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He needed a clear head right now. We needed to be asking questions that would help us learn how to leave this place.
Instead, Dante was only digging us deeper. The blooms around our feet grew, sending black petals puffing into the air. The vines wound around our legs and rooted us to the spot, but Dante didn’t seem to notice.
“You’re lying,” he growled as he leaned in.
I ran my fingers over his bare back until I gripped his wrist. He couldn’t kill the woman. She was the only person here.
Maybe this washerrealm. And if Dante killed her, we’d be trapped here forever.
I’d never seen so much conviction flash in someone’s eyes. The woman stiffened against him and leaned into his blade, seemingly unperturbed as blood ran down her collarbone. “You are myson. I didn’t know the meaning of the word until I saw your eyes, Dante. I was a dumb, stupid little girl, pregnant far too young and afraid of a father who would have beaten you out of my womb. Instead, I told him I had made a deal to make our family wealthy and powerful, just like he wanted.” She gripped his arm and leaned in. “But when I saw you, Dante, you were all that mattered.”
Then she revealed what she had been holding against her chest.
A perfectly black flower that had every color I could imagine all swirling inside of it until it was nothing but a black, shimmering diamond made into silk.
I knew exactly what I was looking at.
This was a Death Lotus.
And that’s when everything came back to me, hitting me hard.
“Lily,” I whispered on a shocked breath.
And that’s when the screams began.
DANTE
I couldn’t absorb what my mother was telling me, but the instant I heard the screams, I realized what it was that she had done.
The witches who had created me told me that my mother was dead. That she was an overambitious whore who wanted more than the deal for my life entailed, and so she had met her end.
But that hadn’t been the whole truth, had it?
My mother had sold her soul to Hell itself to seek justice. I recognized the Death Lotus she held against her chest. I sensed the familiar energies that I shared.
She had sacrificed herself for me. She didn’t have to tell me the truth of her story.
I could feel it.
The shadows all around us were the screams of the witches who had changed me.
She was right. They were gone.
Because she’d killed them a long time ago and anchored their remnants to this place asfuel.
“How did you know what to do?” I asked, bewildered as the mist slowly cleared, revealing an entire field of Death Lotus blooms.
It was exactly what Lily needed to win.
Lily. How could I have forgotten?
Everything seemed to come back to me all in a rush.
This was what we would need to get out of here.
This is what Lily needed to survive.
Towin.
