Page 72 of Claimed In Darkness

He’s dead.

I move before my thoughts can catch up.

Before I can consider why I care.

I drop to the ground beside him, gripping his arm, fingers digging into feverish flesh.

"Zephiran," I snap. "Fucking look at me."

His body shudders violently, a sharp gasp tearing from his throat as if he’s just surfaced from drowning.

His head jerks up.

His eyes?—

They are wrong.

No longer the deep, inhuman crimson that has haunted me from the moment I first met him.

Now, they are black.

Pure, depthless voids of hunger and ruin.

The relic still pulses in his hand, the magic curling around his wrist, sinking deeper, deeper, deeper.

His lips part.

I expect a snarl. A curse. Some arrogant, cutting remark to tell me to back off.

Instead, his voice comes out ragged, raw, something between a whisper and a growl.

"He’s here."

A slow, sickening chill trickles down my spine.

Who is it?

His father?I’ve heard of the whispers.

I just never knew howreal they are.

The vault door slams shut behind us.

Magic surges, sealing us inside, locking the air is overflowing with the smell of something old, rotting, waiting.

We are trapped.

I now truly understand what this was.

Not a heist.

Not a desperate attempt at freedom.

It’s a damn trap.

Zephiran sways, muscles tensed against the magic suffocating him from the inside out.

His breath is ragged, uneven, like something is clawing at his ribs from the inside.

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