Page 104 of Crown of Darkness
Thiago strokes my face. “Wait. We’re going to wait and give this hex a chance to vanish completely. Lysander’s taken over by the beast right now, but he was always disciplined. I know he will fight his way back.”
“You’re going to leave him there? In the cells?”
Thiago hesitates. “I have no other choice.”
* * *
I can’t sleep.Again.
I see Ayelet screaming as that wall of water washes toward us. I see Lysander’s eyes fusing to gold as he loses all his hard-won gains. And I see Thiago on his knees, his head bowed against the weight of what this revelation has cost him.
What my mother has cost him.
I slip from the bed and steal away from our chambers as soft moonlight gilds Ceres. There are few guards within the heart of the castle, and I manage to evade all of them as I make my way to the second-tallest tower within the keep.
I can’t defeat my mother.
Not with a sword, not with my fae magic…. I can’t even make the land rises against her, because I have no power beyond Evernight’s borders.
The Hallow lies still and dormant as I enter, but I can almost sense someone watching me.
Slowly, I light the torches that surround the room before turning back to the center of the Hallow. It hums like a contented cat, the vibration of that power shivering over my skin. Ever since I made the bargain with the Mother of Night, I’ve felt it whispering to me in the night and singing to me during the day.
I close my eyes. “Are you there?”
Power rushes through me, snatching me up in its gaping maw, and then the trap snaps shut around me. It feels like an enormous hand closes around me and then it’s tugging me through the floor….
I fall a thousand miles, lungs screaming for breath.
And when I hit the water, it’s almost a relief to stop falling.
Splashing desperately, I kick for the surface. Little glowing balls of light stir through the water around me, and as I break the surface, I realize more of them stream toward me as though the ripples of my entrance draw them like a fly twisting in a spider’s web.
Curse it.
The shore—
I reach for the power that envelops me here, and then it’s turning me inside out, twisting me throughnothing. I land on my hands and knees in the shallows, cursing under my breath. I hate this place.
But as I lift my head, I know the worst is yet to come….
The Mother of Night walks down the slopes of her island prison, her black silk robes swishing around her ankles and a satisfied smile on her lips. “Of course I’m here, Iskvien. I am always here, watching over you. And I always will be.”
Scrambling to my feet, I splash out of the water, but there’s no escape. She drew me here. How in the Underworld did she do that? She’s supposed to be trapped in the Mistmere Hallow, so how did she reach through the Hallow in Ceres—?
“I didn’t,” she says calmly. “You calledme,Iskvien. And you opened the link between us. Since I cannot leave my prison….” She gives a sinister little smile and a shrug.
“Send meback.”
She tilts her head. “I thought you wished to talk?”
Every muscle in my body freezes. “The last time wetalked,you trapped me into this fucking quest for a crown that doesn’t seem to exist.”
Dark, merciless eyes. “It exists,” she says and then turns and walks away.
I stare at her back.
“Then why is there no trace of it? Someone has to know where it lies. Or maybe it was destroyed—"
