PARIS
The darkness screamed with a thousand tortured voices.
Mine was the loudest.
Cold. So cold. Wrapped in a blanket of frozen thorns, trapped in the darkness. So lost. So broken.
Let me out!
Let me out!
Let me out!
I couldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. I?—
I shot awake with a raging headache, the essence of flowers streaming into me, wrapping a bolstering blanket around me.
What the hell? Hadn’t I just been dead? Yeah, dead. The vampire prick had killed me after…after…
Oh, Aidan. No, no, no. Please tell me that hadn’t been real.
But I could still taste his blood.
I wanted to puke my organs up and scream at Heaven to make this better. I couldn’t be alive wearing this shame.
Wait. Alive? How the fuck was I alive?
Kernels of pain burned in my chest, triggering a dull throb spreading up my neck to pulse behind my eyes.
“Where am I?” I spoke with a raspy voice.
And where was the water?
I pushed myself to my knees, wincing from the hammering in my skull.
The darkness again? The same thing that’d happened before I’d woken up on the ice. Had it really just happened a second time?
Ugh. I rubbed at my throat, checking my neck. Not broken, a living heart pumping blood around my body. I stood up, making sure I still had my stakeblade. Yep, present. And the crystal dagger lingered off to the side.
Okay, so this wasn’t a replay of the Albion Nest thing. No finding a new dagger here in these gardens, a mound of earth beside me.
A grave? My grave?
What the hell was going on?
I swayed slightly, giving my brain a chance to catch up. Silvanus had killed me. I remembered it clearly, just like the rest of it. He’d picked me up and broken my neck. Lights out for me.
I’d died. I’d felt myself die in his hands. Last time I checked, I didn’t have the power to come back from death. Most didn’t.
So, why was I alive?
Ugh. Here we go. No clarity, more brain ache.
I jammed my hands into my pockets, rocking on my heels, thinking through a pounding head.
Failing to piece anything together again, I inspected my surroundings. Reveling in the immense wave of energy coming at me.
Encased inside a glass dome, the first hints of sunrise painting the sky beyond in oranges and purples.
