Before my vision is swallowed whole, before my eyes roll over black, I hear Solena scream.
“Zyphoro! Gygarth has found him!”
The door explodes open, wood splintering beneath the force of Zyphoro’s arrival. My vision swims, edges blurring, but she moves with lethal grace. Her daggers cut through the air, silver flashing like shards of a dying star. I don’t even have time to brace. The air hums, sharp with the promise of steel, and before I can take another breath, before I can blink, my eyes roll over black.
Chapter 16
Amara
There are no dreams.
Only falling.
A slow descent into darkness, weightless yet drowning in silence. Cold presses against my skin until something warm and rough drags across my cheek.
My lashes flutter, awareness drifting back to me in pieces. The damp chill in the air. The faint lap of water against stone. And something beside me.
A shadowed form shifts, smoke given flesh.
Ashen.
He hovers just above me in his kitten shape, his body unfurling and curling like mist caught in a breeze. His ivory-bright eyes watch me before he gives another slow swipe of his tongue across my cheek.
I manage a smile. My fingers lift weakly, threading through the drifting strands of his fur, warm despite its insubstantial, smoky form. He leans into the touch, his ever-shifting body curving around my hand, as though relieved to find me whole.
Slowly, the world stitches itself back together. Sound, breath, thought. My mind sharpens, pulling itself from the fog. And then I realize. If Ashen is here… where am I?
My gaze drifts to the bars encasing us, to the dim, flickering gloom of the cave beyond.
I bolt upright, the last remnants of sleep vanishing in an instant. My hands fly to the bars, gripping them, shoving against them. But the moment I do, I feel the snap of my chain, dragging me to the center of the cage with such force I nearly fall.
Ashen growls at my side, the sound low and rumbling. His body expands, shadows rippling over muscle and sinew as he grows. He presses against my legs, anchoring me as the truth crashes in.
We’re in his cage suspended above the lake. The cavern swallows the sound of my breath as confusion claws up my throat.
Then I hear something, see something in the shadows, and my gaze darts beyond the bars, straining to see past the thick shroud of darkness.
“Who’s there!” I demand.
A figure steps forward, emerging from the gloom.
“Calm yourself, Princess.”
I know that voice.
But there’s a rasp to it now, twisted and raw, so unfamiliar it makes me doubt myself.
Then he lifts his head toward the dim light, and the air rushes from my lungs.
For a moment, I’m certain it’s a trick of the dark. A mirage conjured by exhaustion and shadows. But then I see his eyes… one of them. The same eye I’ve stared into day after day, the eye of my warden.
There’s no mistaking him.
“Anethesis,” I breathe, the name scraping from my throat like gravel, half disbelief, half fury.
His once-flawless face is unrecognizable now. A grotesque canvas of scorched flesh and twisted sinew, like wax left too close to flame. One eye is fused shut, a warped ridge of scar where it used to be. The other, untouched, unchanged, glints in the dark like a shard of jade. His golden hair, once long and regal, is gone. Only uneven stubble remains, clinging to the wreckage of what he was.
I choke on a gasp, horror rising in my throat. My stomach lurches, a sick twist of revulsion and shock.
