Page 51

The dead.

I felt them. Their suffering. A soul was not meant to be trapped in a corpse once the heart stopped beating. They were like a pulse beneath my skin. Pressing. Reaching with desperation to escape. My throat tightened as the pain of each of their deaths tore through my body. It was an agony so deep that it would bring anyone to their knees. But my voice did not falter.

Because this was the price I paid for the monster I had become, the thing I did to make my pitiful existence worth living.

My eyes clung to the burning bodies, voice hauntingly coaxing the souls to move on.

A broken sound escaped someone behind me as the onlookers wept.

As if something inside them had cracked open, grief spilling free where it had been trapped. Tears streamed down their faces, hands trembling as they clung to one another, drawn into the pull of something they could not understand.

I felt the prince’s eyes, sharp and unsettled, at the edge of my awareness. Watching. Trying to make sense of what I was.

The melody deepened, dragging something heavier from my chest as the souls began to move. Some went easily. Others… resisted. Clinging to the world they had just been violently torn from. I felt every one of them. Their fear. Their regret. Their rage. But I carried them anyway. Guided them into whatever waited. Into whatever they had earned while they were alive. The Seven Hells would decide what sort of eternity they would endure.

I felt the release of the last soul slipping free like a blade being torn out of my chest.

The song died on my lips, and for a moment, the world felt empty and cold.

Ash drifted through the air, dancing in the quiet breeze that brushed against the tear-stricken cheeks of the survivors.

I dipped my head, boots squelching against the gore-covered cobblestone as I walked in the direction where I had left Umbra. The crowd parted for me, bowing as I stormed by.

I dissolved into the shadows, reforming at my steed’s side. He chortled at me in disappointment as I ran my hand through his coarse dark hair.

“I know, old friend,” I whispered. I needed to be more for them. For the people. They deserved a ruler who was not a monster.

“We need to send word to the court,” I said, louder as I heard the others approach.

“Does someone want to explain to me what the fuck just happened?” Solas asked, auburn strands of hair plastered to his furrowed brow with sweat and gore. “There has never been a daytime attack before.”

“I am not entirely sure,” I said flatly, mounting Umbra in one smooth lunge.

“I do,” Caelum sighed. “And it is not good.”

Chapter Fifteen

Run

Lyra

Ash drifted lazily from the hazed sky above, settling against my skin like the ghost of a lover’s touch. The smell of sulphur and smoke filled my nostrils as oppressive heat drew sweat from my skin.

I could almost feel my power leaking out of me in glistening sweat dampening my skin.

I did not want to help Helion.

The only thing I wanted to do for Helion was to make his cold, unfeeling heart stop beating. But instead, I trudged behind him, boots sinking into soot-choked ground, and glared at his broad back. My captor. My husband.

We passed yet another pastel painting propped against the blackened bark. I paused despite myself. Staring into it made my skin crawl as if a thousand eyes were clinging to me. Its pale colours seemed to shift beneath my gaze, pigments bleeding and curling across the canvas as though stirred by an invisible hand.

Colourless paint oozed across the canvas, spreading in slow, unnatural tendrils until my own face stared back at me.

I gasped and stumbled backwards. A second figure began to take shape behind me in the painting.

I spun around so quickly I nearly slammed into his chest.

“What is that?”