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“Those revenants we passed earlier were beheaded by a lone fighter with significant sword skills and speed—Mina might as well have left a calling card. She was at that castle, but she left it and challenged those creatures for a reason.”

Kristoff frowned. “Because of the sorcery?”

“Could be that. Could also be because the world is coming to an end. These continuous quakes tell a story, and the ending is a tearjerker.”

“What?”Kristoff gazed around in horror, feeling as if they were trapped in a collapsing tin can. “You said an exit would exist. We’ve been all over this realm and have found none!”

“Perhaps Mina did,” he said with an unconcerned shrug. “I scent a mass of ghoul blood buried beneath these rocks, but not her. Though I do smell a sorcerer. Ah! It’s the one who accompanied Mina earlier. Where are you, sorcerer? Come out, come out.” Lothaire climbed atop a mound of boulders, repeating, “Where are you?”

Still dumbstruck that this world was ending, Kristoff gazed on in silence. Did Lothaire have enough sanity left to answer his own question?

At length, the Enemy of Old peered down at his feet.

Mina burned in the hive of ghouls, with no idea what had happened to Adham.

Her fever raged as it hadn’t done since she’d been a child, held securely in Mirceo’s arms. As she fought the contagion, her body flailed on the ground. Lucidity waxed and waned. She was transforming.

No, not transforming.

I’m dying, soon to be reborn a monster.

Regaining consciousness, Mina had found herself on a raised shelf of rock inside a hollowed-out cavern that must be several miles wide. Green slime coated the towering walls, giving off a sick-tinged light. A rudimentary stone throne stood nearby.

At least two dozen sentries circled her.

She tried to rise, but the infection had set in with a vengeance. She had to get away from these creatures and find Adham.He’s still alive. He must be. She longed to guide him to freedom. At least one of them could be saved.

More quakes hit, the stone vibrating beneath her. She again detected that thread from the mortal realm. After all their struggles, she and Adham had been so close to deliverance.

She mopped sweat from her brow. This couldn’t be happening. The worst fate for an immortal had befallen her. A Lorean’s body lived through almost everything—oftentimes even death.

Yet she didn’t regret saving Adham from that ghoul. Logic said,You were succumbing to plague anyway. Best to sacrifice for him.Her heart said,That’s not why you did it.

She loved him.

But her actions had likely been for naught. If her fate was a nightmare, what was his? Clawed as well? Trapped in Nightside until it imploded into nothingness?

They’d been so close. . . .

Tears coursed down her cheeks. She held onto her love for him, wanting to cradle something so precious as her fever intensified, marking her end. She would cradle that love until cognition left her.

Adham.

The ghouls began to sway in unison. In her delirium, she felt linked to all the monsters in the mountain, as if she shared a collective hivemind with them.

She sensed these sentries were excited that their contagion burgeoned in another host. Drone ghouls labored away in their tunnels, searching for an escape from the realm. Somewhere in this cavern, the primordial queen longed for her mate and brother. Ages ago, she’d dispatched him through another rift to the mortal world to explore new territory and to infect. But the rift had closed behind him.

The queen was frantic to reach him and to escape this dying land. She had laid eggs for others to seed, but she wanted her chosen king to sire their future generations, passing on his strength and sentience?—

Mina shook her head hard. She wanted no shared thoughts with them, ached to scour her mind clean of the illness they’d inflicted upon her.

Even as the last of her strength faded and her lids grew too heavy to keep open, she bared her fangs at the sentries.

Though she’d provoked them, none would attack. Because she would soon be one of them.

She closed her eyes and dreamed of a sorcerer with eyes like the sun.

Forty-Seven