Page 79 of Crown of Darkness
“Because you said the child of destiny needed to die!” I gasp.
“But that’s not the truth, Vi,” he snarls. “I would have loved you. I would have trusted you. I would have given you everything. And you have ruined it.”
The protest dies on my lips, because there’s something quivering around his hand, an enormous twist of shadow writhing into a nest of shadowy snakes.
He hurls them at my face, and I try to scream, but they evaporate the second they hit my skin, leaving me to inhale the smoky residue of their being.
It tastes like death.
At that I wake, gasping in a suppressed scream, every inch of me hammering with alertness. My hands shake. My pulse thunders. And I swear I can still taste the kiss of the grave.
But I’m in the room beside Eris’s bed, and though the candle has burned low, it’s the same candle I lit hours ago. I wave a hand through the flame, just to feel the bite of its heat.
“It’s just a dream. Just a fucking dream.” I reach for Eris’s hand to squeeze it, but she doesn’t squeeze back.
She’s still asleep.
Still shockingly vulnerable.
Every bead in the web of dreams lies crushed into dust on the pillow around Eris’s dark hair.
I want to run. I want to hide. Even my nights are no longer safe. But I reach out for the power of the Ceres Hallow, feeling it tremble awake somewhere close by.
“Prove you’re not monsters. Let her go.”
It’s a foolish thought, thrown out into the night in the hopes that the Mother of Night will hear it.
I don’t dare hope for anything more.
But nor do I lay hands on Eris again, because that hungry, slavering darkness within her knows I’m there.
And I think it knows that I’m the key to freeing itself.
Even though, Maia help me, I’m the one in chains.
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Chapter Sixteen
The next day, I’m slumped in my bath, trying to wash away the residue of oily smoke that still somehow clings to me, when I receive a note from Thalia saying the impossible has happened.
Eris is awake.
Slipping into my training leathers, I hurry through the hallways of the castle, though the sound of someone yelling makes my footsteps slow as I reach Eris’s apartments.
And then Finn bursts out of Eris’s room.
A boot follows him, and Finn snarls as he turns and catches it. “I missed you too,” he yells through the doorway. “Next time you swoon, I’m going to leave you in the dirt!”
“Swoon?” comes an enraged hiss from within. “I didn’t swoon, you ass. That bastard hauled me under with his magic.”
“Who?”
“If I knew that, then I would have slit the prick’s throat and broken free!”
And then Eris appears in the doorway, her eyes widening when she sees me.
We stare at each other, and my foot shifts before I remember that endless slick of darkness within her.
