Page 46 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

Rhys’s grip on Isabella’s wrists tightened, anchoring her, but the force of those ribbons slammed into her chest, a hook tugging her ribs outward. Her ribs screamed. Her body arched as though she were being strung on wires. Terror clawed at her.

She gasped, head snapping back.

“Isabella!” Rhys’s voice thundered, ragged, frantic.

The ribbons coiled around her waist, her throat, cold and wet as pondweed, slick as mud. They pulled. She dug her nails into Rhys’s hands, not to pry free, but to hold.

Catrin’s voice whispered in her ear, silk over razors. “Conduit. Pretty conduit. Be what is wanted. Be what is needed.”

Be silent. Be small. Be safe. Rules she had obeyed her whole life.

The shadows swelled until the burned chamber drowned in them. Isabella’s vision tunneled, narrowed to Rhys’s eyes—gray gone near black, fierce, refusing.

He tried to break the pull, wrenching her back, but she shook her head, choking. “Don’t… Let me?—”

The black smoke filled her mouth, her lungs, her mind.

And she understood: this was the gate, and Catrin meant to claim it, claim her .

Rhys wrenched at her hands, trying to break the circle, to tear her free of the conduit’s pull.

“No! Isabella!” His shout tore from his throat. “I won’t lose you for this. I’ll damn the gate, damn her, damn all of it before I lose you.”

His desperation hit her harder than the smoke filling her lungs. His grip was brutal, his body bent toward hers, ready to break every vow he had made. For a heartbeat she thought he would tear her away, shatter the grimoire, consign his mother and brothers to their prison forever. For her.

Her chest burned, throat raw, but she forced the words through. “You cannot—” she coughed, black spilling between her lips, “—consign them to this for me.”

“Yes, I can.” His voice cracked, naked, wild. “I will. Better their torment than your death.”

He meant them, those words. And it told her that he loved her.

Loved her above all else.

And her love for him would not allow her to fail.

Her vision blurred. Shapes writhed at the edges of sight, the mother, the boys, thin and stretched, Catrin gnawing at their souls. Their hands reached, trembling, pleading.

“They suffer,” Isabella gasped. “You hear them—” Her head jerked as another ribbon of shadow drove itself into her mouth, gagging her. “I feel them?—”

Catrin laughed, low and intimate, pressing her phantom mouth to Isabella’s ear. “He loves you not. He would unmake you for them.” She dragged a finger of smoke along Isabella’s throat, then licked her with a ribboned tongue. “Let go of your earthly form. Come to me. Join me, Isabella. Be free.”

The voice was a sibilant hiss, laced with promise. A lure. A trap. Isabella knew it, but still?—

Rhys dragged her forward, trying to haul her into his chest as though he could shield her with the meat of his body. The grimoire’s hum rose to a shriek, vibrating through the scorched stones.

“Isabella,” he begged. Not command. Not demand. Begging. His whole frame shook. “Come back to me. Close it. Leave it. Let her have them and I will live with the pain. I can live with that pain, but I cannot live without you.”

Her pulse thundered in her ears. A hundred mornings with Papa’s rules lashed across her memory. Never say, never show, hide, hide, hide.

Be what is wanted.

She had hidden so long.

But she was not a child anymore. She was not property to be shuffled, nor shadow to be smothered.

She pressed her forehead hard against Rhys’s, their grips bruising. “I choose,” she rasped. “Not her. Not silence. Me. I choose.”

She had lived caged inside her silence, her sight smothered, her soul bound. But now she flung the doors wide. She let the voices, the visions, the dark flood through her. Unmasked. Unbarred.

The gate answered.

The air tore open.

Catrin’s laughter fractured into a scream, the sound splintering glass somewhere far below. The soot bled down the walls in black torrents. Isabella’s body bowed backward, every vein lit with fire. She screamed with it, a sound that felt like it would rip her throat apart.

Rhys shouted her name, his voice a lifeline. He clamped her wrists, not to hold her down, but to hold her here.

Through the blur of black and ash, she saw them, saw clearly for the first time. His mother, her eyes swollen with weeping but alight now with recognition. Will, coughing weakly, small chest fluttering, but lifting his face toward her. Ned, humming through his fear, voice thin but alive.

The sight of them filled her, but so too did the pull. It wanted her. Catrin wanted her. She felt herself being stripped into threads, pulled through the dark.

Rhys’s voice broke over her. “Isabella, stay with me—please?—”

She wanted to. God, she wanted to.

She wished she had told him that she loved him. She wished?—

The dark swallowed her scream. Her body jerked. Pain, sharp and deep, flayed her, and she soared, floating high, her body crumpling to the floor below.

She heard the broken roar of Rhys’s pain, saw him fall to his knees at her side, and then darkness closed over her, deep as the grave.