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I lifted my head to find that Luca had found us too, and Blaise was right behind him. Kas nudged me up, and I ran to Luca, jumping into his arms and wrapping my legs around his trim waist. He supported me easily, kissing my neck and gripping me fiercely.
“Thank fuck, you’re okay. I’ve been so worried,” he murmured into my hair.
“Takes a little more than some plants to kill me,” I said, hugging him tighter even as the mist wrapped my ankles. “I gotta go, but I’ll be back. I know the way now,” I promised them all, nipping just a few drops of blood from Luca’s neck before the mist snaked up my spine and peeled us apart.
I was immediately wrapped in darkness, the sensation of moving without touching solid ground flipping my stomach.
It wasn’t like the time the mist delivered me to the labyrinth, where I was passed out and totally unaware, and it wasn’t like when I’d tried to leave my team and just kept turning in endless circles in the maze.
This time, I felt like I was being drawn through the actual mist, traveling over the invisible plane where it existed. Almost as though I was in a no-man’s land of dark, rolling hills and endless fog.
Vampires didn’t believe in heaven or hell, and I’d never considered the idea that the mist could be like a world of its own. Until the Trials, I’d always thought of it as a single mind, one entity we all dissolved back into after death.
But now I sensed Nicolas there, barely scenting him and feeling his mind nearby. When I strained, I found other familiar souls like my mother and brother Erik. None of them were visible, though, and I wondered just what the limitations of the mist were.
Was I actually in an alternate reality? Did Nicolas have a life here? Did my mother and brother remember what had happened to them? Part of me still feared the mist was just pulling together Nicolas’s form to influence me.
For the thousandth time, I wished I could contact my Grand-mère and ask her all these questions. She might not know everything, but the child in me still needed to look to her for answers.
Eventually, my feet touched solid ground and the mist began to pull away, revealing that I’d been delivered right back to Jillian and Darnell, who were just stirring as the sun peaked over the eastern hedges of the labyrinth.
I sighed, feeling almost as though I’d dreamed the whole night - the mist showing me the passage, wrenching theBook of Icefrom my own skin, learning a new spell.
But the taste of Kassian’s blood - Luca’s too - was on my lips. And I still remembered the spell for the ice armor.
“You smell of fresh blood,” Jillian snapped, sitting up straighter as she inhaled deeply and proved that it definitely wasn’t a dream. Her pupils began to spread in her eyes, bleeding darkness into the whites as bloodlust nipped at her senses.
I stepped wider, each hand wrapping a knife handle in case she attacked. How the fuck was I going to explain this?
“Did you find an animal? You reek of fur,” Darnell said, wrinkling his nose but licking his lips.
I bit down on a laugh. They were smelling Luca’s wolf, not Kas. I could work with this. “A fox. I was wandering while you two lazy asses slept. Even though the mist kept bringing me back, I found a fox sneaking out of a little cave.”
“Greedy cunt. Sharing is caring,” Jillian hissed, stepping closer to me. I could see in her eyes that she was edging closer to the idea of pouncing on me. Her eyes weren’t solid black, but she was struggling. They were starved for blood, too.
“I think it’s actually a tunnel - to the Fauna section,” I hurried to offer, hating that I had to give up intel, but hoping it would distract her.
It didn’t.
Jillian lunged toward me, fangs out and hands snatching at my hair to try and yank my head back and bare my throat. I twisted, ducking enough to miss the bite, and rammed my shoulder into her gut. She doubled over with a growl and tried to tackle me to the ground.
We scuffled a bit, her nails dragging across my skin, but I wrenched an arm free and plunged my knife into her shoulder.
Nothing fatal, but it would fucking hurt.
She howled and I easily pushed her off me, hopping to my feet and checking on Darnell. He had simply been watching us to see what happened, but at least his eyes were clear.
I’d be one pissed vampire if I ended up killing a teammate and getting eliminated over some bloodlusttheycouldn’t control.
Jillian was grumbling curses at me as she stumbled to her feet and yanked the knife out of her shoulder. She tried to hurl it at me, but I ducked easily. The knife sailed past me and buried itself in the hedge of mirror vines.
“Stupid bitch. I liked that knife,” I grumbled, knowing it would be dumb to try and retrieve it, but still kind of wanting to.
“Show us the tunnel,” Darnell broke in, striding past Jillian and giving her a stern look.
I smirked at her, tossing a bit of ice magic at her with the thought that she was acting like a toddler. Her mind was just open enough to catch it, and she gave a muffled little scream of rage at the invasion.
“You’re too easy, Jilly,” I cooed, dancing backward on my feet. Oh, if only I could just kill her now. “Queens can’t let anger and bloodlust control them. You should know that. It’s why you’ll never win.”
