Page 64 of A Touch of Madness

She leans forward as far as the restraints allow, her head tilting, those black eyes gleaming.

“Then why do you keep dreaming of me?”

A sudden, sharp pulse ripples through the air, the wards flaring bright, and I stumble back, my heartbeat thundering.

Lara grins, her teeth too white in the dimness. “They need your blood to fix me, don’t they? That’s what Solstice said would happen if you were foolish enough to try to fix things on your own. Your blood.”

The words feel like a noose tightening around my throat.

She giggles, the sound light, airy, like a child whispering a secret. “What do you think will happen, Sylvie?”

Her voice drops to a whisper.

“When we are one again?”

The chamber spins, my body locking in place, my breath choking out of me?—

And Lara smiles like she already knows the answer. Like she’s waiting for me to figure it out. Like it was always supposed to be this way.

“What will it be? Will you save yourself or will you save me? Because I don’t think there’s a world in which you save us both.”

Her words hit me again, the reality inside of them putting me in a chokehold.

“Lara,” I say, and she locks her soulless eyes on mine. “Do you remember when we were little girls, and mom would always tell us to trust our instincts. Trust our gut.” I don’t know why I’m asking the question. It comes to me, and I refuse to ignore it. “She would always say that we had all the answers we needed inside of ourselves.”

The words almost seem to reach her, like that memory of our mother’s words can penetrate deep enough into her soul to pull her back, just a little.

“She said that we would always have each other,” I say, my voice cracking as a tear rolls down my cheek and Lara sits, expressionless, staring at me. “She said even if we lost track of each other, all we needed to do was trust ourselves. That we’d find out way back to each other. Because our bond as sisters was one that could never be broken.”

The words come, and I feel as if our mother is the one speaking them instead of me. Her voice ringing loudly in my ears. The words she said over and over again for years.

My tears flow as she continues looking at me with those dead eyes, and the pain clutches at my chest like it wants to pull me under. Everything is spinning and I’m trying to right myself, but nothing works.

Except our mother’s words.

“I still believe her,” I say. “I still believe in that bond, and I always will. No matter what.”

Finally, Lara deeply inhales, and she starts to say something, but then abruptly stops, as if she thinks better of it.

“Do you believe her?” I ask, needing to know. Needing to see if anything I’ve said is working. If anything is helping even in the slightest. When she doesn’t answer, I ask again, repeating the same question as she slowly shakes her head.

“I suppose you’ll have to find out for yourself, won’t you. Trust your gut, Sylvie.”

Her words are meant to be menacing, but instead of being eerie and damning, I decide I’ll do just that.

I’ll trust myself. And if something goes wrong, there is exactly one person to blame.

The chamber is eerily silent. Not in the way that simply lacks sound, but in the way that waits. A living, breathing thing, thick with the weight of what is about to come. The torches burn low, casting long, restless shadows across the stone walls, their flickering glow illuminating the intricate carvings of the runes that line the chamber, pulsing faintly with old magic, as if they too are preparing for what is to unfold. The air is dense with the scent of damp stone, of incense burned in preparation, of Sylvie’s magic—a wild, untamed force that hums beneath the surface of this place, curling around us like a silent storm on the verge of breaking.

We stand in a circle around her.

Lara.

She is bound, not merely by iron and chains, but by the wards that keep her tethered to the here and now, the runes upon the chair locking her in place. Yet, she looks at us not with the eyes of a prisoner, but with the eyes of something ancient and clever, something that has been waiting in the dark, watching, biding its time.

She does not struggle. Not physically. But I can feel it. The tension coiled beneath her skin, the slow pulse of something shifting within her.

She knows—and she is amused.

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