Page 6

CHAPTER

FIVE

Oralia

Drystan screamed. The sound was a thousand knives piercing my heart.

I did not hesitate—did not stop to weigh the cost—I could not allow Drystan to die. Shadows exploded from my chest, sharp and deadly, zinging toward the Golden King.

Perhaps the smile on his face should have prepared me.

Or maybe the dread pooling in my chest should have instead.

The moment my shadows reached him, primed to strike, they disappeared as if they had never been there. But Drystan’s screams quieted into soft heaves. I sent another bout of shadows forward, intent on finishing what the first had not, but Typhon merely raised his hand. The same smile sliced across his face.

The shadows turned, shooting back at me and barreling through my skin. Like rabid dogs, they twisted around my arms, my throat. I knew these shadows—they were mine, but they were wrong . As if they did not know to whom they belonged. Drystan was crying my name even as Typhon laughed, as the shadows wrapped around my throat and squeezed.

The magic in my veins roiled, loosening its grip only to falter, surging higher but holding back on instinct. I gasped for air as the demented magic jerked me up to the tip of my toes. My head fell back to gaze unseeingly at the curved ceiling of the throne room. The last thing I thought before the world went black was that I hoped Ren would not come.

* * *

The world was wrong.

My skin itched, too tight across my bones. Each breath ached, and the fabric of my gown was stuck to my skin. I groaned, head rolling, and hissed at the sharp slice of pain in my throat.

“Do not move,” Drystan groaned.

As I blinked slowly, the throne room swam into view. The marble of the floor dug into my knees. My arms were spread wide, and as I jerked, the grunts of two soldiers reached my ears. Dark metal cuffs circled my wrists, unearthly metal I had never seen before biting into my flesh. The soldiers held the ends of each chain, keeping my arms spread, and a third held one hanging between us, attached to a collar at my throat.

I reached for my magic and came up empty. There was nothing but the absence of it as if it had evaporated like mist in the sun. My lips moved without words, calling without sound to a power no longer present. Even now, I could only barely feel the tug of the soul bond in my chest, connecting me to Ren—his heartbeat a frantic rhythm beside my own.

“Breathe, Oralia.”

Drystan was kneeling beside me, strung up as I was, though his arms were around his back. Blood pooled on the floor beneath him, streaming from gashes beneath his eye and lip. He was wheezing, a hollow whooshing with each breath hinting at a puncture in his lung.

I tried to breathe, but though there was air, I found it did nothing to satiate the need, not without my magic. The dark metal cut into my skin, rivulets of blood sliding into my gown, dripping onto the floor, and they did not heal. It had to be kratus resin worked into the metal—the only thing able to pierce a god’s skin, yet it did not feel like kratus resin. This felt wholly new.

“The king requests your presence,” Hollis intoned as if this were all a game.

He stood a little farther back, elbow resting on the pommel of his sword. An amused smile curved his lips. When Hollis jerked his head toward the door, Drystan was wrenched to his feet. With a tug, I was dragged onto my stomach as the soldiers holding my chains surged forward. I grit my teeth against the scream building in my chest while Hollis observed in fascination. Drystan stumbled, shoulders jerking as if he might break his chains.

“Pick her up, Vion, please,” he begged one of the soldiers. “Do not do this.”

But whichever soldier he was entreating paid him no mind as the doors opened. I was dragged down the hall, a dark smear of blood left on the marble floor in my wake. Each breath was agony, and it was not merely the slice of pain through my wrists and throat, it was the absence of the magic I’d come to love. My power had turned on me, abandoned me . When I closed my eyes, I saw those shadows rushing back at me, felt their bite against my skin.

Dying sunlight streamed across my lids, and I was wrenched to my feet, tugged down the stairs on shaky legs, and into the grounds. We rounded the palace to the field of wildflowers, the rays of the fading sunset spilling over a sea of purple and white blossoms. And there, gathered within the beauty, were Typhon and his men. Caston stood beside his father, the corners of his eyes tight with worry before they widened, tears brimming in his eyes and slipping down his cheeks.

But it was Aelestor that had his hand closed over the pommel of his sword, outrage wild on his pale face. Mecrucio wore a similar expression beside him. Though it was muted as if shock had taken hold. And like any common prisoner, I was dragged through the grasses and thrown at the feet of the Golden King.

“I am willing to forgive your treason if you agree to serve me, and in exchange, I will reward you with power beyond your wildest dreams.”

The edges of my vision pulsed, and bile coated the back of my tongue. It was as Ren had always feared, and I could do nothing but stare up into the face of a monster.

“I would rather return my magic to this world,” I spat.

He nodded, tongue clicking in contemplation. Caston gazed in horror at his father, lips parting to speak before Typhon silenced him with a look. The Golden King’s hand closed over the pommel of the young god’s sword, sunlight glinting off the strange metal ring.

“You are nothing with him,” Typhon commented mildly, weighing Caston’s sword in his palm. “But you could be something with me.”

I shook my head. “I would be nothing but a puppet.”

Beside me Drystan fought harder, a growl slipping through his teeth before one of the soldiers kicked him in the stomach. He pitched forward, hanging heavy on his chains and gasping. The world swam in and out of focus, the darkness of night melting across the sky a strange comfort.

Typhon hummed. “Better a puppet than a consort thrown out into the cold the moment he is done with you.”

My lip curled at the idea that I could be so insecure. That I would crumble beneath insinuations of being nothing but a plaything to Ren. A hollow laugh slipped through my lips.

“You do not know who I am, do you?” I asked as he raised the sword high above his head.

Typhon smiled placatingly, as one might to a child. “Who is that, Lia?”

There was a hiss of wind as the sword swung down. Right before it hit my neck, a deep voice rang out through the clearing.

“ Lathira na Thurath ,” Ren answered in a swirl of shadow and smoke.

Dread dropped deep into my stomach as the sword was wrenched from Typhon’s grasp before he could make the killing blow.