Page 132 of The Night Prince

My pulse is racing so quickly, I think I’m going to pass out. The fever is coming for me, and I can’t keep it at bay. I fight it with everything I have, even though darkness would be a relief. I can’t give up. I can’t expect someone else to save me.

There’s a flicker of darkness to my side, and Blake pulls me out of the way of thething’stail. We land hard on the ground, Blake’s arms curling around me, and I bite down hard to stop myself from screaming as the welts in my back are exposed to the air. It strikes again, scooping up cloaked men and Wolves, dead and alive, and swallowing them whole.

“Pick up your weapons!” James roars. “Next time it strikes, go for its eyes and mouth! Kill any southerners that get in your way.”

I try to push myself up, and Blake helps me to my knees. He kneels before me and clasps my face in his hands. “Aurora, listen to me. You need to stop suppressing your power. You’re the only one who can save us. If you don’t, we will all die.”

I shake my head. “I’m not a wolf.”

Out of the corner of my eye, Alexander staggers forward, eyes set on me as the shadows writhe around him. Ryan is on the floor, bleeding. Philip is standing by James, the two of them barking frantic orders and getting the Wolves into formation, only for another three men to be plucked into the maw of the beast. Claire plunges a sword into a hooded male that lurchesfor her before turning to face the shadows—her eyes bright and feral, even though the blade trembles in her hand. Ian lies dead on the floor.

“Not your wolf, Aurora.” Blood and gore splatter the ground beside us. Warm droplets drip down my cheek and onto his hand. “Your power. There’s a reason why you didn’t shift on the night of the full moon. A reason whyGhealachshone for you on the night of the battle with Sebastian. A reason why the Àithne doesn’t work on you, why Callum has struggled with his wolf—gods, why I have—since you have been around.” He grips me tighter, sliding his hands into my hair. “I think you’ve started to suspect it too. You feel it. It’s not your wolf that you keep suppressing when the fever comes for you. It’s a different power. The Wolves thought it was literal. A heart turned to rock, fossilized by time. What if it was not?”

What he’s saying, it can’t be true. I shake my head. “Even if you’re right, it’s deep within me, and I’ve been holding onto it for so long that I cannot let it go.”

“Darling, people like you and me, we do not let go.” He bumps his forehead against mine, and the wolf blazes in his eyes. “We unleash.”

He breaks away from me and draws his sword. He meets Alexander’s blade. There’s a ring of steel as he throws the Borderlands lord back before advancing upon him. A growl reverberates in his chest.

The serpentine beast rears up above us all, and I stagger back onto my palms as it turns its obsidian eyes on me. I no longer feel pain, nor my blood, nor heat. I’m numb. It’s like looking into an endless abyss. Its scent ambushes me, ancient and primordial, and my clothes stick to my skin. It laughs, araspy sound that vibrates through me and makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“He will be so angry with me, when he finds out what I have done to you,”it hisses. “It will be our little secret.”

The darkness crashes down upon me, and something in my body rises up to meet it. A scream builds in my chest. My skin is clammy and everything is far away. The fever, it’s coming for me, as deadly as the serpentine creature that hurtles ever near, its mouth opening, its fangs dripping with blood. Every instinct in my body braces itself.

Blake is right. I have started to suspect something. I have read through his books filled with experiments on Wolves, and not one of them could stop the shift, nor fight the effects of silver and wolfsbane. I have wondered why I’ve found myself in Night’s prison and what it is he wants from me. I cast my thoughts back to the family tree I found in Blake’s bedchambers, and who the two scrubbed names at the top may belong to. Lochlan thought my mother brought the Heart of the Moon to the Northlands. Blake and Callum thought Sebastian had it.

I have thought of my mother, of the reason she might have withheld the truth from me. She loved me more than anything. I was her heart, she told me, her love.

When the fever hurtles through my body, I don’t fight it. I don’t suppress it.

I close my eyes.

I release a breath.

For once, I let go.

Chapter Sixty

I’m falling, hurtling, crashing through darkness.

It rises to meet me.

I jolt into my body. My skin is stone. The taste of crypts and mildew is thick on my tongue. I cannot move. I cannot breathe. I’m a statue in the palace gardens and moss coats my skin like wet velvet. A scream builds in my chest, but my mouth is sealed shut.

The moon hides behind the clouds, and candles light the way through the hedge maze. Courtiers wander, long silk skirts trailing over the cobblestones. Some pause.

“Perfect stonework,” says one.

“She almost looks alive,”says another.

And I have had enough. I’m not a statue—with no thoughts, no feelings, no desires of my own. I’m not made of stone. I don’t exist as decoration, for people to look upon, comment upon, as if I cannot hear them.

My smile crumbles. The ground quakes. The stone that encases me cracks and I shed it. It turns to dust, coating my naked skin, as I stand on a podium. I raise my chin, and aglimmer of moonlight touches my face. The courtiers around me start to scream.

Enough.

Then I’m falling once more.

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