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For the first time since fleeing Stonebriar, I found myself wondering if he had ever truly hated me... or if he had simply been terrified of what I would become.

My pulse turned violent, scorching my veins with molten heat as every lesson I had fought so hard to bury burnt through me.

Maybe they had never been trying to break me.

Maybe they had been trying to stop me.

“Lyra.”

Helion's voice reached me as though from the other side of the sea itself, distant and muffled beneath the roar building inside my skull.

“Breathe,” he pleaded, taking one cautious step towards me. “Look at me.”

His hand reached for mine.

I recoiled from him with a broken sound lodged somewhere between a sob and a scream, baring my teeth as panic consumed every rational thought I had left.

The cry that tore from my throat carried something far older than grief.

Power burst through me in a violent surge, the black water erupting around the boat as though answering a command I never meant to give. Waves climbed into the sky, folding around Helion in towering walls that imprisoned him behind dark, churning water, his words lost as I stumbled backwards.

I couldn't breathe.

Before he could stop me, I threw myself from the boat and into the waiting embrace of the Dead Sea.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Fractured Memories

Lyra

The water embraced me, tingling against my skin with aching familiarity.

Bile coated the back of my throat at the agony tearing through my legs. Every bone broke and reformed, splintering beneath my flesh.

My scream bubbled from my mouth, rising to the surface as I thrashed.

Sea water flooded my mouth, and I let it, embracing the burn spreading through my chest.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

My bones reformed, flesh giving way to scales as they stitched together to form a powerful tail beneath me.

I had no time to recover from the pain of the shift.

Water flowed past me, as I whipped my hair behind me with a powerful thrust of my tail.

I needed to escape. Needed to unlock my memories⁠—

Flames licked the surface of the sea, circling above me in a in a deadly inferno.

Water bubbled around me, boiling as it heated to a scorching temperature, evaporating the power in my veins, drop by drop.

My hair billowed around me as I screeched, reaching towards the wall of boiling water imprisoning me.

Pain exploded through my hand the moment my fingertips brushed its surface. I jerked back with a hiss, watching my flesh blister and bubble beneath the scalding heat, the skin tightening until it threatened to split

Trapped.