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Our footsteps echo off the obsidian walls as we walk down the endless hallway.

Kiaran is beside me. I feel his presence in every nerve ending, every cell. That brush of power, soft and beautiful and merciless. I know the brutal violence coiled beneath that veneer of control. Know the snap of it shattering between one breath and the next.

Behind us, Aithinne’s face is a mask of composure. But I see the tension thrumming through her frame. The bloodless grip on the hilt of her blade.

She’s afraid.

Aithinne . Who laughs at the apocalypse and delights in gallows humour and the macabre. Afraid.

The knowledge lodges in my chest.

Up ahead, Sorcha jerks to a halt. The scuff of her boots cracks through the hush. Slowly, she trails her fingers over the pitted stone.

Silence bleeds out.

I clear my throat. “Not the right spot?”

Sorcha’s hand falls away. “If it were so simple, I’d have had no need of Lonnrach the first time. Blood calls to blood, and this tower sits on a convergence of ley lines. Finding the proper confluence is an imprecise art.”

“Ten shillings says she’s leading us to our graves,” Aithinne mutters. “I’d bet my best dagger on it.”

“She’s bound by her vow,” I remind her. “She has to help me find the Book.”

The reassurance rings hollow, even to my own ears.

Kiaran’s oath should be exact—no loopholes, no semantic gaps to slither through.

But Sorcha . . . Sorcha is a creature of twisting corridors.

Of riddles and mirror-mazes. She’s had centuries to hone that cunning mind.

To identify the infinitesimal cracks and splinter them wide.

A blade aimed straight at my heart.

“Careful with vipers,” Aithinne says. “You’ll think you’ve won right up until you feel the fangs in your heel.”

Ahead of us, Sorcha goes still. A lioness scenting blood on the wind. “How precious that you think your quaint sayings are amusing.” She pivots, skirts hissing against stone. “Tell me, Aithinne, how long did it take Lonnrach to break you?”

Aithinne flinches. A minute seizing of muscle, but it’s enough. Enough for Sorcha to scent weakness.

“Did you scream?” Soft and terrible, each word precise as a scalpel’s cut.

“When my brother peeled you apart? How many times did he grind your bones to dust and piece you back together before you became this simpering thing?” A dismissive flick of fingers.

“A century? Five? Too generous, I think. I imagine you lost count somewhere after the first dozen times.”

Something in Aithinne’s eyes goes flat. Shuttered. I recognise the darkness swirling in her eyes, the haunted look. I’ve seen it staring back at me from the mirror after Lonnrach—

Don’t think about it don’t think about it—

Memories sharpen their claws, raking at the door of my mind.

The visceral snap of bones splintering. The wet, animal sounds trapped in my ruined throat.

The soundless scream as he finally cracked me open and nested in all my dark spaces.

Beneath Kiaran’s mark. Hollowing me out until nothing remained but a shell, and I had to die to carve him out of me.

No. I can’t do this. Not now. Not here.

A lightning strike of shadow.

Kiaran slams Sorcha into the wall, his forearm crushing her larynx. Stone cracks on impact. A low, groaning shudder, and grit rains down. Powdering my hair. Catching on my lashes.

His other hand presses a blade to the thrum of her pulse. Defiance and terror war across her face. Her nails scrabble at his wrist.

He leans close, the dagger’s edge dimpling her skin. “Address my sister that way again, and I’ll spend the next century introducing you to unexplored frontiers of suffering.”

The blade’s point slips, splitting flesh. A single crimson droplet beads, then spills. Kiaran tracks its path with terrible gentleness.

“I may have vowed not to end your miserable life,” he says, almost conversational, “but I made no promises about taking you apart. In all the ways you fear most.” A tilt of his head, considering.

“You don’t need eyes to fulfil our bargain.

Or a tongue.” He skates the dagger’s tip over her trembling bottom lip.

“So many pieces to carve away without ever breaking my word. Because in your haste to destroy my consort,” he closes the final distance, lips curving into a slight smile, “You failed to negotiate your own safety.”

Her eyes are wide, whites showing all around. The pulse in her throat visibly thrums. I glimpse the fear beneath—the knowledge that she miscalculated.

Good , I think. Let her drown in it. Let it devour her from the inside out, knowing I am the only one Kiaran ever touches with reverence.

He releases her with a shove. Sheathes his blade. “The portal. Now.”

Sorcha straightens. Tugs at her cuffs, as if she can smooth away the cracks. Piece the armour back together.

She pivots and stalks away. Rigid control in every line.

As we continue our slow progression, Aithinne is silent at my side. Now and then, I catch the compulsive clench and release of her fingers around her sword hilt. Sorcha’s words dig their barbs in deep.

My mind wanders to Lonnrach—the gleam of madness in his gaze. The perverse ecstasy limning cruel features as he broke me again and again.

I wet my lips. Draw an unsteady breath as I force the thoughts down.

“Why didn’t you find the Book?” I ask Sorcha. My question hangs in the stagnant air between us. “You wanted it badly enough. Why did you give up?”

Why give up on it if you loved Kiaran so much?

Sorcha slowly turns to face me, head tilting. When our eyes meet, hers are clouded. Distant. “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong.” A twist of a smile. “I didn’t give up. I crawled out of there. On my hands and knees. With my life.”

A deep crease gathers between her brows. Her attention flickers to the pitted stone, the seeking tendrils of her senses crawling across the stonework.

We wait, suspended in the hush. The dank air presses down, thick and cloying. Almost alive in the way it slithers into my nose and mouth. Chokes me.

The barest whisper of power snags against my own, gossamer-thin. A half-remembered taste at the back of my tongue. Bitter almonds and ozone. Hardly there at all.

Sorcha goes still.

“Kadamach.” Sorcha extends a hand without looking away from that empty span of stone. “Your blade, if you would be so kind. Quickly now.”

Kiaran doesn’t hesitate. He slips a knife from his wrist sheath and places it in her upturned palm, hilt first. Before I can object to Sorcha handling anything sharp and pointy, she slices the knife across both palms. Crimson wells up, coating her hands in red.

She passes the blade back to Kiaran and presses her bloody palms flat to the wall. I watch as the blood glides and pools across the smooth obsidian. Curving into an intricate pattern.

“There you are,” Sorcha croons to the weeping rock. “ Fosgail .”

Light flares, blinding. A sound like the world breaking. I’m crouched with my knife half-drawn before my vision clears enough to see the dark gash bisecting the wall. Taller than a man and twice as wide. Crumbling at the edges.

Beyond it, only a terrible, yawning void.

Sorcha steps back, wounds already knitting closed. “One portal to certain death. As requested.”

I stare at the dark opening with an impending sense of alarm. What could the Morrigan have done to make Sorcha decide Kiaran wasn’t worth it?

“What made you crawl out of there and leave the Book behind?” I ask her. I’m surprised by the slight hint of humanity in the depths of her usually cold green eyes. I’ve seen moments of her emotions before, when she looks at Kiaran with longing. But this is something more.

I stare uneasily into the lightless hollow. This close, I feel the barest whisper of power leaking through. But more than that, the visceral sense of wrongness raises the fine hairs at my nape. Whatever the Morrigan did, it left wounds that never healed.

Sorcha’s smile is devoid of humour. “The Morrigan will stop at nothing to break free. The moment we set foot inside that prison, she’ll take our measure and determine who is a mere pawn . . . and who holds the key to her release.”

I swallow hard against the nerves fluttering in my chest. “Which were you?”

Sorcha’s laugh is sharp and broken. “Neither. I was her plaything.”

She sweeps an arm forward, gesturing me toward the portal like an executioner offering their victim one last chance at escape. As if to say, Make your decision, Falconer. Is he worth risking everything for?

Kiaran’s eyes meet mine and his expression is unfamiliar, almost feral. A flash of something dark and ravenous lurking just beneath the surface, barely contained. His curse. The curse that I have one chance of breaking.

You’re mine, Kiaran MacKay.

I look away and step through the portal.