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The dagger slammed into the empty space where they had stood a fraction of a second prior.

The impact detonated across the sand like an artillery strike. A massive shockwave of red energy and pulverized black stone exploded outward, throwing me backward through the air.

I crashed heavily onto the cold ground fifteen feet away, sliding through the grit, my hands losing their grip on Vaelthrys. The spear clattered onto the stone beside me, its gem dimming, its crimson veins fading into dormant shadow.

The Blood-Tithe shattered into millions of liquid drops that rained down onto the black sand, leaving the arena completely empty.

The crimson smoke cleared. The wind died down.

I lay flat on my back in the volcanic grit, staring up at the grey, unfeeling sky of Nymeria. The blood from my lower stomach was pooling beneath my hips, cold, sticky, and heavy. My lungs hitched, pulling in short, agonizing breaths as the physical reality of my injuries began to drag my consciousness toward the dark.

Around the perimeter, the eight towering ward-stones let out a long, dying hum as the golden dome flickered, fractured, and shattered into falling shards of light.

The wards were down.

“TAURIEL!”

Caspian’s voice was the last thing I heard—raw, broken, and desperate—before the black shadows swallowed my vision, and I sank into the cold, silent void.

FIFTY-THREE

The world did not return in light. It returned in a violent, gut-wrenching eruption of dark magic and suffocating pain.

A harsh, ancient hand slammed down onto the center of my blood-soaked chest, and a surge of raw, unrefined fire was forced violently down my throat. It collided with the deadened, silver stillness of my veins, shattering the anti-magic lock of the Crescent Potion like a hammer striking glass.

The reaction inside my body was instant and catastrophic.

My throat bucked, my back arching off the cold, volcanic grit as a mouthful of bitter silver fluid burst from my lips. The moment the potion was forcefully purged from my blood, the dormant, trapped magic inside my soul detonated.

Torrential shadows erupted from my skin in a violent, blinding shockwave.

The pitch-black threads of my markings did not merely creep across my forearms—they exploded outward in swirling, atmospheric tempests of living midnight, tearing through the air, whipping across the ruined sand like a nest of disturbed vipers. Beside the darkness, the dormant solar spark at the center of my chest reignited with an agonizing, white-hot flare, scorching my lungs from the inside out.

“HOLD HER DOWN!” a panicked female voice shrieked through the roaring wind of my magic. “PURGE THE SILVER FROM HER VEINS BEFORE THE HEART FAILS!”

I gasped for air, but my lungs pulled in only the bitter, copper tang of my own blood and the suffocating stench of burnt ozone. Pain—raw, tearing, and absolute—screamed from the puncture wound in my lower abdomen where Vaelthrys had passed through Soren’s body and impaled my flesh.

Through the red, swimming haze of my fading vision, I saw him.

Caspian was on his knees beside me in the sand. His royal blue eyes filled with a wild, feral terror I had never seen in the High Captain before. He ignored the violent shadows lashing against his skin.

He didn’t care about the dark magic tearing through the air. He didn’t care about court protocol, or the King, or the broken arena.

His calloused hands—shaking violently, covered in thick, dark arterial blood—were pressed hard against my lower stomach, his long fingers desperately digging into my tunic, trying with all his physical strength to keep the life from pouring out of my body.

“Stay with me! Tauriel, look at me!” Caspian’s voice was no longer a low, gravelly rasp; it was a broken, ragged roar that cracked on every syllable. His palms were slick, sliding against the open wound as the crimson tide seeped between his fingers, staining his wrists, soaking his leathers. “Look at me, Trouble! Don’t you dare close your eyes! Don’t you dare leave me in this place!”

“Cas... Caspian...” I choked out, a thick bubble of blood rising in my throat, spilling over my lips. My hands, weak and trembling, tried to reach up to touch his face, but my fingers felt heavy as lead, falling limply back onto the cold grit.

Beside him, another figure dropped to his knees in the black sand.

Aerynn.

My brother had abandoned his royal mantle, throwing his ceremonial cape into the dirt as he threw himself down beside Caspian. His handsome face was contorted into a mask of pure agony, tears streaming down his cheeks, leaving clear tracks through the soot on his skin.

He grabbed the shoulder of the High Mage who was frantically hovering her glowing, white-lit hands over my torn stomach.

“Save her!” Aerynn begged, his voice high, frantic, cracking into desperate sobs that echoed across the quiet amphitheater. “Please... by the gods, save her! She’s my sister! She’s my baby sister! Take my blood! Take my magic! Take whatever you need, just save her!”