Page 59 of A Touch of Madness

I step forward.

The wards hum in response, sensing my magic, crackling faintly in the charged air. The restraints around Lara’s wrists and ankles pulse in tandem with the runes along the walls, ensuring she stays locked in place.

I swallow hard. “Lara.”

Nothing.

Part of me braces for the worst—silence, refusal, a sister who doesn’t even acknowledge my presence. But somehow, the nothingness is worse. The emptiness. The hollow void. The absence of response, of reaction, of anything resembling who she once was.

I take another hesitant step forward, the dim light stretching my shadow across the stone floor. The closer I get, the colder it feels, like the air itself is retreating from where she sits, caged in iron and magic.

Her head slowly raises as she lifts her chin from her chest, and the first thing I notice is the way she’s smiling.

Not in greeting. Not in warmth.

It’s forced. Too wide, too sharp, too knowing—like she’s been waiting for me in the dark, amused by my arrival.

The second thing I notice is her eyes.

The light inside of them, the reflection of who she was—it’s gone. Her pupils are too dark, swallowing the color until there’s nothing but black voids, staring, watching, waiting. The whites of her eyes are barely visibly, as if I’m only imagining the sliver that’s there.

I try again, my voice quieter this time. “Lara, do you know where you are?”

Slowly, like she’s just remembering she has a body, she tilts her head. The movement is unnervingly smooth, her chin dipping at an unnatural angle before she rights herself again.

Then, after a long, aching pause?—

“Do you?”

Her voice slithers through the air, soft and saccharine, but threaded with something else. Something wrong.

A shiver crawls down my spine.

The runes embedded in the walls pulse once, the magic sensing the shift in energy, reacting to her presence the same way I do. Like it knows she’s not supposed to be here.

Not like this.

Lucian shifts behind me, barely perceptible, but I feel it. The way the others tense. The way Dorian moves just slightly closer, his hands curling into fists.

Lara hums. A small, quiet sound. Then, finally, she moves.

Not much—just the flex of her fingers, her nails tapping against the iron armrest in slow, deliberate succession. A rhythmicclick, click, clickechoing through the chamber, like the ticking of some invisible clock counting down.

“Help me understand,” she murmurs, her head tipping back slightly as she studies me. “Are you afraid?”

My throat tightens. “I’m not afraid of you.”

The lie sits heavy on my tongue.

Lara laughs—a breathy, delighted sound that doesn’t belong in this room, doesn’t belong to her.

“You should be.”

She leans forward just enough for the torchlight to illuminate her face, and I swear a demon is possessing her. The way her eyes are so far from hers, the strange, eerie smile, the hollowness of her cheeks.

I suck in a sharp breath as I take her in, and it’s then that I notice…

There’s something wrong with her skin.

---