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Damien’s face was expressionless and his tone even less lively. “We both know you can’t stay in the Faeland forever, Keera.”
“Is that where I am?” I exaggerated my gaze around the throne room. Even though Damien’s suspicions were correct, I would never be foolish enough to corroborate them.
My eyes fell to the small dagger holstered at Damien’s hip. I was unarmed, but if I could run the blade through Damien’s heart, perhaps the dream would end before his torment even began.
I shifted my foot, preparing to strike but my boot slipped along the tile. I crashed to floor. Thick, hot blood soaked through my clothes and covered my face. My heart pounded against my chest as I tried to push myself up. I slipped, ramming my shoulder into the floor.
A groan escaped my lips but I refused to look up at Damien’s satisfied face. I couldn’t do it any longer. I kept my gaze locked on the blood-soaked tiles so I didn’t have to see the Shades hanging by their feet. I planted my boot and lifted myself up, only to slip once more. This time, I landed on something soft.
Hildegard stared up at me with dead, open eyes. Her body was cold, drained of all its color just like it had the day she bled out in front of me. My stomach lurched and I fought the urge to be sick. I tried to stand but it was pointless. The sticky blood had coated every inch of the floor and my boots.
I ran my hand over Hildegard’s eyes, shutting them as I shut my own. Damien sat above it all, lounging in his throne as he let this piece of his memory merge with our dream.
A sob stirred deep in my chest, but I wouldn’t let it out. Instead I looked back down at Hildegard, but she was gone.
Gwyn was laying in her place. Her almost lifeless body gaping at her belly from where Damien had cut her. Where Damien had rummaged inside of her in search of Gwyn’s cursed womb, only to cut the organ out for himself. She wheezed as she looked up at me, full of fear and defeat.
I was grateful I didn’t have to imagine my horror. I let the memory of finding her on that day overwhelm me with regret and loss. The sob that had been building burst and Damien smiled down at me with his cruel grin, watching my pain like a playwright.
“So much blood on your hands,” Damien whispered.
I stared up at him, unwilling to wail like he wanted any longer. “Youkilled them.” I wouldn’t deny my part in Hildegard’s death or Gwyn’s attack, but Damien had dealt the blows.
His hungry expression shifted to something darker. He sipped from his goblet before throwing it to the ground, face hard and emotionless. “Then perhaps it’s time to revisit a death whereyoudrew the blade.”
The throne room disappeared in a blur of shadow before reshaping into a place I’d only set foot in once in my life. The stage was coated in dust so thick it felt like snow underfoot. The empty rows of seats had a presence about them, like the ghost of every initiate who had died in her Trials was watching me. Waiting for what came next.
I was in the room where it happened, revisiting the memory that had haunted me for decades, no matter how hard I tried to kill it with poison or lock it in the deepest trenches of myself.
This was the room where Brenna had died.
It was a small theater. Its rows of seats circled around the curved stage where I assumed Elvish musicians and fire spinners had once performed for their people. Had the room existed in the palace, Damien would have used it to entertain the royals at court, but it was left in disuse on the island of the Order.
Except for when the king called forth the Trials, when the latest group of initiates would be tested to their limits in the hope of earning a hood.
Damien stepped out onto the stage, dragging an old wooden chair behind him. He placed it in the center. The exact spot it had sat thirty years before.
Damien drummed his fingertips over the back of the chair, but it was no longer empty. My heart squeezed at the sight of her—Brenna bound to the chair with a rope so tight it had left bruises on her skin. Her blond curls were covered in her own blood, amber-stained strands stuck to her neck. Some of the blood had dried along the scars that formed faint lines across her honey eyes. They stared up at me in fear, just as they had that day.
Not fear that she was dying. Not even fear that I would kill her.
Fear that I wouldn’t.
Damien paced along the back of the stage, eyes locked on the bloodstone dagger with a wooden hilt that had appeared on the table beside Brenna. He licked his lips in anticipation of rewatching his favorite play being acted out in front of him.
Damien had designed an impossible choice that could only end in bloodshed. And his thrill had come from not knowing whose blood it would be. I could still recall the satisfied grin he’d given me after I’d done it. It was the same one he wore now. He’d known he had witnessed a transformation I could never come back from. And I had stoked that ruse for three decades. I let him and his father believe in my ruthlessness because the truth would only get me killed.
Brenna had stacked the game before Damien ever made me play it.
“Do you think she forgave you before she died?” Damien asked as Brenna thrashed against the bindings. The wooden chair scraped against the stone like a cry for help no one would hear.
“No,” I answered, unable to look away from Brenna for one moment. Even in her terror, even knowing what came next, my entire body yearned to touch her, to protect her. Even after thirty years. “Would you forgive someone who betrayed you so completely?”
Damien stalked across the stage and picked up the dagger. Brenna’s eyes stayed focused on me, locked in the memory of what had really happened. “Life is nothing more than a vicious game.” He placed the blade into my hand and curled my stiff fingers around the hilt.
I scoffed. “And your aim is to win?”
Damien tilted his head, carefully considering the question. “My aim is for everyone else to lose.” His jade eye flicked to Brenna, still squirming in her chair. “You know how to end this.”
