Page 22 of The Reaping Rose

I’m standing, but floating. Each movement weightless. Until a tingle starts at my toes and climbs. The fluttering of a hundred caged butterflies rattles in my bones. They fill my chest, and my heart races as if I’m suffering the Beating. On the verge of bursting.

So fast.

So hard.

Each pump of my heart springs tears to my eyes.

I clutch my chest, nearly burning my hand on the searing rune that glows white in the darkness.

Wilder.

Is this how it feels as his heart hammers against his ribs? As he hangs at the door of death, suspended where I left him when I woke him in this prison?

I drop to my knees. Bone meets obsidian, and my kneecaps sing.

“No,” I choke out, pressing my hands to the stone and pushing myself to standing.

I’ve barely just entered, and already the prison is testing me in a way it didn’t before. Weaving terror through my Fae blood and learning what might break me. I clutch the necklace Callum gave me and ground myself, refusing to succumb to the darkness the prison threads through my mind to test me. To terrorize me.

I am Fae, but I am also human. Half my blood cannot be manipulated by these walls.

I push back.

The second step is lighter.

Or have I been walking for hours?

Around me, all the walls have changed from black to purple. A deep plum that is somehow familiar. I’ve seen these flecks before. Felt these chilling tendrils. I stare so long into nothing that my memories shine back. But it is not me in the vision; it’s Hazel.

Hands outstretched.

Raven-black hair waving in the breeze.

Violet sparkles in her eyes as her shadows consume me.

“There you are.” It whispers as it did back then. “I’ve been looking for you.”

I stop walking and close my eyes, sinking into myself while the memories of Hazel’s shadows crawl through me. There is no fighting them, so I don’t. I pause and breathe, refusing to look them in the eyes as they whisper. Until they drift away with a sense of something strange.

Boredom?

As if her magic has thoughts of its own and decided it’s done.

The shadows leave me alone, drifting away and relieving me of their torture.

Until I open my eyes and find myself at the foot of a familiar cell. The circle of runes is no longer dark as it was when I stepped over them. This time, they glow. And at the center is my mate, just as he was the first time I saw him in this place.

“Wilder?” His name is a gasp.

A cry.

I rush forward, but an invisible force grabs me. Preventing me from breaching the runes like I did before.

Wilder chuckles, but it doesn’t sound like him. There’s an echo to his laugh and grit to his voice.

“The prison doesn’t create new memories. It tortures you with what you walk in with,” Wilder speaks with a hollowness in his voice.

The words are the same warning he shared with me in Solace, but it’s not him saying them now. It’s this illusion crafted by the prison, peeking into the recesses of my mind and seeking out my secrets.