Page 61 of Court of Bone and Amethyst

I shift my body slightly, which sends a spike of pain down my spine. My hands are bound tightly behind my back with thick, rough pieces of rope. Panic rolls through me.

The wall. An explosion. Falling. Darkness.

Avonia.

She must have blasted us off the wall. And now…

I rotate my head, trying to see where I am. A tent erected over the snow. That’s why I’m so cold. I’m literally lying on snow. I’m also alone. Or at least from what I can see in my limited field of vision.

Sucking in a deep breath to steel myself, I roll my body, gritting through the pain, until I flop all the way over onto my other side. I think I broke something in the fall, one of my shoulders maybe. That seems to be the source of the agony every time I move.

Once I’m on my other side, I see that Owyn and Merla are lying bound a few feet away from me. I also see the entrance to the tent. A swirl of snow slips in through the flap, and up around the boots of the guard standing there. His eyes narrow when he sees me, and he turns and steps outside, no doubt to tell Avonia I’m awake.

Owyn is facing away from me, and I can’t entirely see Merla on the other side of him to tell if they’re awake. “Can you hear me?” I call.

“Aye,” Owyn says, his voice laced with pain.

“And Merla? Is she okay?”

“I’m okay,” she says, though her voice is more faint than usual. “My legs are broken.”

“Oh, goddess…” I close my eyes a moment. “And you?” I ask Owyn.

“My nose had a run-in with one of the warrior’s fists.”

I wince. So he’d been conscious at some point after we fell from the wall. I try to keep the terror out of my voice as I ask the question that’s been burning on the tip of my tongue. “Where is Zyren?”

“He’s having a reunion with his dear brother,” says a voice that makes my body even colder than it already is.

Avonia straightens from where she’d just ducked through the tent opening. A strange mix of relief and horror and rage burn through my body. Zyren is alive, that’s the most important thing. But here I am again, Avonia’s prisoner. The woman who slaughtered my entire family, who made the Otreyas line nearly extinct. The woman who has hunted me since the moment I stepped foot in Valaron.

She stands there, flame-colored hair and black armor, and I notice she has a strange metal appendage attached to the stub where Zyren cut off her arm rescuing me the last time. There’s aglow of magic about it. As I watch, she flexes her fingers, and the dim light inside the tent hits the metallic surface as it moves.

“You know,” she continues, “I had no idea that your guardian was Lyonian royalty. And I’m not often surprised. That was a well-kept secret.”

“A guardian must sever their ties to all titles and attachments. Surely you know that,” I say.

“But he certainly didn’t adhere to that with you, now did he?” She smiles, and it’s all ice and daggers. “To marry one’s ward… that’s a bit unorthodox, to say the least.”

Even though I can’t see Owyn’s face, I can read his shock in the way his body tenses.

“We had to complete the spell to seal the nightmares back in their territory. It was the purest form of duty to his realm.”

“Pure? I’m not so sure.” Her smile widens. “Something tells me the two of you have done a great many unpure things together.”

I ignore her barb. “The spell seems to have failed, though. How did you do it, Avonia? How did you release nightmares through the seal on their territory?”

“When one possesses nightmare blood, they have access to magic that the Valaronians couldn’t even dream of.” She smirks. “No pun intended.”

She runs her hands across her belly, which has grown slightly since last I saw her a few weeks ago. She’d obtained her nightmare blood through direct union with one of the nightmares. But the way she’d said it…access to magic that the Valaronians couldn’t even dream of…

She doesn’t know Zyren and I possess nightmare blood, too.

I keep my face carefully blank. “So, your enhanced blood allowed you to summon nightmares to this side of Valaron. And I suppose that’s how you created a lookalike of King Jonavus.”

Avonia’s smile grows even more sharp and deadly. “Oh, my little queen, that isnota lookalike. It’s the king, alive and well.”

“But I saw himdead.” My words come out hard, despite the panic spiking through my veins, the horror. “I saw the blood, saw the life leave his eyes.”

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