We bound ourselves to each other that long-ago night.
The link between us is still there, buried deep in my heart and chained down by treachery.
I reach for it and metaphysically dust it off, and on the inside of the sarcophagus I swear I feel her suck in a sharp breath as if she feels it too.
That son of a bitch.
Keep your enemies close indeed.
Now how the fuck am I going to get this cursed thing open?
16
“Soraya?” I whisper through the stone.
I’ve tried everything I could to shift the lid. The sheer weight of it is impossible to move, and the distraction across the grotto will only last so long. Which means the only way I’m getting through it is by using my magic.
I pace around the sarcophagus.
Falion Sifted beyond sight.
But how? How did he do it?
Pressing my hand against the sarcophagus, I try to reach through it the way I reach through shadows. Nothing. Nothing but cold stone against my touch.
I can’t help thinking about the first time I ever Sifted.
My two foster brothers hurled me over the lip of a well, and I woke up in a nearby forest.
Nearly a mile away.
I did it once.
But how?
I was four. I can’t even remember what I was thinking that day. It’s my first formative memory, but it’s as shadowy around the edges as the gloom that fills this room.
The well. Strong hands levering me over the edge.
“We’re done feeding you, you little bitch,” my eldest brother said.
I can’t even remember his name.
But Riori? I remember him. I remember that you never dared allow yourself to be alone in a room with him, and as he held me over the edge of the well, he leaned close enough to whisper, “I hear you sniveling at night. You’re scared of the dark, aren’t you? Well, this ends in darkness, you little bastard. And the only people who will hear you scream are the two of us. The well monster’s going to feed well tonight.”
And then he lets me go as he laughed.
That day filled my nightmares for years. Sometimes I wonder if my recollections of it are even real, or whether they’ve become some twisted amalgamation of my dreams.
I fell for what seemed forever.
And then the icy shock of cold water swallowed me whole.
I couldn’t swim.
It was so dark down there I could barely breathe.
I thrashed, and I screamed, and I looked for them, but all I could make out was a thin circle of light above me, with two dark heads peering over the lip of it before I went under again.
And then something touched my foot.
Something cold and slimy curled around my ankle, like a bony hand that was half-rotted.
“You’re not the first brat we’ve fed to the well,” Riori said as he dragged me out of the hut. “You’re finally going to go meet the rest of our brothers and sisters.”
I screamed and screamed and screamed.
Please. Please!
A glowing hand reached out to me, plunging through the dark waters like a full moon rising.
“My little girl,” whispered a voice in my head, “if you ever need me, reach for me. I’ll be there for you. I promise. I love you… I love you….”
I took that hand, and it felt like a doorway opened within my mind. I finally fell through it.
And then I was sobbing in the forest and that door was still open somehow, an invisible hand stroking through my hair before the sensation faded and a pair of dry leaves skittering over my skin as the wind stirred them.
My eyes blink open, and I’m standing in front of the sarcophagus.
I’d forgotten about that hand, that voice….
I Sifted beyond sight that first time.
Yanking my hands off the stone, I strip the glamor from my skin and stare as a faint luminescence bleeds through. I’ve spent my entire life hiding that light. It’s a dangerous kind of weakness to show before my wraithen brothers and sisters.
Before my king….
Swallowing hard, I curl my fingers around the glow. Spears of light stab through my clenched fingers. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of it means.
But there’s one thing that’s starting to embed itself in my mind: Shadow is the absence of light. Light is the death of shadow.
What if I was able to manipulate more than mere shadow?
You are not merely wraithenkind, Zemira….
I let the light escape along with the exhale of my breath. Even if I am half fae, there’s nothing for me in this world. My ghostly pale skin sees to that. I can hide it behind glamor, but I’ll always be hiding it. I would be forever living a lie, no matter how much I yearn for that lie.
There is no place of acceptance here, even if I wish I could escape my father’s court….
The only one who has ever accepted me—betrayals or no betrayals—is entombed alive within this sarcophagus.
Soraya is all that matters. I’ll need her if I’m going to be able to pull off this heist.
Or maybe I just need her.
It’s a bitter antidote to swallow.
I place my hands on the stone again.
And this time I push through them.
Soraya. Soraya. Soraya. I try and channel that focus, that desperation I had the first time I Sifted beyond my limits. Darkness flickers in and out of my mind—there’s something….
There.
I plunge through the sarcophagus, and then I’m tumbling onto a warm body.
“What the fuck?” Soraya bursts out, grabbing me by the wrists.
I’m groggy and disorientated, but I have precisely two seconds to remember she’s an assassin and will probably take to my sudden appearance in a similar way to a sleeping cat that’s suddenly had a dog thrown upon it.
“It’s me!” I hiss as she wrestles with me. “Soraya! It’s me!”
Harsh gasps burst through the small space as she freezes. “Z?”
I wilt against her. “Hold tight.” There are chains around her wrist. “I
