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She hardly noticed that she was being passed back and forth. Not with the familiar numbness settling in. Not as she felt herself shutting down. Not as she felt herself slipping into nothing where she didn’t have it in her to care about anything. Where she didn’t know how to hold herself together.

Where it was too exhausting to try.

“Stay with me, little storm,” Theon said softly, guiding her into the house and out of the drizzling rain. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to mix with the blood on her skin. She could feel drops of it slowly sliding down her flesh, and she raised her fingers to wipe at one.

They came away stained in red.

And she was immediately pulled into memories of assessments.

Of visions they forced her into where she killed her friends. Killed her family that didn’t exist.

Of choking on her own blood while she was tortured in front of her friends.

Of watching her friends be tortured.

“Please stop!” she cried as the small knife was stabbed into Lange’s side again and again.

He groaned with every strike, his body marred with small deep cuts. When this was over, all traces of the abuse would be gone. No scars on the outside. What Legacy would want Fae marred with imperfections to serve in their kingdoms?

“You can make it all stop, Tessalyn,” the Priestess replied calmly. “Just show us your element.

“I can’t!” she wailed. “I’m trying, and I can’t!” She was chained to a wall, forced to watch.

And when Lange lost consciousness, they brought in Corbin.

“Tessa. Tessalyn, look at me.”

The entrancing forced her gaze to eyes of emerald green. Theon was gripping her face between his palms, his thumb grazing back and forth across her cheekbone, smearing the blood splatters.

He had blood on his face too. More than she did. Little spots and larger smears. And he looked…tired. His eyes weren’t as bright.

“Are you back, Tessa?”

She nodded mutely, leaning against the wall.

The wall?

Her eyes darted around. They were upstairs in their bedroom, but even the small familiarity of it wasn’t enough to ease the tension in her body. What she needed was—

“Here.”

Theon was before her once more. When had he left her? But he was pressing a glass into her hand.

A glass of amber liquid.

She swallowed the entirety down.

“By the gods, Tessa,” Theon muttered.

But she didn’t care as the liquor warmed her belly, her arms loosening a fraction.

More.

She needed more.

She needed to drown in it.

No, she needed to drown in—