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“Excellent news.” The advisor claps his hands with a smile. “Isn’t it, your majesty?”

The queen purses her lips. “Only just.”

“You’ll be tasked with retrieving it,” Reeces says to me. “You must present it to your queen with all due haste.”

“I will, but only if you let Nox go.” I steal a glance at him and his purple eyes flicker with blue in their depths, the pain from his injuries making the colors neon. “He can help me find it.”

The advisor shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

Reece withdraws an oddly-shaped dagger from the folds of his robes and the length of it catches the flames from the scones on the walls, reflecting it at me. With every step he takes, my hands shake and my legs quiver with the need to move, to do something to protect Nox. Instead, I force myself to remain still and take the opportunity to listen to his blood.

It’s slow, as though he’s the walking dead.

I school my features at the discovery. “Don’t come any closer.”

He stops an arm’s length from me and Nox. “Do you know what this is?” When I frown, his lips quirk up. “This is a blade forged from the sands found on the shores that surround the Void.”

“That doesn’t help me,” I say.

“It’s poisonous. One piercing from this dagger will end a person’s life once their blood is corrupted.”

I hold out my hands in supplication. “Please. I’ll find the ring. You don’t have to hurt anyone.”

“Since when have you cared?” The queen taps her lips in thought. “My prisoner is more special than I realized. I wonder why that is? He’s no one important, not even a nobleman.”

My mother’s display of nonchalance while Nox’s life hangs in the balance, not to mention my own, has a fire gathering heat in my chest. Her life force flares briefly under my command and her eyes widen.

“Reece,” she gasps.

The advisor lunges forward, driving the dagger into Nox’s shoulder.

My scream shatters the night.

It’s followed by the pained cries of the people around me as tiny crimson rivers flow from their eyes, noses, and ears. My mother shrieks the loudest, her voice piercing my mind.

“Paint the roses red with her blood!”