Page 128 of Tempest

Ardyn

A fractured,broken sound ricochets through the den. I’ve dropped the picture, the glass shattering at my feet.

I can’t breathe.

My chest tightens. I clutch it as I stumble back. The walls are moving, creeping closer, locking me in a tomb.

I can’t breathe.

The ceiling whirls, centers itself, then whirls again. I spin around, expecting to see the door, freedom, but instead, I see Mila.

She’s not the Mila I remember. Skin peels off her skeleton has she reaches for me. Her face concaves as I watch, decay giving her a grayish green cast. She tries to speak to me, but all I see is a gaping black hole where her tongue should be.

“Mila.” Her name comes out of me in a gasp.

She unhinges her jaw, her eyes melting from their sockets and a ghastly skull taking its place. Yet I can hear the words as if she speaks them.

“Please. Help us.”

Black combat boots step up to her as she tries to crawl out of the wreckage.

“I think Ardyn’s still breathing, but I can’t check on Clover. You have to help us!”

The form standing over her doesn’t move.

She tips her face up as much as she can while splayed on her stomach. “What—what are you waiting for? Help me! Call someone!”

Pants move into view as he bends, resting on his haunches.

I blink into black but force my eyes open, hanging upside down, trying to move my lips, to form words, but I’m sick, so sick with nausea and just want to escape…

“Tempest, what are you doing? Stop!”

Choking sounds. Mila can’t breathe.

I have to keep my eyes open.

In half-lidded, upside-down crescents, I see familiar hands wrapped around Mila’s throat, and then they twist.

Snap.

That same murderous hand strokes back Mila’s hair from her slack, vacant face. “Sorry, darling. It had to be done.”

NO.

The ceiling whirls again, bile collecting in my throat, and I’m dumped in the back of an auction house, watching Professor Rossi—Miguel Rossi—pull the trigger into the forehead of the man hugging Hunter.

The man.

The father.

Professor Morgan’s father.

The intricate web of lies unspools from my head with the force of projectile vomit. I drag my body to the front door, using the wall to steady my sickly escape.

Tempest killed Mila.

Professor Rossi killed a man I wasn’t supposed to know about.

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