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Blinking away the tears, I dragged my gaze away from Teine and looked toward the mists.Hismists. The dense, dark fog pushed at the far edge of the Bridge to Death, swallowing up Oberon’s endless sun, but…
I sat up straighter, causing the maidservant to jerk on my hair, but the sharp stab of pain was nothing compared to the sudden pounding of my heart. I’d stared at the edge of the mist on the other side of the chasm at least a thousand times in my life. Maybe even more. I’d memorized the look of it, and I knew precisely where our world ended andhisbegan.
Never, not once, had it changed.
Until today.
The mists. I almost said it out loud as I lifted a shaky finger, but I swallowed the words down. Instead, I pointed insistently, leaning forward in my chair. The mists had moved. They were further across the bridge than they had ever been before, like they were…starting to come into the Kingdom of Light.
But how could that be? Nothing had changed. Oberon still ruled this land and kept the mists out. It had been that way for centuries.
One of the maidservants gasped and dropped my hair. She scurried over to the window and peered outside. “Something’s happening. The mists are coming in.”
“That’s impossible.” The other maidservant continued to work on my hair. “Just some trick of the eye, that’s all.”
The maidservant beside the window turned, and our gazes locked. She pressed her lips together. There was no denying what we both saw. Somehow, Oberon’s barrier was failing. That only meant one thing.
The mists were coming.
Did that mean he was, too?
Six
Morgan
“Here you go.” I slipped two slices of chocolate cage through the bars, both wrapped in brown parchment. Val’s tangled hair skated across her pale cheeks as she snatched the cake away from my hands. She gazed at them eagerly before putting one of the cakes beside Ula Baran’s cot. The poor woman’s light snores matched the rhythm of the phantom twitching in her leg. She’d been requesting valerian-spiked wine every night to drive away the imagined pain. Oberon’s soldiers had taken a bludgeon to her when they’d chased her and Val through the woods, and while she’d healed, she hadn’t been the same since.
Val dropped the other slice onto her own bed and came back to the bars. “How’s Tessa?”
“Angry.”
Val gave me the first smile I’d seen from her in weeks. “Good. Oberon hasn’t…um…”
“Hurt her?” I pressed my lips together. “It’s two weeks until the wedding. He’ll hurt her plenty then.”
The smile dropped. “You have to get her out of there.”
“I can’t.” My hand tightened around the sharp edge of my dagger. It pierced my palm for the hundredth time, and droplets of blood painted the floor. In a moment, the wound would be gone, but the blood would remain—along with the other dried splotches I’d left here—until a nameless maidservant scrubbed the stone. It was my only rebellion that ever made even the slightest mark, but it wouldn’t last, either.
Val’s eyes tracked the blood. “You need to talk to someone about this.”
“About Tessa’s fate?”
“No, what you’re doing. The pain you’re inflicting on yourself.”
“And who am I supposed to talk to? You?” I asked. “What good will that do?”
“You’re suffering,” she said softly.
I tightened my grip on the blade, and pain lanced my palm, skittering up the side of my arm. “This small wound is the worst I can do to myself. He made sure of that, just like he made sure of a million other things. Why would you care anyway? I’m the reason your friend is in that dungeon. He made me convince Ula that the Mist King knew where you two were this whole time. And then he made me send a letter to Tessa to make sure she found out.”
“Which means youaren’tthe reason, Morgan. He is. You need to stop blaming yourself for what Oberon commands you to do.”
I shook my head and stepped away from the bars. “I was the one who made this vow in the first place, even if it’s trapped me here. I could have said no.”
“And what would have happened to you if you had?”
Oberon had not always been a cruel king, and I’d once served him gladly. But four hundred years ago, things began to change. Whispers of dark deeds filled the halls of this castle, murmurs that the king had turned his back on the Druids and started to look to the gods. Not long after, the Druids left the Kingdom of Light, and all the ravens flew far from here, as if they sensed an impending storm. I still wasn’t sure what had compelled me to warn the Kingdom of Shadow and their new ruler at the time, Kalen Denare. I had just sensed something changing, like the ravens had.
