“All of you. Out,” she barks, her glare daring them to defy her. “If I need help, I will ask for it.”
My vision swims, but I catch the smirk playing at Zyphoro’s lips and the heavy sag of Orios’ shoulders before Reon shuts the door behind them.
Solena moves fast, her fingers ripping open my shirt without hesitation, exposing the wound beneath. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t hesitate.
“What were you thinking?” she hisses, grabbing a nearby rag. “As if you do not already have enough enemies eager to see you dead, you decide to take matters into your own hands?”
“I do not deserve to live,” I mutter, my voice hoarse. “Not after what I’ve done to Amara. Not after the pain I’ve caused her.”
The sharp clang of glass and metal fills the space as Solena roughly rummages through a shelf, ensuring I hear every scrape and clatter.
“So this is your penance?” she scoffs, her voice laced with biting disapproval.
I turn my head away, unwilling to meet her eyes, unwilling to answer. Then, the sound I do recognize. A slosh of liquid in a bottle. A second later, warmth splashes against my torn flesh.
A fresh pain tears through me, and I suck in a hard gulp of air, gritting my teeth as the burn spreads deep into the wound.
“If you were truly so wracked with guilt, you would have skewered something vital,” Solena remarks, far too unimpressed for my liking. She tips the bottle again, letting another generous pour of rum wash over me. “You didn’t even hit an organ. This is little more than a flesh wound.”
I squeeze my eyes shut as she presses a cloth against my side, not bothering with delicacy as she binds it tightly with whatever rags she can find, cleanliness be damned.
“What would Amara think if she knew you had done something so incredibly stupid?”she demands.
“I don’t know what came over me,” I admit, exhaling shakily. “For a moment, I thought I was doing her a kindness.”
Solena doesn’t soften. If anything, her expression darkens. “Not just throwing yourself on your sword like an idiot,” she snaps, her hands pausing for only a second. “You summoned Death Singer from the void.” Her gaze drills into me, searching. “Did he see you?”
Regret rises thick and acidic in my throat. I stare at the ceiling, my chest tight. “I do not know.”
Solena shakes her head, disappointment cutting almost as deep as the wound. “On your stomach,” she orders. “I’ll draw more sigils. Just in case.”
I shift, but pain lances through my ribs, sending stars bursting behind my eyes. A groan slips out before I can stop it.
Solena, unsurprisingly, offers no sympathy.
“That’s what happens when you stab yourself,” she snaps. “I’ll mix the ink. Be on your stomach by the time I’m ready.”
I bite down on my lip, my canines nearly piercing the skin as I force my battered body onto my stomach with one final, agonizing roll. A sharp breath hisses through my teeth, but I make no sound beyond that. I lie still, my body pressed against the cool surface of the table, waiting for Solena’s return as she continues her scolding, relentless words that blur in my ears, fading beneath the rush of blood pounding through my skull.
Then, another voice cuts through.
“Favored son,”it whispers. “So long have you been unseen by his eye. But not now. We see you.”
A slow, slithering dread knots in my gut. My eyes burn, red and sore, and at first, I tell myself it’s nothing, just exhaustion, a trick of my blurred vision. But then I see it. A black speck, flickering in the periphery, shimmering like heat off distant dunes. I squeeze my eyes shut, willing it away, but when I open them, the darkness is still there.
Larger. Expanding.
The blackness unfurls, stretching wide until it is no longer a speck but a fathomless abyss so absent of light, so empty of hope, it can only be one thing.
The void.
And within its pitch-dark depths, something stirs.
A glint of pale white cuts through the darkness. An eye, enormous and all-seeing, unblinking in its endless hunger. And below it, a clawed hand, its fingers impossibly long, reaching.
“Come home, favored son,”the voice beckons, dark and sweet as a hymn. A call that slides into my bones, curling around my ribs. “It is time to feed the beast.”
A sharp clatter rips through the air. A bowl of ink spilling onto the floor, the thick black liquid pooling at the table leg.
