She straightened her spine and narrowed her mismatched eyes. Recognition flitted across her face, replaced by apprehension. “It’s too quiet.”
Vesper put a finger to his lips. Kyrith crept beside him as they entered the cave’s mouth. Their breaths mingled with the stillness of the cavern and only a single sound broke the silence.
Dripping.
Each drop echoed in his head. Ricocheted in his skull. Something was wrong. So fuckingwrong.
Vesper swept Kyrith behind him as they rounded the corner. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, and his eyes unfocussed from his heart’s erratic gait.
When Rensburrow came into view, she clapped a hand over her mouth. The world swayed, his head suddenly full of lead or water or something fucking horrific. He blinked hard, but couldn’t believe his eyes, and tried to convince himself it couldn't be true. That his mind played tricks on him. That he was still dreaming. Gods fucking help him.
Anything butthis.
The civilization Kyrith and Thorrin had slaved to build, with years of hard work and sacrifice—
It now lay in ruin. Scattered goods littered the walkway, doors torn off hinges, and glass lay everywhere.
And that rhythmic dripping, the one that would ring in his ears for years to come, was none other than lifeblood. Some bodies hung, strewn, draped like blankets on a laundry line, others tacked to the walls of their homes, their limbs speared with wooden spikes.
Kyrith covered her face with trembling hands. Unable to take his eyes off the scene, Vesper blindly reached for her. Frantically, he searched for faces he recognized, their features contorted, twisted and warped, almost unrecognizable with their necks sliced from ear to ear and chests carved. There was so much blood, running, pooling, clotting—
His core quaked, and the flashbacks of returning to Ellynne to find it gone, whisked away in a lake of fire, sprang to his mind. He relived it in every face of people he’d barely known. He would never have the chance.
Kyrith leaned on him, her limbs shaking, shock echoing through her.
“Don’t look,” he said, except it was all he could fucking do.
But Vesper’s world halted as he spotted her.
Through the blood, he could barely make out the gold in her hair, though she still wore his tunic. And her hazel eyes were …gone.
His legs weakened and he stumbled forward. He caught himself on a wall, but his knees threatened to buckle. A tiny sob slipped from him. The last thing he said to her plagued his mind. How he had turned her away when she needed him. And that would haunt him forever.
He thought he choked out her name, or he said something, but his entire body numbed as he stared at her twisted limbs tacked to the wall. After all of this, everything they had been through—
They would never make up. He would never find the cure for her.
He’d failed to save her after all.
Glass shattered behind him and Vesper spun, his mind slogging as he took in what had happened.
But it was too late.
Whatever that thing was, it sprang from the empty doorway, and seized Kyrith. Tree bark shielded the creature's arms, branches twined around its eye sockets and wrapped around its bones. Her eyes widened and her scream muffled against the creature’s hand over her mouth.
Something struck him. He saw stars.
Endless darkness came for him, and his body crumpled to the blood-soaked ground.
CHAPTER SIXTY
EMMERY
When Destonne returned to Blackdawn Castle, Emmery waited, perched in an armchair in the sitting room. Aside from the moonlight, only the golden glow from a single flickering flame lit the room. She dragged her finger through the fire, as all the things she needed to say circled her tongue. She'd rehearsed them tenfold, and yet as she sat there, she couldn’t breathe.
Once again, her world had crumbled and his answers would either mend the pieces or force her to rebuild. Whatever he said, she knew it would hurt. It was only a matter of how much.
As Destonne stepped into the sitting room and snicked the door shut behind him, he took her in as she did him. For a moment, nothing felt different, and if she kept this all to herself, pretended it didn’t happen, it could be. But she couldn’t now that these truths surfaced like a stale corpse in the sea—bloated, disfigured, and unfathomably heavy.