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Gasping, she struggled to stand upright. She felt the others’ eyes on her but ignored them. Slowly, she managed to put one foot in front of another and walked past the prince toward the rising sun. “Let’s go.”

Behind her, Hadeon cleared his throat. She stopped, looking back.

“It’s that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction.

Of course.

She marched in the direction he pointed without a word, still clutching the map.

Anger surged through her, and the sharp edges of her emotions heightened. Even as she walked, she longed to move, to fight, to do something . While she understood the importance of this mission, doing anything but journey directly toward her mate had something in her chest setting aflame.

Fuck you, Magnus, she thought. You’ll die soon. At my hands.

Shadows hissed at her feet, curling and twisting as her thoughts turned dark.

She glared at the mountain peaks in the distance as she moved in silence.

After some time, she found herself walking at Hadeon’s side.

The prince had a distant look in his eyes, and she thought to wonder just what he might be thinking about.

Had he been honest about his motivations for finding the shadow fae?

She meant what she’d said to Jessamine the night before.

She didn’t believe the prince was dishonest. But she doubted he had their best interests at heart.

Even if she couldn’t be entirely certain of his motivations, she couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t simply forced her to help him find the shadow fae with the favor she owed him.

“Why didn’t you call in the bargain?” she eventually asked, hoping the conversation might distract herself from the agony slicing down the bond. “Why this roundabout way of getting me to come with you to the Abyss?”

“Perhaps I thought it would benefit us both.”

Leveling a flat look on him, she said, “You don’t do anything without a reason.”

Eyes scanning the gently sloping hills around them, no power winked into her awareness.

There wasn’t a single magic wielder nearby outside of their group.

It was completely desolate. Though… as she cast her awareness further out, she thought she detected something else lingering in the air.

It dusted her senses with dread, feeling like hundreds of eyes followed their group’s every step.

Like they were intruding in a place they shouldn’t be.

She’d never believed in ghosts nor had she encountered spirits of the dead in her time as an enchantress.

All she’d had to consider were the demons that threatened her home.

Most had physical bodies, and killing a corporeal form was simple enough by magic or blade. How did one fight an angry spirit?

Pushing thoughts of the lingering eyes aside, she said, “How did you meet Prince Arden?”

Hadeon shrugged. “The shadow fae weren’t highly favored toward the end of their existence in the fae realm. And I’ve never been among my mother’s favorite sons. Arden and I bonded over our mutual unfavored existence at court functions, balls, and the like.”

The queen disliked her own son? The notion seemed ridiculous. But Arabella needed to know if there was more to why Hadeon wanted to stop his mother. What was their history? Why was he so desperate to stop her from securing immortality? What could the price be for one queen to live forever?

As they walked, her eyes caught on how the light reflected off sections of his wings. They didn’t just have feathers like his brothers’ wings, which she’d seen on the dais the day she’d met the queen with Elias. Speckled between the feathers, something glittered in the light.

Turning to the blank parchment in her hand, she said, “Any suggestions for reading an unreadable map? Maybe something Arden said to you?”

“It was something he created,” Hadeon said as he navigated around a boulder, angling downhill.

“He’d been studying old texts and went on about how some realms are mirror images of each other and others were unique unto themselves.

He’d been sparse with the details of how he’d created a map of a place he’d never been to.

When I saw him after he created it, he looked pale and sickly.

At the time, he’d been excitable and eager to tell me about it.

But war was imminent, and my mother told me to end the friendship or risk us being viewed as allies to the shadow fae.

So, there hadn’t been time to learn much about it. ”

“I see,” she said, though this only sparked more questions in her mind about the fae war. There was so much she didn’t know—so much that was left out of the histories. How much of what she’d been taught was a fabrication or partial truth by the victors?

They walked in silence for a time while she tried to get the map to work. But as the minutes turned to hours, the parchment remained stubbornly blank.

The sun crept higher in the sky, and Hadeon slowed his steps.

Suddenly, the air shifted, like electricity just struck the ground, and she looked around.

To the naked eye, the land seemed no different.

There were unremarkable rolling grassy hills in every direction with occasional large boulders. The surrounding hills were almost entirely treeless and lacked any kind of shrubbery. In the distance, the mountains loomed.

A soundless scream ripped from the earth. It wasn’t the scream of a mortal. No, this felt as though the earth itself cried out in protest at this fissure that was formed into the very fabric of this world. The sound filled her mind until all she knew was the familiar agony.

We found it .

Whether by making or happenstance, the gateway to the Abyss was before them.

She dropped to a knee, clapping her hands over both ears instinctively. But it did nothing to muffle the sound ricocheting in her mind. Beside her, Jessamine collapsed to her hands and knees before retching.

“I forgot enchantresses don’t do well with gateway travel,” Breckett said somewhere above her. “Elias had to haul Arabella through the gateway last time.”

She managed to look up, noting panic in Hadeon’s eyes. Though it disappeared as quickly as it’d come. So quickly she thought she might have imagined it.

“They can’t walk through?” Hadeon pressed.

Breckett looked at her and Jessamine and then back to Hadeon before shaking his head. “Not without help.”

Beside her, Jessamine had stopped retching only long enough to sway and slump onto the grass, unconscious.

Agony filled Arabella’s mind as the gateway seared her senses.

Sucking in labored breaths, she struggled to remain conscious as her fingers dug into the patchy grass. But she couldn’t tune out the gateway’s shrieks nor the pain coming down the mating bond, which had suddenly become tinged with concern.

Could Elias sense her as well?

Spots formed in her vision, and she started to sway.

This gateway was unlike the one in the forest. It was an illness in this world—a deep wound that bore evil—and it struck something deep in her core.

Distantly, she wondered if some evil entity had made a slash between realms, incrementally tainting the land with foreign energy. One that promised desolation.

She noticed then that the gateway bore a darker melody. It was a slow cadence beckoning her forward. The screeching filling her mind was gradually replaced by a trilling sound as alluring as a siren’s song.

Slowly, she raised her head.

The motion had her gut whirling, and she thought she might be sick. But she managed to turn her eyes toward where the gateway materialized in the air.

It wasn’t a rift in the air like the gateway in the forest. No, this was a simple dark mist hovering above the ground, about as tall as a winged fae. The mist was faint enough to be translucent. If she hadn’t been looking directly at it, she might have missed it.

As she studied the gateway, its song increased, and she felt herself standing without her willing it.

A presence settled on her shoulders like a cloak of night, and the agony inside her head suddenly grew distant as the lilting music overtook it.

Her thoughts grew fuzzy, and she took one step forward and then another.

“Where are you going?” Breckett demanded, but she paid him no heed. “Arabella! Damn you, what are you doing?”

There was a shuffling sound behind her as she continued toward the gateway. Her feet moved of their own accord. One step and then another. Soon, she was only paces away from the dark mist.

Something in her chest tugged, urging her to stop.

Even as her thoughts grew distant, she knew the thing in her chest anchored her.

The person on the other side was entwined with the threads of her destiny.

He was important to her, but she couldn’t seem to recall why.

But even knowing that, he was too distant, especially as a song crested within her.

It laced through her every sense until she was vibrating with it. It beckoned her forward.

And she would follow.

As she neared the gateway, the pale darkness of the once-translucent mist deepened and churned like a storm cloud. As if in response, her shadows blossomed beneath her feet, spreading their inky tendrils forward.

Steps sounded behind her, but her eyes fluttered closed as the dark melody swelled to a crescendo.

Come , it seemed to say. Come to me .

Slowly, she reached out a hand.

The moment her fingers connected with the gateway, her braid lifted off her shoulders in a sudden gust of wind before she stepped into the space between realms.