Page 43 of Too Dangerous To Die

I wake in a sweat, breath ragged, body trembling.

The bond pulses between us. I feel Nora not far, sleeping restlessly beneath a ridge of stone where we made camp. Her dreams are tangled with mine now. I can sense her magic like a heartbeat beside my own.

I loved her. How did I fall for a purna? A purna so powerful, she controlled beings like the Wraithborns, those that refused to cross to the other side?

I turn to Nora, staring at her form.

The same woman. The same soul.

But not Medea.

And if I can’t control myself...

She never will be.

19

NORA

The ruins of once a city emerges from the ash like a carcass picked clean by time.

Stone towers, cracked and hollow, lean at strange angles as if they’re bowing toward the heart of the Wastes. Shards of glass glint like bone beneath the morning sun. Dust hangs in the air, thick, silver, laced with the scent of ancient, lingering magic.

Rhaegar doesn’t speak as we descend into the basin, and neither do I. We’re both still raw from what nearly happened last night. From whatdidhappen.

I trail behind him, slower now, letting the silence stretch between us like a fraying cord. My ribs still ache from holding my breath too long. From denying what I felt.

Or wanted to.

The city ruin feels... wrong.

Not dangerous, exactly. But still. The stones remember. The wind here doesn’t whistle, itwhispers.

We walk beneath a crumbled arch, and the shadows immediately close in around us. It's cooler down here, the sun veiled by the skeletal ruins above. Rhaegar’s footsteps echo ahead, but I pause, drawn to something on the walls.

Murals.

Painted in fading golds and blacks, framed in lines of runic script I can’t read but somehow understand. My fingers brush across them, and the moment my skin touches the stone, a shock of heat lances through my hand.

The mural shifts.

No, itripples.

Like breath through a corpse.

And there in the center is a woman. Pale-skinned. Amethyst eyes. Armor forged of black obsidian and laced with violet crystal veins. Her mouth is twisted in fury. In command. Her hair whips in a wind that isn’t painted butalivein the wall itself.

And she’s wearingmy face.

A jolt surges through me. I stagger back, nearly tripping over the uneven floor.

The runes beneath the mural pulse. My vision narrows.

I’m not in the city anymore.

I'm somewhere else.

Screams echo around me. Men in dark armor fall to their knees. A woman—me,Medea—lifts her hand, and the air tears open. Lightning and shadow crackle at her fingertips, and the world goes still as she speaks a name I can’t remember but feel etched into the marrow of my bones.

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