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A myriad of images plagued him with no reprieve. He saw the pleading eyes of the shadow-touched before he plunged his blade into them, over and over, until it wasn’t the gaze of strangers he met, but Talemir’s hazel stare, going wide beneath the carving motion of his swords.

Wilder watched as healers peeled away the bloodied bandages from Malik’s swollen face as he thrashed beneath their hold, upsetting tables and trays, knocking assistants off their feet, bellowing in pain.

Wilder’s memory took him to his own Great Rite – the red-hot slash of blades through his own flesh, the snap of bones and the blunt impact of trauma to vital organs. He couldn’t breathe. There was no air to be had, no fight left in his ragged lungs. He felt every blow again and again, each more vividly than the last.

He cried out as the pain and images compounded. A broken body and a broken mind – that was their intent: torture at its finest.

And just when he could take no more, just as he considered cracking his own head upon the stone to make it stop, he was shown something else. Something good.

His cabin.

Home.

And Thea waiting for him inside, a simple band of fine silver on her fourth finger, a smile on her full lips.

‘There you are,’ she said.

He wanted to acknowledge that he knew this wasn’t real, but couldn’t bring himself to speak, to break the reverie. For any moment with her was a blessing, real or not. He fought the lump in his throat, wanting to say those words they’d denied themselves before she entered the Great Rite. What if it was now or never? What if he never saw her again? As the Warsword he knew she’d become?

He clawed at his neck, a ragged gasp escaping him as he realised that these moments of reprieve from the violence and memories were designed to break him just as much as any pain.

Icy water rained down on him, his chains rattling again as thick hands clamped around his arms once more.

Everything was distant – the flickering torchlight, the terrified screams, the fetid smells, the rough handling – as though it were happening to someone else far away. This time, when Wilder was dragged from one cell to the next, he understood the husks staring back out at him from behind the stone bars, for they looked how he felt: hollowed out, a fragile shell of what had come before.

When he was thrown into a new cell, as dank and wet as the last, he didn’t fight, didn’t get back up. He sprawled there across the stone, rebelling against the voice in his head that told him to stand —

Until he saw a pair of eyes blinking at him from the darkness.

Still strung out and disoriented, Wilder scrambled to his feet, raising his fists, meaning to use the manacles as a weapon.

But his cellmate made no move to attack. Instead, he moved into the dying torchlight and said, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

CHAPTER TWO

THEA

Through ribbons of darkness and bursts of lightning, Althea Embervale glimpsed the vast tempestuous sea and the forlorn island emerging from the mist below. It was no ordinary isle, no common landmass, but rather a place that existed on the fringes of the Veil, where the Scarlet Tower protruded like a shard of bone through flesh.

Wilder. Wilder was somewhere in there.

She was going to get him out, and then unleash a reckoning upon those who’d held him captive.

Thea’s boots hit the black sand with a soft thud. A great pair of wings beat once, twice, before dematerialising behind the famous Warsword at her side.

‘This is probably a trap,’ Talemir Starling offered, scanning the jagged shore around them.

‘Probably.’ Thea didn’t take her eyes off the dark tower in the distance, resting her hand on the hilt of her sword as she absorbed the uncanny energy toying with her power, hinting at an otherworldly force. ‘Does it make a difference?’

There hadn’t been much opportunity for strategising as they travelled, nor had Thea had the chance to test her newly won Warsword strength and agility. They had flown through clouds and walked through shadows, but it hadn’t been fast enough. Every second Wilder spent in that place was a knife to her heart.

Talemir’s dark power flickered, as though he sensed Thea’s impatience, and felt the strange presence permeating the island. ‘Fuck no.’

‘Good.’

They left the shore behind and made their way through the dunes, waist-high grass brushing against them as they moved. The screams and shrieks of howlers and wraiths echoed across the foul place.

Wilder’s former mentor, and the man known as the Shadow Prince, turned to Thea, shadows swirling at his fingertips. ‘Shall I?’