Page 26

There is one person I’d go to when I needed something—anything. She may not be thinking clearly right now, but I still need to see her again. One more time before I make a decision that will change everything forever.

I steel myself and push open the door.

The chamber is dim, the light from the hovering witchlights too pale, too weak to chase away the darkness curling along the edges of the room. The air is thick, too still, as if it holds its breath in anticipation. The runes along the walls pulse faintly, reacting to my presence, but my gaze is already drawn to the figure at the center of the room.

Lara.

She is exactly where I left her, bound to the reinforced iron chair, her wrists and ankles encased in glowing sigils designed to suppress whatever unnatural force lingers within her.

“Lara.” The word comes out harsher than I intended, and she stirs.

It feels unnatural. Not like a person shifting into wakefulness.

Like a puppet whose strings have just been pulled.

Her head snaps up, her chin lifting too fast, her body jerking against the chair like something unseen has yanked her back into herself. Her limbs remain bound, but something in the air shifts, thickens, as if the magic holding her is fighting to keep her in place.

The room warps, the shadows stretching wider, deepening.

And then she opens her eyes. I will never get used to the emotionless void staring back at me.

A poor imitation of what once was.

A sickness twists in my gut.

“I was wondering,” Lara murmurs, her voice a soft, saccharine drawl, “how long you were going to make me wait.”

I feel the others tense behind me, although I told them to wait.

Lucian. Dorian. The Girls. The elders. Ravenna.

They rest just outside of the room, but I feel them.

I square my shoulders. “What did they do to you?”

Lara tilts her head, the motion eerily smooth, the corners of her lips still curled, her amusement stretching too thin.

“You act like you don’t already know.”

A shiver crawls down my spine.

Her fingers flex against the restraints, nails scraping against the iron again in that familiar rhythm.

“The nightmares,” she whispers, her voice slithering through the room. “You’ve seen them, haven’t you? The pieces they let you have.”

My breath catches.

She knows.

She knows about the visions.

“Do you know why, Sylvie?” she continues, her voice sickly sweet. “Because you and me? We are not separate. We never were.”

I shake my head, refusing to let the weight of her words dig into me, refusing to acknowledge the way my blood thrums at the sound of her voice.

“No,” I whisper.

She leans forward as far as the restraints allow, her head tilting, those black eyes gleaming.

“Then why do you keep dreaming of me?”

A sudden, sharp pulse ripples through the air, the wards flaring bright, and I stumble back, my heartbeat thundering.

Lara grins, her teeth too white in the dimness. “They need your blood to fix me, don’t they? That’s what Solstice said would happen if you were foolish enough to try to fix things on your own. Your blood.”

The words feel like a noose tightening around my throat.

She giggles, the sound light, airy, like a child whispering a secret. “What do you think will happen, Sylvie?”

Her voice drops to a whisper.

“When we are one again?”

The chamber spins, my body locking in place, my breath choking out of me?—

And Lara smiles like she already knows the answer. Like she’s waiting for me to figure it out. Like it was always supposed to be this way.

“What will it be? Will you save yourself or will you save me? Because I don’t think there’s a world in which you save us both.”

Her words hit me again, the reality inside of them putting me in a chokehold.

“Lara,” I say, and she locks her soulless eyes on mine. “Do you remember when we were little girls, and mom would always tell us to trust our instincts. Trust our gut.” I don’t know why I’m asking the question. It comes to me, and I refuse to ignore it. “She would always say that we had all the answers we needed inside of ourselves.”

The words almost seem to reach her, like that memory of our mother’s words can penetrate deep enough into her soul to pull her back, just a little.

“She said that we would always have each other,” I say, my voice cracking as a tear rolls down my cheek and Lara sits, expressionless, staring at me. “She said even if we lost track of each other, all we needed to do was trust ourselves. That we’d find out way back to each other. Because our bond as sisters was one that could never be broken.”

The words come, and I feel as if our mother is the one speaking them instead of me. Her voice ringing loudly in my ears. The words she said over and over again for years.

My tears flow as she continues looking at me with those dead eyes, and the pain clutches at my chest like it wants to pull me under. Everything is spinning and I’m trying to right myself, but nothing works.

Except our mother’s words.

“I still believe her,” I say. “I still believe in that bond, and I always will. No matter what.”

Finally, Lara deeply inhales, and she starts to say something, but then abruptly stops, as if she thinks better of it.

“Do you believe her?” I ask, needing to know. Needing to see if anything I’ve said is working. If anything is helping even in the slightest. When she doesn’t answer, I ask again, repeating the same question as she slowly shakes her head.

“I suppose you’ll have to find out for yourself, won’t you. Trust your gut, Sylvie.”

Her words are meant to be menacing, but instead of being eerie and damning, I decide I’ll do just that.

I’ll trust myself. And if something goes wrong, there is exactly one person to blame.