Page 19

19

NORA

T he ruins of once a city emerges from the ash like a carcass picked clean by time.

Stone towers, cracked and hollow, lean at strange angles as if they’re bowing toward the heart of the Wastes. Shards of glass glint like bone beneath the morning sun. Dust hangs in the air, thick, silver, laced with the scent of ancient, lingering magic.

Rhaegar doesn’t speak as we descend into the basin, and neither do I. We’re both still raw from what nearly happened last night. From what did happen.

I trail behind him, slower now, letting the silence stretch between us like a fraying cord. My ribs still ache from holding my breath too long. From denying what I felt.

Or wanted to.

The city ruin feels... wrong.

Not dangerous, exactly. But still. The stones remember. The wind here doesn’t whistle, it whispers .

We walk beneath a crumbled arch, and the shadows immediately close in around us. It's cooler down here, the sun veiled by the skeletal ruins above. Rhaegar’s footsteps echo ahead, but I pause, drawn to something on the walls.

Murals.

Painted in fading golds and blacks, framed in lines of runic script I can’t read but somehow understand. My fingers brush across them, and the moment my skin touches the stone, a shock of heat lances through my hand.

The mural shifts.

No, it ripples .

Like breath through a corpse.

And there in the center is a woman. Pale-skinned. Amethyst eyes. Armor forged of black obsidian and laced with violet crystal veins. Her mouth is twisted in fury. In command. Her hair whips in a wind that isn’t painted but alive in the wall itself.

And she’s wearing my face .

A jolt surges through me. I stagger back, nearly tripping over the uneven floor.

The runes beneath the mural pulse. My vision narrows.

I’m not in the city anymore.

I'm somewhere else.

Screams echo around me. Men in dark armor fall to their knees. A woman—me, Medea —lifts her hand, and the air tears open. Lightning and shadow crackle at her fingertips, and the world goes still as she speaks a name I can’t remember but feel etched into the marrow of my bones.

Blood runs across her arms. She’s smiling.

I smell ash. I taste metal.

Pain rips through my skull.

The vision fractures like glass. I crumple to the ground, clutching my face as warm wetness spills from my nose.

Blood.

I wipe it away with shaking fingers, heart hammering like a war drum. My breath comes in gasps, and when I look up?—

Rhaegar is gone.

Panic claws up my throat.

“Rhaegar?” I call out. The city absorbs the sound like a sponge. “Rhaegar!”

Nothing.

Not even an echo.

I curse under my breath and push myself to my feet, magic sparking chaotically in my limbs. Something is wrong. Something is watching me.

And then I hear it.

A snarl.

Low. Wet. Hungry.

I whirl around just in time to see it step out from the shadows—a beast the size of a small house, hunched and snarling, its skin like oil-slick stone. Its eyes burn with sickly yellow light. It isn’t natural. It isn’t alive. It’s bound by magic—by the same threads I just disturbed.

It charges.

I scream, darting between two columns just as its claws rake the air where my throat was seconds ago. Magic roars in my blood. Instinct screams at me to run—but something deeper, darker, anchors me.

I spin, pulse pounding.

“Come on then,” I growl.

It lunges again.

I roll beneath the strike, reach up with both hands, and unleash a burst of chaotic force straight into its gut. The blast hurls it backward, smashing it into a pillar that explodes in dust and fractured stone. It snarls, stunned—but not dead.

I press my palm to the ground. Energy surges beneath my skin. Arcane and earth, blended. Raw. Untrained. I feel the pulse of the city’s heart, and I call it.

A crack splits the floor beneath the beast’s feet. Roots—long petrified—spear upward, wrapping around its limbs and yanking it back as I raise both hands and scream.

Magic pours from me in a wave of silver flame.

It crashes into the creature, and this time, it doesn’t get back up.

The silence afterward is deafening.

I drop to my knees, panting, my body shaking with exhaustion and triumph and fear.

Sudden ly , a slow, deliberate clap .

I whip around.

Rhaegar stands in the broken archway, arms crossed, a faint smirk on his face.

“Well,” he says, his voice cool and unreadable, “you didn’t die.”

I scowl. “You left me.”

“You wandered.”

“I was dragged into a memory !”

He shrugs one massive shoulder. “And still managed to kill the thing I summoned.”

“You what ?”

“You needed a push.” His eyes narrow slightly. “You need more than instinct if you’re going to survive what’s coming.”

I push myself to my feet, breathing hard. “So that’s what I am now? A test subject?”

“No.” He steps closer. “You’re a weapon. You just haven’t decided what side you’re on.”

My magic flares again, this time unbidden. He sees it. Smells it. Feeds on it.

But he doesn’t move any closer.

He turns.

And without another word, walks away into the dark.

Leaving me behind, breathless, trembling, staring at his back.

And wondering which of us is the monster here.