None of those clues will matter if Eloise catches me—I won’thavea life after tonight.
My feet pound against the forest floor, sending bolts of pain up my legs, every thud reverberating through my skull. I don’t dare turn around, don’t dare stop to catch my breath or orient myself.
I just run.
And run and run and run…
Smack into the very woman I’m so desperate to escape.
Fucking shadow magic. Shit!
Cruel fingers tighten around my arm, her other hand yanking on my hair and pulling tight—so tight it makes my eyes water.
“I’ve spent decades working on this!” she hisses. “Decades ensuring every detail was perfect. You willnotruin this for me!”
I claw at her face, wishing I had that dagger from the meat packing plant. Wishing I could carve her up with pretty moonlight runes, just like I carved up those fucking mages—mages that she sicced on me when I was a kid.
The memory of their tortured screams calls to something deep and primal inside me, the scent of their blood stirring a desperate hunger back to life…
The back of my neck burns—the very spot where the fae rune showed up in Auggie’s photos—and another Tarot card appears in my mind. Not Judgement this time, but the Tower. The same card I saw the night we killed the mages, right before Draegan took me to the Ryker plant.
And just like that night, the same otherworldly voice echoes through my mind.
Upon those screaming hours
Bathed in blood and breath
You will give them light, my moon
And I will give them Death.
With newfound strength, I kick Eloise’s legs out from under her and knock her to the ground, straddling her and wrapping my hands around her throat.
That wild hunger roils inside me, connecting with a power so ancient it must be even older than the trees that surround us. Yet somehow, it feels impossibly familiar to me, like a beloved flannel shirt worn soft in all the right places, or a favorite old song whose lyrics I’ve only just remembered.
Silver and violet light bursts from my hands, and Eloise shrieks like a cat in heat beneath me, thrashing and writhing, but I don’t let go.
Sparks of magic sizzle across her skin where I touch her, hot and electric, unleashing a flood of images in my mind—a maternity ward full of crying babies, one of them boasting a head of black-and-silver locks. My father’s young face, pale and bewildered as someone puts that child in his arms. The bullies who tormented me throughout my young life. Zorakkov on the cathedral altar, slicing my palm. The dark fae male from my nightmares. All the shadow mages and witches from my wedding night, now hooded and robed, summoning legions of demons from the very bowels of hell.
Throngs of people cowering before them. Chained. Whipped. Stripped and marched through the streets of Manhattan, executed in the most gruesome, dehumanizing ways.
And fire. So much fire.
Eating, consuming, absolutelydevouringeverything in its wake until there’s nothing left of the city’s infamous skyscrapers but the ground on which they were built.
The images are like some dark, twisted brew of all my worst memories and nightmares, so vivid and raw I can’t help but wonder if Eloise is somehow rooting around in my mind, fishing out all of my darkest fears.
But as soon as the thought forms, I know it isn’t true.
These visions don’t belong to me at all.
They’re hers.
Not nightmares and fears, but… hopes. Achievements. Her carefully executed plans leading to her perfect future.
Goddess, whatever this strange magic is, it’s allowing me to tap into her thoughts. To read her like one of Rook’s library books.
Still struggling to break my grip, Eloise gasps, her eyes widening with shock. Then, as quickly as they flooded my mind, the images go black.
