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He sighs and rubs his brow. “Just try not to get hurt. Again.”

“Says the man who showed up half alive in my garden.”

He ignores me and presses his palm flat against the ground. Tiny little threads that are so thin I almost miss them snake out of his rings to slither along the stalks of grass. I tap my oddly empty left middle finger against my knee and scan the mist. It’s too thick to see the statues. Another specter takes form beside me in a crouch mirroring my own. I raise a brow at the hazy outline of a man—or perhaps it’s a woman? It doesn’t really matter. There is nothing that can be done for it or any of the other souls. They’ve been here for too long, more shadows imitating others or reliving the same horrific moments of battles than souls.

Lucas flinches, and I turn away from the specter. “Did you find Alasdair?”

“No,” he grinds out.

I follow his gaze. A small, ghostly battle is warring before us, ghosts shifting in and out of focus.

Lucas grumbles, “This is going to be a nightmare. If he’s hiding out there, we can’t trust our eyes. I don’t sense anything with my rings, but I can’t map out the park all the way to Antonia’s monument from here. It’s too big and complex.”

“Let’s run for it and get this over with.”

“That is a terrible plan, or do you have a death wish that you haven’t told me about?”

Death would be far more merciful than anything the Archweaver will have planned for me.

I never wanted to be stuck in this mess. I didn’t want to be Heir; I wanted to be a healer. I wanted to marry my childhood sweetheart. I wanted to live in peace with her by my side. I wanted to be there while she solved magical mysteries, to hold her while she rambled late into the night. And raise our child when the time came. Astoria is not maternal, but I could be. If not, we’d have Lucas.

The thought is like a punch in the gut, and my shoulders cave with the force of it. I can’t breathe, my eyes squeezing shut. My dream can’t ever come true. Not anymore. Everything is ruined.

I don’t have it in me to keep fighting. So I smile widely, mind made up, my voice lilting playfully. “Keep up.”

I take off running. Lucas growls and runs after me. I go faster and faster, weaving around statues. My legs ache. My lungs burn, but oh, does it feel good.

A small voice in the back of my mind tries to surface, tries to warn me, but I can’t be bothered to hear it. My arms are off balance, both middle fingers aching from either too much or too little weight. It has me tipping to one side, stumbling on uneven ground.

The fog is so thick that I don’t notice the slate floor of the memorial until it’s practically at my toes. I jump to avoid tripping and land on the black stone. My chest pumps, my throat raw. Sweat slicks me, and my filthy shirt sticks awkwardly to my back and chest.

The low clouds are so thick that they fully obscure Antonia’s statue, giving me a few more moments of reprieve before looking through the enchantment to behold the twisted torment of my beloved. There’s so much pain within me that I’ve reached a threshold of some sort. Surely, the mind can only comprehend so much suffering before it shuts down completely. Astoria. My beloved. My life. My entire existence has been yearning for her, watching her, waiting for her. Wanting her.

My head aches, and I swallow to keep the rising bile at bay when my thoughts swirl treacherously, whispering to me all my dark thoughts that are sounding more and more real.

I don’t think I can bear this existence, carrying on my life in the Order like nothing has changed. It’s a thought that terrifies me nearly as much as the reality that I am about to see the love of my life trapped in a torturous existence within a statue, doomed to never decompose, like these ghosts that surround me.

Maybe when I’m damned to the same existence by the Archweaver, then we can finally be together, even if it’s my spirit endlessly longing for hers that will always be just out of reach.

A hand grabs my bicep, and I’m yanked back. Once again, I am stumbling and meet Lucas’ enraged gaze. He hisses, his finger in my face, “Don’t do that again. You could’ve run into a trap.”

I welcome the distraction and smirk before answering breathlessly, “My apologies.”

He shakes his head and shoves past me. My head is too light, and I stroll casually behind him as he leads the way forward. It’s easier to slip into this blasé version of myself. Its familiarity allows my mind to go quiet.

Finally, the mist clears as we near the middle of the monument’s compass, revealing a carved divot in the black stone where Antonia’s statue once stood.

I freeze, all airy casualness evaporating. Lucas isn’t moving. He just stares at the space. Then utters a soft, “No.”

I should’ve seen this coming. Of course, Alasdair would take the statue. He wouldn’t risk his primary food source being left unguarded. No, he’d take Astoria somewhere else where he could keep an eye on her or use her to lure Lucas and me to him.

Perhaps this was his plan all along. I underestimated the clever bastard, the very thing I warned Lucas about again and again.

“Take me to the Archweaver estate now,” Lucas growls.

My head snaps towards him, my eyes wide. “Are you out of your mind?”

He scoffs, throwing his arms wide. “You were sprinting through this place mere seconds ago, and now you have the audacity to ask me that?”