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If I’m greeted with the evil version of Karnon, he gets right to work. If I’m met with the kinder, crazier version of Karnon, he rocks me against him, murmuring nonsense about wings and gills, claws and scales.

“Aetherial?” I call out.

Silence. It’s been like that for the last several days.

I begin talking to her anyway, just in case she can still hear me, telling her anything that crosses my mind. But not once do I mention the one thing that weighs most heavily on my mind—

I’m going to die here.

Chapter 28

Day who-the-fuck-knows andvisit number six with Karnon, the guy who’s beginning to star in all of my nightmares.

When we arrive, the guards drop me unceremoniously on the ground before retreating.

Groaning a little, I push myself onto my forearms, reaching for my blindfold. Lately the guards have stopped binding my wrists and ankles. What’s the point? I’m too weak to escape.

I pull off the cloth around my eyes, blinking against the brightness of the room. I freeze when I take in my surroundings.

The first thing I notice is that I’m not in Karnon’s bedroom. Here, dead leaves are scattered across the floor, and spindly, dead vines cover most of the walls and much of the ceiling. They’re even wrapped around the great antler chandelier ending far above me. This derelict room looks like it’s been left to the elements.

A wild room for a wild, mad king.

My gaze falls to a raised dais at the far side of the room. The massive chair perched in the center of it is a chair made entirely of bones. And sitting on it is Karnon.

He assesses me from his throne. “Precious bird,” he says, “you are dying.”

He stands, and that simple action alone sends a shiver down my spine.

Today won’t be like the other visits.

His footsteps echo as he descends down the stairs in front of him, leaves crunching beneath his boots.

I get a good look at his eyes, and it’s my stepfather all over again. The half-mad lust that looks more animal than man. The trigger-short temper that can veer to anger at the slightest provocation.

He stops less than a foot away from me. It’s just the two of us in this room; whatever guards or aides or officials are normally stationed here are now gone.

Karnon kneels next to me. I try to scramble away, but my limbs are heavy and sluggish. I want to shriek in frustration. I’d vowed long ago to never again be a victim. And here I am, powerless beneath the will of a mad king.

He begins petting my hair. “What a pretty, pretty bird. A shame you cannot fly, trapped as you are in this cage of a body.”

He cups my face. “You are dying because the animal in you is being smothered.”

Riight, that’s why.

“I’m dying because you’re poisoning me,” I say.

He stares back at me, his gaze distant, and I can already tell my words didn’t register with him. He begins petting my hair again. “How can a creature survive when she doesn’t have gills to breathe or wings to fly?”

When I don’t answer, he gives me a look like my silence is making his point for him. His touch moves from my hair down my back.

I try to bat away his hands, my limbs sluggish. It does no good.

“Sweet creature,” he says, stroking my back, “fret not.” He leans in close to my ear. “Today I will set you free.”

I turn to look at him, my gaze locking with those slitted pupils of his. We stare each other for several seconds, his hands laying heavily on my back. His body begins to tremble, and then, all at once, he releases all of his magic right into me.

His magic islike a sledgehammer to my back, driving down into my skin, into my bones with the force of a freight train. The shockwave from it ripples out around us, shaking the very walls of his throne room.