Page 34 of Too Dangerous To Die

We don’t speak on the climb back from the ruins.

The silence between us has changed, hollow and sharp, filled with too many truths we can’t take back. I feel them pressing in from all sides. His words still burn in my chest like cinders.

If they want you, it means they think you belong to them.

I keep my eyes on the path ahead, though the terrain shifts beneath my feet like it wants to swallow me whole. The Wastes never forget. I’m starting to think they don’t forgive, either.

By the time we return to the ridge, night has thickened into something almost tangible. Clouds blot out the moons, and the stars hang low, watching. The fire Rhaegar left behind has burned to coals, casting long, skeletal shadows across the rock.

Something tightens in my chest as I look at our camp.

Something is wrong.

Then I feel it, cold and sudden, like a hand down my spine.

They're here.

“Rhaegar…” I breathe, my voice brittle.

He turns before I finish the warning. His body tenses, wings flaring wide, catching the scent on the air.

Then they emerge.

From the dark. From the mist. From theland itself.

Three of them at first. Then five.

The same haunting figures that watched from the shadows. Only now, they move.

And they’re fast.

I scramble back as one closes in, metal-clad arms reaching. I raise my hand to cast, to defend, but the magic stalls—like it’s been seized mid-thought. A freezing pressure hits my skull, and I stagger, dropping to one knee.

“No,” I whisper. “No—get out?—”

One of them is suddenly there, kneeling in front of me. I don’t see his face, just the smooth, dark curve of his helm and the runes carved down his arm. His hand lifts.

I try to scream, but it doesn’t come in time.

He touches me.

The moment his fingers graze my skin, ashocktears through me like lightning cleaving bone. My vision whites out. My mind opens like a wound.

And they pour in.

A war.

Ash raining from a broken sky. Silver blades crashing against stone. Women screaming. Men howling. My name—no, not mine—echoing through the blood-slick halls of a forgotten fortress.

A betrayal.

Someone falling. A crown shattering. A voice, familiar but wrong, whispering, “You were promised to us.”

A promise made in blood.

Hands bound. Runes seared into flesh. A soul split in two.

And through it all, aname I do not knowspoken like it belongs to me.

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