Page 59 of Too Dangerous To Die

My blood runs cold.

They haven’t seen us yet. But they will.

And when they do, they won’t care what Noraremembers.

They’ll only see what she’s become.

And they’ll try to take her back.

27

NORA

The moment I feel them, I know.

The pressure shifts in the air like a storm rolling in over bone-dry land, thick and slow and unnatural. The magic prickles along my spine before I even see them—an ancient, raw hum I haven’t felt since I was a child standing before a Matriarch’s altar. It’s like breathing in smoke laced with memory.

I sit up slowly from my makeshift bedding beneath the shattered archway, Rhaegar already rising beside me, every inch of him alert, coiled, his eyes slitted in suspicion.

“They’re close,” I whisper.

“I know.” His voice is gravel, already hardening with purpose.

From between the crooked spires of half-buried ruins and crumbling statuary, they appear—silent and spectral, their outlines sharpening as they step into the pale light of a dying moon. There are five of them. Robes of black, gray, and deep crimson hang off thin shoulders. Their faces are streaked with ash and warpaint, but there’s no mistaking what they are.

Purna.

My sisters. My past. And from the way they look at me—my judgment.

The one at the center steps forward, and though her hair is streaked with silver and her mouth is a bitter line, I know her.

“Ivenna,” I breathe.

She was never Matriarch when I knew her. Back then, she was a Second, strict but fair. She taught me how to feel the breath of the world beneath my feet, how to coax vines through stone cracks.

Now she looks like someone who’s carved power out of fire and blood.

“I had hoped the whispers were wrong,” Ivenna says, her tone quiet but sharp as cut obsidian. “That our fallen sister hadn’t broken covenant.”

“I didn’t break anything,” I snap, standing. My bare feet dig into the soot-crusted floor. “You abandoned me. You left me to rot when you thought I was a threat.”

Her eyes narrow. “Because you were. You still are. Medea stirs in you. We can see it.”

My throat dries. Rhaegar steps forward, silent but solid beside me, and her gaze slides to him like oil across glass.

“And this?” Ivenna’s voice dips lower, venom coiled in silk. “The cursed beast you lie with?”

Rhaegar growls. The sound is quiet, but it makes every bird for miles scatter.

“He is not your concern,” I bite out.

“He isourconcern if you still claim to be one of us. The blood pact you made with him is a blight. Unforgivable. It is spreading. Even now, your magic—our magic—is tainted.”

I lift my chin. “You came all this way to lecture me?”

“No.” Her gaze sharpens like flint to blade. “We came to give you a choice.”

The other Purna move behind her, and their silence is more dangerous than anything else.

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