Her eyelids snapped open, throat raw and cheeks damp with tears. She was sitting on a wooden chair, her limbs frozen by some sort of enchantment. She couldn’t move a muscle. Her mind trapped within the prison of her own body.
And standing before her, an indecipherable expression on her face, was Edith Hughes.
Despite the shadows running through her veins and the feathered darkness swirling behind the whites of her eyes, the High General of the Demien Order looked painfully human. Just a girl. Perhaps only a year or two older than Wren.
But she was the farthest thing fromhuman.
As Wren came to her senses, the reality of her situation dawned on her. She remembered now.She remembered it all.Her abduction during the final trial of the Decennial. Edith’s confession that Wren was somehow the key to destroying Blackwood. The look of glistening pride in Edith’s eyes when she’d shown Wren the Demien Order encampment.
But now…she was here. Whereverherewas.
After bringing Wren to the encampment, Edith had promptly relocated her into a large tent hidden deep within the Demien Order’s winding caverns, torturing her with a magic Wren had never known possible.
Somehow, with the help of some dark and perverse magic, Edith was forcing Wren to relive her death.
Over and over and over.
The same night. The same car.
The same mistake.
For what purpose? Wren hadn’t the faintest clue. Before she could even get a word out and beg Edith for more information, the High General would place her hands upon Wren’s temples andthe process would begin again. The only respite she got was a few hours at night when Edith would relocate her to another tent to sleep, though even then, Wren couldn’t shake off the memory. It was as if it were burned into her retinas. Branded into her mind.
Now, Edith dropped her hands from Wren’s face, the shadows retreating with her, slithering over her arms and sinking back into her skin. Wren let out a strangled cough. The acrid taste of blood flooded her mouth.
“Please.” Wren’s voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable.“Enough.”
But if the other girl felt any inkling of pity, she didn’t show it. Edith’s face remained expressionless, her dark eyes anchored on Wren’s face as though she were attempting to lookinsideher.
“How do you feel?”
“How do I—” Wren couldn’t help but let out a shock of laughter. “How do Ifeel?”
Edith’s lip twitched.
“Answer the question.”
“I feel like ripping you apart limb from limb,” Wren snapped. She attempted to move her hands, to moveanything, but her body remained frozen. She was nothing but a puppet. A plaything for Edith’s whims.
“Pity,” Edith huffed. “I suppose we’ll just have to keep going.”
Terror laced through Wren, sudden and violent.
“No,” she choked out. “Please. Just—juststop. Haven’t you had enough?”
“It’s not up to me,” Edith replied, voice cold.
“What does that mean?” Wren asked, hating the raw desperation in her voice. “I’m begging you. Just tell me what it is you want.”
Edith tilted her head, her eyes raking up and down Wren’s face.
“Funny. I never thought the catalyst of destruction would be one tobeg.”
Wren groaned, fighting against the paralysis that had taken hold of her body.
“Has it perhaps occurred to you that you’re wrong, then? That I’mnotthe catalyst of destruction? That I’m not the one you’ve been looking for?”
Edith stepped closer and the whites of her eyes bled to black.
