“Sight—ssseeing.”
With a sigh, he stuffs his hand in the pocket of my cloak. “I forgot what a sarcastic cunt you are.” He retrieves my bangle and waves it in my face. “Have you recalled the last time you used this yet?”
I don’t answer. Can barely focus on anything beyond the ragged workings of my lungs.
“I take your silence as a no.” He pockets the bangle, then pulls out a bronze dragonscale blade.
My heart slams against my ribs at the sight of it, the shade familiar. The same tone as a Sabersythe I watched heave into the sky and bind into a ball when I was only five phases old.
Tyroth grips a handful of my hair andyanks, jerking me against the spearof stone. I cry out, the blade glinting as he brings it close to my scalp andslices.
I feel the strands sever, see the clump of curls fall away in his hand.
“Something to send as proof when I inform Kaan of your death.”
I grow so cold one tap would shatter me.
Tyroth whistles, long and deep. The sound ricochets off the cavern’s walls, followed by a gravelly rumble—like Bulder’s gut just gurgled. Or at least that’s what I tell myself, that Tyroth’s dragon didn’t just rouse from a heavy slumber.
I tremble anyway, certain I’d rather die by my own blade than be eaten or burned alive.
“You can keep your head,” Tyroth drawls, looking down at the small black pouch he’s stuffing my hair into, tugging the drawstring tight. When he looks at me again, there’s cold hate in his eyes. “Spend your eternal existence hunting me from beyond, little sister. Watch me slaughter your favorite brother, then decimate The Burn until it’s nothing but rubble and bones. Payment for helping himself to what wasmine.”
The last word is hissed with such vehemence I realize one terrible, frightening thing …
He knows.
He found out about Kaan and Elluin.
Does he know about Kyzari? That she’s not his?
The ground trembles in thumping increments.
“But first, a parting gift.” He pockets the satchel and leans close, brows pinched as he studies me. “I’ll help to fill in your blanks with this trick I’ve been working to hone …”
He claps his hands over my ears.
I jostle despite being skewered, trying to rip my head aside to avoid eye contact.
“Hold still,” he growls, jerking me straight, using his fingers to pry back my lids. “I’m not the best at this. One wrong move and I might strike something important, and that would spoil the whole reveal.”
I scream. Not from the pain of being stuck through, but from the agonizing way he plows into my mind like a blunt spear.
His pupils swell, my body loosens. All the color seems to dissipate from the world, leaving only two bold disks of black I plummet amongst, distantly aware of my mental walls crumbling—the ones eternally standing guard around the most important parts of me.
My guts threaten to turn inside out as he spears past my thoughts of the diary. Of Kaan. Kyzari.
Elluin.
Instead, he narrows on a darkened corner I hadn’t noticed was even there until he stabs it. Brutally. As if he’s trying to slay something he can’t quite see the shape of.
There’s a painfulpop, like he just pierced some sort of membrane.
I gasp, jolting as a torrent of raging burden gushes out and burns throughme like a caustic flood of poison, stuffing nooks and crannies I’ve been ignoring for over a hundred phases.
Casting me …back.
“Do you remember now?” Tyroth asks, his voice a grating echo as I—
