened to make me retch.
I closed my eyes until the urge passed, then took inventory. My wrists and ankles burned where the manacles seared my rubbed-raw flesh. Meanwhile, someone had put my limbs through a sausage-grinder, and a throb had cemented itself to my bones.
But I’d lived, which meant I could go to Amryssa. That was all that mattered—her, and the fact that there would be no wedding today. Not when the prince was dead.
A grin pieced itself together on my aching face. Sweet Zephyrine, my prayers had actually been answered. Now the urge to kiss someone filled me. Maybe next time I passed Merron in the hall, I’d do just that. Months had passed since the last time, but today called for a celebration.
I just needed to unchain myself, first.
I raised my head. My keyring lay ten feet away, where I’d hurled it against a baseboard last night in a bid for survival.
I whispered to the dagger at my waist. I couldn’t reach the hilt, but I didn’t need to—the dagger awoke, its energy curling in my mind like a question mark.
Yes?
“Keys,” I rasped. “I need my keys.”
The knife’s energy flared. The keyring arced through the air, landing against my palm with an abrupt jangle. The dagger’s sizzle subsided as whatever consciousness lived inside fell into slumber once more.
I thumbed through the keys with stiff fingers, then flung my chains away and stumbled out into the hall, where another key scraped in yet another lock. I shoved Amryssa’s door open and lurched through.
The sight of her, wan and exhausted, shredded my heart, but at least she’d survived. I fumbled with her restraints. She watched with limpid eyes, too depleted to even greet me.
Which was probably was for the best. If I’d spoken, the truth of the prince’s fate would’ve leapt from my swollen throat. But I refrained, knowing we’d have to feign surprise at breakfast. Someone would inevitably rush in, shrieking about the royal corpse in the drive—or the front hall, or whatever resting place Kyven had made it to in his final, ill-fated seconds—and Amryssa had zero capacity to lie.
Of course, I’d still tell her the truth, once I’d played dumb for Olivian. I wouldn’t even protest the seneschal’s punishment, as long as it didn’t cleave me from Amryssa’s side.
I helped my best friend from bed. While she clung to a bedpost, I exchanged her nightwear for a proper gown. My own dress—of burgundy cotton, its bodice stiff with dried sweat and blood—scraped at my skin, but I didn’t have the stamina tochange right now. No one would expect much of us this morning, anyway.
