Page 91 of The Final Contract

The voice cuts through the fog, sharp and echoing. My heart leaps. Stasia? It sounds like her.

“Seraphina!”

Another voice now. Different. Deeper. Killian. He’s behind me. No—back the way I just came.

I freeze, breath catching. My arms stretch out in front of me, fingertips brushing against thick, wet air. The fog clings like cobwebs.

“Killian?” My voice comes out thin, shaky. It bounces back at me, distorted, whispering my name in a hundred directions.

I start forward, or at least what feels like forward. The ground beneath my bare feet is cold, hard. Stone, maybe. A corridor, shifting and endless. I can’t see the walls, only the press of darkness hemming me in.

“Sera!” Stasia again, somewhere ahead.

I run. My lungs burn, and the fog curls tighter with every step.

A turn. Another.

My palms scrape against damp stone as I spin around corners, chasing the sound of her voice. But the path keeps shifting—dead ends, sudden walls where there shouldn’t be any.

“Seraphina!” Killian again, closer now. Behind me.

I whip around, chest heaving. Nothing. Just shadows stacked on shadows.

And then I see something.

At the far end of the corridor: a figure.

He sits in perfect stillness, swallowed by the dark. But there’s light—no, not light. A single, sharp spotlight, cutting down through the fog. It illuminates the thing in his hand.

A white rose dripping with blood so red it glistens.

I stumble back, slamming into stone. My throat closes.

No.

I turn and run again, faster, twisting through passage after passage. I can hear my sister, hear Killian, both of them calling me, but their voices are warping, dragging at the edges like they’re being torn apart.

Another corner. Another hall, and he’s there.

Closer this time.

The rose bleeds between his fingers, dark drops spattering the stone beneath him. His head is bowed, features swallowed by shadow.

“No…” My whisper cracks, breaks. I bolt again.

My feet slap against the ground, heart hammering louder than my breath. The fog feels alive now, clawing at me, pulling at my clothes, my hair.

I whip around another bend?—

He’s there.

Closer still.

I can see his shoulders, the slope of his jaw hidden beneath the dark. The blood runs thicker now, spilling down his hand, slicking the stem of the rose until it drips in a steady rhythm to a white tile floor below.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Terror claws up my throat. I can’t breathe.