The black water climbed my boots, my knees, my thighs—fast, too fast. It hissed where it touched stone, a hungry, wet sound, like a thousand snakes licking flesh from bone. The air was thick with sulfur and burning metal. My skin prickled even before the acid kissed it, the fumes alone enough to scorch the inside of my nose.
Ryan stood on the highest step of the dais, King Elias cradled against his chest like a broken bird. My father's head lolled. Silver had eaten his lips away, leaving a grimace of perpetual agony. Only the faint, erratic flutter beneath his ribs told me he still lived.
I tried to breathe, but the heat was suffocating.
I could not think about Damon. I could not think about the communication orb in Valen's hand or the fond, twisted smile that said someone I loved had sold us out. If I thought about it now—if I let myself picture Damon handing my son over to the Usurper—I would drown in grief before the acid ever reached my heart.
Leo is waiting. Leo is alive. That is the only truth I let myself hold.
The water reached Ryan's waist. His face twisted with suppressed pain where the acid lapped at the fresh cuts on his legs from the fight.
"General!" I screamed over the roar of the rising flood.
Kael and Soren were fighting a losing battle at the main door, trying to jam debris into the gap to slow the flow. It was useless. Soren slipped. With a choked cry, he went under. The black water swirled, turning red for a second, then swallowed him whole.
Kael roared, stumbling back, his armor smoking. "Go, Princess! Get him out!"
A rasp, thin as paper tearing, drew my attention back to the dais. My father's eyes were open—clouded, storm-gray, exactly like mine. His burnt finger lifted, trembling violently, pointing to the far wall where shadows pooled darkest behind the throne.
One word, forced between cracked teeth.
"Disposal."
The corpse chute. Of course. Even a prison designed for eternal torment needed a way to throw out the dead.
I followed his finger. Ten feet above the flood, a rusted iron grate glinted, half-hidden behind pulsing silver veins in the stone. It was high—too high. The acid was at Ryan's chest now. He could not reach it, not with Elias in his arms, and if he dropped the King into the fluid, it would be over.
I did not think. I moved on pure instinct.
I climbed Ryan like a tree, my boots digging into his shoulder, his raised knee. The raw strength of him never wavered, even while the acid ate him alive from the waist down. He became a statue of muscle and will, anchoring us against the tide.
I reached up. My palms slapped the slimy wall. The grate was old iron, crusted with centuries of rot and filth.
I gripped the bars and pulled.
Nothing. It was fused shut by time and rust.
Below me, the acid kissed Ryan's collarbone. He bit back a scream, his head thrown back, cords standing out on his neck.
"Aria!" Kael yelled from somewhere below, his voice gargled with pain. "Now!"
I planted my feet against the wall, wrapped both bleeding hands around the cold iron, and let the Voice rip out of me—raw, desperate, royal.
"OPEN!"
The command slammed into the metal. Bolts sheared with a sound like gunshots. The entire grate tore free in my fists, taking chunks of stone with it. I hurled the heavy iron down into the flood and reached into the darkness.
"Ryan! Hand him to me!"
Ryan pressed Elias upward. I grabbed my father by the back of his ruined tunic and hauled him into the chute. He was limp, heavy as guilt. I dragged him up, ignoring the way silver flakes off his skin seared my palms. My father's bones ground together. He did not cry out; he had passed beyond pain.
"Kael!" I screamed down the shaft. "Climb!"
"Go!" The General's voice was distant now. "I'll buy you time!"
There was a splash, a roar of defiance, and then the sickening sound of stone collapsing. I didn't know if Kael was dead or alive, but I knew he wasn't coming.
Ryan came last. The acid snapped at his boots like a living thing, trying to drag him back. He kicked free of it, muscles bunching, and hauled himself inside the narrow tunnel just as the chamber below vanished beneath black, boiling death.
We were in the chute.
Total darkness. The smell of rotting meat and old death was overpowering.
"Move," Ryan gasped from below me. "Keep moving."
We climbed.
Up, up, muscles screaming, lungs burning with chemical rot. The chute was a vertical throat of stone, slick with slime. It was barely wider than my shoulders. I had to push Elias ahead of me, inch by inch, while Ryan pushed from below.
Every inch was agony. My shoulders scraped stone until they bled. My knees were raw. In the dark, my mind began to fracture.
Beware the shadow, the Oracle had said.
Was Damon the shadow?
I remembered the way he looked at Leo. The way he taught my son to hold a spoon, to tie his shoes. I remembered Damon taking a bullet for Ryan in the ambush. Was it all a lie? A long con? Or had Valen broken him?
Focus, I told myself. Climb.
If I stopped, we died. If we died, Leo was alone with the traitor.
The chute narrowed, then narrowed again. I couldn't breathe. The walls were crushing me. Panic clawed at my throat.
Then—a draft.
Cold air. Real, clean air.
It kissed my face like a benediction.
"I see it!" I choked out.
I shoved Elias ahead of me one last time and crawled out into freezing rain.
We spilled into the forest like corpses given one last breath. Mud, pine needles, storm. Rain lashed sideways, so cold it felt like blades after the choking heat of the chute. Thunder rolled overhead, shaking the ground. Lightning forked, illuminating the royal city walls miles away—serene, untouchable, oblivious to the escape.
I rolled onto my back and sucked in lungfuls of storm. The rain washed the soot from my eyes, the sweat from my skin. Ryan collapsed beside me, Elias cradled against his chest. My father's pulse flutters—weak, erratic, but there.
We were alive.
For now.
But the silence in my head was louder than the thunder.
Damon.
I sat up, mud sliding from my hair. I fumbled the burner phone from my tactical vest. My fingers were numb, bleeding, shaking so hard I nearly dropped it.
The screen lit up, ghostly blue in the dark forest.
I did not dial Damon's cell. I couldn't bear to hear his voice, to hear him lie. Instead, I dialed the safe house landline—the emergency frequency only the elders and the inner circle used.
It rang once.
Twice.
Pick up, I begged silently. Pick up and tell me Valen is a liar. Tell me you're reading Leo a bedtime story.
The line clicked open.
No voice answered.
Instead, chaos poured out of the speaker.
Glass shattering. Heavy furniture overturning. The wet, distinct sound of wolves snarling and tearing at each other.
And then, a scream that sliced through the storm and went straight into my heart.
"Mommy! Mommy, where are you!"
Leo.
The sound tore a hole in my chest.
"Leo!" I screamed into the phone. "Leo, run! Hide!"
Another crash. A roar I did not recognize—something feral and wrong. Then nothing but Leo sobbing my name over and over, high and broken and terrified.
"Damon!" I yelled. "Damon, answer me!"
Damon's voice was not among them. There was no reassuring shout, no command to hold the line. Just the sounds of slaughter.
The line stayed open, feeding me my son's terror across hundreds of miles of storm.
I clutched the phone so hard the plastic cracked in my grip. Ryan was sitting up now, his eyes wide with horror as he heard the sounds tinny and small from the device.
The nightmare did not end in the prison.
It had followed me home.
And I was too late.