I inhaled his familiar scent, felt the heartbeat of the man I loved. “And you’re too kind for someone who doesn’t run.”
Chapter 39
Rykr
Maybe I had been arrogant, but nothing could have prepared me for the terrors I’d faced in the Hall of Echoes. Besides visions of Seren betraying me, I’d had to face illusions of my father and Dalric, each of them whispering of my failure, their voices speaking to my deepest fears.
Whatever Seren had faced must have been just as difficult and she’d done it badly wounded. My brave, amazing warrior.
Even though we’d survived the Nxywraiths, they’d left their mark. A deep feeling of helplessness filled me as we dragged ourselves through the endless, dripping tunnels, each corridor filled with the stench of death.
I might not be able to save her. Seren clung to me, but she was weak.
One by one, we found those sentenced to the Skorn with us tonight, including Tara and Amahle, who were both dirty and ragged, but alive.
Some of the people we’d encountered had screamed for help before vanishing into the dark, lost to the Nyxwraiths. Others had been left behind, too far gone to continue. We had to keep moving. Had to push through the slick, narrow passages, ducking beneath crumbling archways and climbing over the twisted, shriveled bodies of those who hadn’t made it. The walls seemed to close in on us with every turn, the weight of the mountain above pressing down like a tomb.
We stumbled over a fresh corpse—one of the trial’s sentenced, his body twisted in agony, his face frozen in a silent scream. The Nyxwraiths had drained him completely—his flesh was withered, his eyes nothing more than hollow pits of darkness. I checked every body we passed, fear gnawing at my ribs. Thorne. Where the fuck was Thorne? Each time I lifted a lifeless face, my stomach coiled tighter, waiting for the worst.
I tried to stop looking—tell myself it wouldn’t change anything. But my hands betrayed me. Every corpse I passed, my fingers curled against cold flesh, my breath held, waiting for the impossible. Waiting for Thorne to be among them.
I didn’t find him. Or Brogan Ragnall.
For now.
Seren’s hand in mine was the only thing grounding me. I hadn’t let go of her since I’d found her, except to freeze the bleeding wound on her chest, and the moment our fingers touched again, my pulse steadied. But the fact that she couldn’t use her powers terrified me more than anything. She needed help that I couldn’t fucking give her.
A group of about twenty people now remained in what we believed was the exit from the Hall of Echoes—a large, circular space chiseled out of stone. Cold, dark, lifeless.
The ceiling above us was an enormous, wooden, trapdoor. Drips of water seeped between the seams in some spots but gave little clue as to what may be ahead of us.
Seren sat on a low, flat boulder in the middle of the space—large enough for only a couple of people to sit—and I knelt at her side. She leaned against Tara, who’d put an arm around her in a display of affection unusual for the elder Ragnall sister. She was clearly worried about Seren.
“We have to get you out of here.” I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed the back of it. “You need medicine.”
“She needs my mother.” Tara gave me a pained look. “But I’m not convinced she’s safe, either. Dammit, we never should have gone to Seth and Darya.”
“We should have listened to you,” Amahle said with a shake of her head. “You knew what Seth was this whole time. I’m so sorry, Seren.”
Seren shivered violently. “I’m not happy to be right.” Her eyes scanned mine. “What happened after he shot me? I … felt …”
I knew what she’d felt. I’d felt what she’d felt—the all-consuming pain from the crossbow bolt. It was my intrusion into her mind once again, like I’d done with the skinwraith attack, but this time as I’d searched for a way to give her my ability to heal and to take the pain away.
I didn’t have to say any of it, though, because from the way the bond thrummed between us, she knew. And while I’d helped her in the short term, I had the feeling that these intrusions into her soul were causing the loss of her own powers. “I can’t do it again,” I said in a soft voice. “The bond is getting too unbalanced, Seren. I feel it now.”
“I know.” She tore her eyes away from mine.
“How did you survive that shot?” Ciaran asked from his place beside Amahle.
“Lucia gave me some training back at the encampment.” I glanced at Tara, whose expression remained like flint. Truth was, if Tara hadn’t arranged for Lucia’s training we might not have gotten this far. The Rúna be damned. Maybe Madoc was the evil twin, but he’d saved my life. I just knew that Tara wasn’t. Which meant that my father had been wrong to enforce that cruel practice in Lirien.
My father—and I—had been wrong about many things.
“Well, Seth did us a favor, even if he didn’t intend to.” Seren closed her eyes for a moment. “He put us in this trial with the people we know the best—who we’ll die fighting to save. That probably helped all of us in the Hall of Echoes. And it will help us with whatever we face next.”
Gods, she looks so weak. The thought gutted me. “Any clue what comes next?” I asked. The night already felt too long, and the trial wasn’t over yet. How on earth would Seren survive the best warriors in the Vangar like this?
Seren shook her head wearily, but she seemed to understand what I was thinking. “Hopefully now that I’ve got my closest friends and sister with me, my odds just went up. But none of us have weapons, do we?”
