LOGINKenna
Evander looks down at me and goes perfectly still.
“What was that?” I whisper. It could easily have been the fireworks the elder council in the coven ordered for the festivities.
Another Earth rattling boom shakes the underground temple to the point dust and bits of rocks tumble from the ceiling.
I don’t even have a second to take a breath before Evander rolls off me, pulls me to my feet, and grabs his shirt. He yanks it over my head and deftly buttons it, but his body is so still, and his head is cocked to the side as he listens to whatever is happening beyond the sanctuary of the cave.
His mark on my shoulder burns, and blood seeps into the white fabric of his shirt, which is large enough that it brushes over the top of my knees as he steps away and quickly puts on his pants. “Where is your cloak?”
“Evander, what is going on? It’s just the fireworks&ndash
Blake“Will I ever see her again?” Lexa moves with me through the dark, our bodies falling into the shadow of manor houses that sprawl throughout the neighborhoods resting against the palace walls. The layout of this city is so similar to Moonrise that I’ve found it more than disorienting sometimes, like whatever ancestor of the sitting king stole the design from the Firestone Queens, trying to recreate the kingdom they forced to ash. “Chessie?”She gives a tight nod, refusing to meet my eyes. I know what she’s asking–for me to look into a future that’s so unstable and shifting with every second that passes. I can only give her the truth I know in my heart. “Silas loves her, but he’d let her go. When this is over, when I’m able to get you home, Chessie can decide if she’s staying with him or going back to Eastonia, but Silas will not allow her to aid in the battles taking place here. I think… you agree with him on that.”Lexa nods again, but her eyes are distant, focusing on the smo
LexaAn entire day passes. I count the hours, the minutes, the seconds, until time bleeds together in my head. My mind pounds like a drum, my temples splitting, and the only thing keeping me lucid is a near constant array of healing drafts being poured down my throat every hour on the hour, as if they are responsible for ensuring my heart doesn’t stop beating. In the first hour of the second day in Silas’s country home in the Highwoods–a mountainous estate several hours north of the capital, I’m told–I rise from bed, gingerly testing my range of motion, feeling how taut and new my spine feels. Like the bones are made of glass. I make it three steps before my back crumbles, forcing me onto the edge of the bed. Bea, Silas’s healer, is a stout and bossy woman, a shifter, and a beautiful one, at that. She can’t be older than my age, but she’s hardened, like she’s seen nothing but violence, blood, and war her entire life. She doesn’t take no for an answer. The woman has been torturing m
LexaBright pain laces down my back with every step as I walk out of the woods and onto pearls of gravel. I’m not sure where I am, but it’s not the port. A shadow rises in the near distance. My vision ebbs in and out–a wall. The Glade. I’m standing on a rise and looking down at the city, at the capital of Pantharas, and beyond. My knees give out. Blood trails down my back. Hands grip my arms, yanking me upright. “Kaleb?” I croak, squinting against a rush of bright light threatening to blind me, but everyone around me is speaking in the fae tongue–and rapidly. I pick out a few words but nothing substantial. Nothing that gives me any idea of what happens next. I just won the Trials. I won. I did it, Kaleb. I won for us–“I am her sponsor now. Let her go!” Silas’s voice rips through the fray, and suddenly, I’m in his arms, which isn’t right. He shouldn’t be here. He kept having to leave, to go to the Highwoods, wherever that is. “K–Kaleb?” I cry out. Silas scoops me into his arms,
LexaThe forest comes alive. My wolf’s body glides unsteadily over roots and rocks, the moss cool under my soft, recently unused paws. My heartbeat drives adrenaline through my veins as I barrel, often losing my balance and sliding over the unfamiliar terrain. The smells are all wrong. The creeks that run through the forest like veins drift in different directions every time I pass, making it impossible to gauge where I am and what direction I’m traveling, but I keep running. I don’t know what else to do against this beast of mist still pursuing me deeper into the woods other than lie down and stay as quiet as possible, like on the beach, but I made that mistake before. I didn’t fight. I watched everyone get killed instead. It’s a regret I’ll carry for the rest of my life. The beast shrieks as it gains ground, coming up behind me with its talons clinking together like dried, hollow bones. I try to ignore it, to focus on my breathing, the way my body feels as the wolf I was forced to
LexaKaleb adjusts the loops and straps keeping my shifting dress in place, his fingers biting through the damp, rainy cold. There was a shift in the air last night, after a day spent mostly in solitude at Silas’s house. I’d spent most of the day looking out of the window, watching the trees sway between manor houses and in the small parks, all of them tinged with gold–the first signs of autumn. I missed the harvest. Kaleb’s touch is firm as he moves down my body to my sandals, checking my frame from my neck to the very tips of my toes. I’m allowed a weapon of choice tonight but only as long as I can carry it. I doubt the king knows about my use of a shifting halter, which Lis was able to craft in a matter of hours. I sent Kaleb with a sketch and measurements when he returned to the Glade without me yesterday morning. I eye the weapons laid out on a table across the room. We’re not in the city anymore. We’re far outside the walls cutting off the capital from the endless woods and p
LexaIt only takes one smooth motion for Kaleb to catch me around the middle and take me to the ground. My back hits the soft carpet with a thud that rattles my bones, and I jerk, diving to drive a knee between us. He gathers my wrists, pinning them above my head, and thrusts his knee between my legs, pinning me. His eyes are bright and only inches above mine while he inspects my face for damage from my fall. Pain throbs through my forehead, but it’s my pride that stings in agony. “I told you,” he says low in his throat, a soft growl that laces over my skin, “your overconfidence is going to kill you. Do you think you can still see in the dark without your wolf at your disposal?”I go totally still, my body relaxing against my will, and fold. I submit. I give up. “What happened to us? Why does this have to be so hard? Rejecting each other? I don’t want to do it, but you’re making it clear that we–we’ll never be able to be together. What changed in you after the maze? You’re not the







