Page 40 of The Reaping Rose

Blinking my eyes open, I wonder what vision the prison tempts me with now. What new tortures it has planned when my mind is a glass cage on the verge of shattering. My eyes focus, and I’m not met with the golden room Malachi dragged me into, but I’m somewhere just as grand.

The walls are gray stone, as if I’m underground or in a cave. Tucked in some corner of the realm. But when I turn my face, a wall opens to daylight. There is no glass to block out the warm kiss of air wafting through the rustling trees.

Trees.

I sit upright at how green they are. How alive.

A soft film of magic hums between the room and what’s outside. A protective barrier that lets in the sound of birds chirping. Animals skittering. It lets in a hint of flowers on a fresh breeze. So ripe I taste it on my tongue.

My body aches as I push to the edge of the large bed. Here, there’s a fresh wave of pain, as if I’m waking from a dream within a dream. My fingers skate over the silk sheets, and I take in the room’s size. More than twice that of mine at the palace, although there is no endless sky or unsettling emptiness overhead. The vines crawling the stone walls are comforting.

That scent is comforting.

“Wilder,” I whisper, standing.

There’s a crackle in the air. Aether stirring the ends of my hair. I turn in time to look into his sizzling golden eyes as he appears.

“You summoned me.” The caress of his voice in my mind nearly knocks me out at the knees.

It’s been so long since I’ve heard him. So long since the aether graze of his magic has embraced me.

“Wilder?” I take a step back, hesitant to trust what’s before me.

This is what the prison does. It tears apart the mind and fills the holes with hopes and dreams simply to rip them away.

Wilder’s smile is the most beautiful taunt. He’s stunning. But the moment I back away, his smile slips. His crackling eyes dim. Wilder’s golden-brown hair is a touch longer on top than it was when I last saw him. Messy. His eyes are dark and tired. I search his face for proof he’s a figment of my imagination. I trace every inch, from his strong jawline to the scar that cuts through his right eyebrow and then over the bridge of his nose, slicing a path down his left cheek where it forks out and fades.

It’s him, but it’s not.

Or I’m not me.

My palms press to my belly, and I realize I’m no longer wearing my leathers. My skin is washed clean, and my hair breezes with the fresh scent of lavender. I’m wearing a thin white dress that hooks at my neck and hangs loosely over my body. While it’s not sheer, the fabric lets warm air through as if I’m wearing nothing.

“You’re not real.” I shake my head and close my eyes, refusing to give in to the prison’s manipulation, knowing all it wants to do is lure me into my cell and force me to watch my mate die again and again. “None of this is real.”

“Look at me, Elorie.” Wilder’s scent moves closer, and my heart races.

There’s a thundercloud brewing in my veins. Aether quivering through my bones.

“I can’t.” My voice shakes; a tear slips down my cheek.

Of all the things the prison has done to break me, seeing Wilder this close, his nearness and scent so visceral, I’m falling apart. This will be what unravels the rest.

For months, this emptiness has consumed me. The place he once held in the threads was a vacant abyss. I yearned for him—ached for him. I needed him as Alyssium crumbled, my hope along with it. It’s too much to believe he’s here when I know that’s exactly what the prison wants.

“Open your eyes, Starfire. Don’t get lost in there.” His magic angles my chin up with the gentlest nudge as I nervously crack my eyes open. “I understand why you don’t want to believe your eyes right now—I understand too well. For nearly a hundred years, that place crept into every regret, every mistake, every doubt, and it played them back for me thousands of different ways. Then I heard your voice.”

He steps closer but has yet to pull his hands from his pockets, not daring to touch me with more than just his magic. Magic that wakes my body, prickles my skin, stirs in my belly.

“Your voice was the greatest comfort in the darkest place. It was the only star in the night sky, and I clung to it.” His golden eyes darken. “Until the prison used that too. It took the comfort of you and twisted it. Made me believe I’d get no more than a flicker of your voice in my head before Sarrow claimed me. It showed me your face just to take you away again and again.”

Wilder’s voice cracks in a way that is so unlike the confidence usually bleeding from him.

“I watched you die so many times; I’d wait for your voice to echo through the thread so I would know the prison was lying. That you were still here. And even then, when you stepped over those runes, I didn’t know if I could actually believe what I was seeing.”

My heart aches with his confession. I knew Wilder endured great pain in the hundred years spent in the prison, but he’s never admitted this much. He never hinted that some of his torture involved me. If it was anything like his death cycling before me, over and over…

The thought alone is nearly unbearable.