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Even a breath was too long, too much time for us to stop her from tethering away as Landers fell against the grass. Rain pelted his body as the Svech rapidly spread underneath his skin.

Andrues was already beside him, pulling his body against his chest as he tried to mend the wounds.

Tried to heal his best friend.

The world went deathly silent as Dukovich fell to Landers’s side, desperately trying to pull the poison from his veins.

I stood there, staring—screaming—but no sound left me.

Yenne’s hands clasped around my shoulders. I had forgotten she was there.

Forgotten she existed.

She twisted my body toward her and began speaking. Her mouth was moving but the only thing penetrating the silence was rage.

Unadulterated rage.

I had nothing, no one to live for now and that made mefucking dangerous. I did not care if I lived, I did not care if I died in the pursuit of vengeance. But I would get it, even if it took my last breath.

I was lethal, I was powerful, and my blood was ancient.

I was everything that Nimbra was made of, and I was about to show her that Gods, were not the only beings to be feared.

Chapter fifty-three

HYACINTH

Myeyeswereheavyas they blinked open against a dark, dank cell. I reached for my necklaces without thinking, without remembering that they were already gone.

I needed them to tell me this gaping hole in my chest, this agony that was flooding my soul, wasn’t true.

That Landers was okay.

Coldness seeped into my bones, curling around my heart as if forcing it to burst. The pain was so sharp, so unrelenting it felt as if my very soul had been cleaved in two.

Nothing had ever hurt more than this.

I threw my head back, a scream tearing free from my throat, so loud, so hollow, it could have cracked the sky itself. My magic surged from my veins, unchecked, wild,violent. The cell shook around me, the air charged with raw energy, but it did not seep out through the gates, did not destroy the way it should have.

But then as quickly as it had come, the pain was gone, vanishing from my body with such force that I gasped against it, coughing as my palms slammed into the stone.

He had to be alive, he had to be okay or I would still feel it.

I would still feel every ounce of the pain.

I clung to the thought, dragging myself to the bars of the cells, chains rattling at my ankles as I squinted into the dark.

“Asrai?” I called out, waiting,prayingfor her response.

But it was not her voice that answered.

“Cin?” Pri’s voice rang through the dark and rage bloomed in my chest.

“How could you do this?” I screamed the question as my fists pounded against the bars.

I pushed my hand through the small space between them, a light igniting in my palm as the other side of my cell lit up. The sound of scurrying and chains clanking ringing out into the stale air.

It wasn’t a corridor, or the entrance to the dungeons, like I expected her traitorous voice to come from, but another cell. And in the corner, Pri sat shaking and wrapped in chains.