Page 153 of House Ignis

Jules kept reading, then stopped dead. Her face fell.

"The antidote can only be made from a single flowering bud.” She licked her lips.” It's a rare variant of the Eclipsa vine itself. It blooms only during a full moon."

My stomach dropped. "When's the next full moon, Jules?"

She looked up at me, her face pale in the sapphire light. "Tonight."

Fuck.

We'd have to go back to where Ryven had been found.

I shot to my feet and reached for my cloak. “I need to go. Now.”

Jules closed the book gently. "I'll keep working on this. If there's more... I'll find it."

I looked at her, my chest heavy with gratitude. "Thank you, Jules. Seriously."

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered with a small smile. "Go. Before your celestial cat has a panic attack."

I managed a small smile, slipping the enchanted cloak back over my shoulders and leaving her in the faint blue glow of the catacombs.

When I reached the surface, the night air hit me, cool and heavy with salt.

"Aether," I called softly, stepping around the stone phoenix bench. Nothing.

My brow furrowed. Unease crawled beneath my skin.

Then I saw him.

His massive obsidian body was stretched out beside the bushes, his golden eyes closed. His chest was barely rising.

"Aether!" I ran to him. "Aether—wake up!"

He stirred faintly, his mental voice a flickering thread. "Poison," he hissed. "Ava—run."

I barely had time to gasp before a heavy hand clamped over my mouth. The metallic scent of earth filled my senses.

A sharp sting lanced into my neck.

Everything blurred instantly. But as my knees hit the stone, the bond—the tether I had tried so hard to quiet—exploded.

It wasn't a hum. It was a scream.

Asher’s fury ripped through the bond, violent and devastating.

It was the sound of a storm breaking, the roar of shadows being unleashed.

He knew.

He felt the sting, he felt my terror, and he was coming.

The sheer force of his rage was the last thing I felt before the world went black.

CHAPTER TWENTY

My head pounded with a sickening throb, as if a war hammer were being driven into my skull. My vision was a smeared mess of grey and black before the world slowly, agonizingly sharpened.

Stone. Cold, unforgiving stone.