The slap of running feet against stone shattered the quiet. Amelia was on her feet in an instant, her body a live wire of tension. “I have to go,” she clipped out, her gaze darting toward the hallway. 

She spun to face me, and the grim set of her jaw sent a fresh wave of ice through my veins. “Thalia.” Her eyes, chips of hard, serious obsidian, locked onto mine. “The dungeons… and everything after. Be safe.”

Her words were a death sentence for my meticulously crafted plan. It didn’t matter. The thought was a shield I raised against the rising panic. Let the pieces fall where they may. I will see this through.

A shadow of a smile, fleeting and full of sorrow, touched Amelia’s lips. “Until next time.” Then she was gone, a blur of motion swallowed by the doorway.

In the ringing silence, her footsteps faded, leaving me alone with the shimmering ghost of the man I loved.

“Well,” I whispered, the word trembling on my lips. “I suppose it’s time.”

The translucent image of Cassius flickered, his expression clouded with a grief so profound it felt like a physical blow. His mind was racing, I could see it—searching for an exit, another path, any other way but this. “I know,” he breathed, his voice a ghost’s lament.

“I’ll be okay,” I lied, and the tremor in my own smile was a bitter betrayal.

“Then let me come,” he pleaded, his form surging with a desperate energy. “Let me join you—”

“No.” The word was sharp, a shard of glass meant to cut. “I need you to bring the elves. Now, Cassius. We are out of time. My father means to complete the ritual in two days.”

Shock widened his eyes. The light wavered around him. “Understood. We’ll muster at the outer wall and await your signal.”

“Good,” I managed, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.

He hesitated, a question hanging in the charged air between us. “And if the signal doesn’t come? When do we move?”

I forced myself to look away, toward the cold reality of the door. “At nightfall. The empty streets will be your cover.” My voice was hollow. “I have to get to the dungeons, Cassius. I’ll see you soon.” I tried to smile, but it felt like breaking.

“You will,” he vowed. “And Thalia…?”

“Yes?” I turned back, my gaze tracing the ethereal lines of his face.

“I love you. And I fully expect to tell you that again, in person.”

A single, hot tear escaped and traced a path down my cheek. “I love you too, Cassius. I’m holding you to that.”

A sad, beautiful smile touched his lips before his image dissolved into motes of light, leaving me utterly alone.

I didn’t draw my mana so much as unmoor myself with it. It flooded my senses, a familiar tide that cocooned me in its power. The world dissolved into a watercolor blur of color and light for a heartbeat, then snapped back into sharp focus, only I was no longer a part of it. I glanced down. Where my hands should have been, there was only a subtle heat-haze distortion in the air. A void in the shape of a girl.

I pressed my ear to the door. Nothing. Easing it open, I slipped through the gap and clicked it shut behind me, the sound unnaturally loud in the sudden silence of the hall. The castle was descending into chaos. Maids scurried past like frightened mice, their whispers echoing off the stone. Amelia, be safe, I thought, a pang of worry lancing through my focus.

As I rounded the final corridor, the rhythmic clatter of armor joined the panicked footsteps. I melted back into the alcove of a window, becoming one with the shadow as a squad of guards thundered past, their faces carved from stone. They didn’t even register the pocket of cold I left in my wake.

“The king is tearing the throne room apart!” one maid hissed to another.

“Will we be safe?” the other whimpered. They vanished around a corner before an answer could come.

The hallway fell silent. I waited a beat, then two, before gliding to the dungeon door. One last scan of the empty corridor, and I slipped through, the heavy wood groaning shut, sealing me in with the cold and the dark.

The stone stairs spiraled down into the earth, each step colder than the last. At the bottom, a lone guard stood watch, a bored sentinel whose eyes still scanned the shadows with practiced vigilance. Getting past him unseen was impossible.

Silent as falling dust, I drifted down the final steps, stopping a breath away from his shoulder. He remained oblivious. I focused a sliver of mana, a tiny, hard pellet of force, and sent it skittering into the far corner.

“What in the—?” he grunted, spinning away from the wall to investigate.

It was all the opening I needed. I unleashed a second, focused wave of power—a silent whipcrack of force that struck the base of his neck. His helmet clanged once against the stone floor, a sharp, metallic ring that was quickly swallowed by the oppressive silence. He wouldn’t be waking for a long, long time.

I knelt, liberating the heavy iron keys from his belt. A moment later, the cellblock door groaned open. With the chaos erupting upstairs, no one would think to check on him.

The deeper I went, the more the air itself seemed to resist me, heavy and foul. With each step, the frantic hammering in my chest grew louder. An all-consuming fire, I reminded myself, my own voice a weak echo in my head. That’s all it will take.

Then, a sliver of ice slid down my spine. Blair’s magic. It saturated the very stones of this place, a lingering stain of her power. Her prison. Her cage. If I attacked it, would she feel the disturbance? I shoved the thought down. It didn’t matter. Even if she was alerted, I just had to be quick.

The corridor opened into a wing lined with solid, iron-banded doors. Sputtering torches cast dancing shadows that writhed like living things in my peripheral vision. I reached the final door and probed the lock with a tendril of mana, feeling the tumblers click. My hand trembled as I pulled it open.

Thalia, get a grip.

I stepped inside, shutting the door behind me, and placed my palm on a familiar, smooth section of the floor. A magic circle flared to life, its amethyst light throwing my invisible shadow onto the wall. The ground rumbled, a section of stone sliding away to reveal the true descent. The inhuman chorus from below—a symphony of chittering, hissing, and guttural cries—rose to meet me.

I stepped onto the stairs.

At the bottom, the darkness was a physical weight. I steadied my breath, gathering my power. Amethyst light bled from my palm, coalescing into a sphere of raw energy that bathed the cavern in a violent, purple glare. In dozens of cells, twisted shapes shrieked and recoiled from the light.

I took one last, deep breath and unleashed everything I had.

It was not fire, but pure, unmaking energy—a torrent of violet power that flooded the cells. The creatures inside, things of nightmare and shadow, threw themselves against the bars, their bodies immolating, their screams turning to ash. I stalked deeper into the labyrinth, the wave of destruction preceding me. The place was vast, a maze of cages and torment. This was going to take too long…

And then it was gone.

The light, the power, my mana—it was all snuffed out in an instant, plunging me into a blackness so absolute it felt like drowning.

I froze, my own heartbeat a thunder in my ears. A profound, unnatural chill slithered through the air, colder than stone, colder than death. Tendrils of black smoke began to coil out of the darkness before me, coalescing into a shifting, wavering form that emitted a faint, sickly green luminescence.

A voice emerged from it, a silken purr that coiled around the silence.

“I see a little rat has found its way into my pantry. We can’t have that.”

Blair.

My blood turned to ice, but a single, desperate thought sparked in the terror: She can’t see me. I’m invisible. I can still get out.

I pressed myself flat against the cold, damp wall, beginning to inch my way back toward the stairs, my every muscle screaming. The dying moans of the creatures were the only other sound.

A whisper, directly in my ear.

“Trying to run? How disappointing.”

Primal terror ripped through me. Before I could draw breath to scream, an unseen force, slammed into my back, flinging me forward. My teeth clacked against the stone floor, and the world exploded into pain and darkness.