Page 109 of Severed Heir

I hadn’t moved, but it was already at my ribs. The breath I took felt final, and somehow, not enough.

Then my head slipped beneath the surface and the water swallowed me whole.

I swam toward the white brick, careful not to brush the glistening pearl light bleeding from the prison walls.

My heartbeat slowed, dulled, like it had simply decided to stop. I reached forward, scraping blindly through silt and debris.

“Breathe,”a voice whispered, soft and too familiar.“You’re safe.”

But the weight pressing against my lungs said otherwise. I kicked harder, sinking lower with every stroke.

“Breathe. It doesn’t get better.”

My chest tightened at the sound of Klaus’s voice. But it couldn’t be—this was some trick, some mimicry, some monster echoing what I’d buried within my fears.

“You burnt my words, but not all. Death finds you. Lives within you.”

I thrashed forward, arms slicing through the water, panic squeezing tighter and tighter until even my thoughts came out strangled. The cellar had to be close. I needed air. I needed out.

“Saving others will not save yourself.”

I sank deeper into the muck, my limbs losing will. Maybe the berries were poison. Maybe I was going mad.

“It’s time to breathe, Severyn,”he whispered again.

I almost did. I almost gave in. Until another voice split the haze like thunder.

“Swim, Severyn. Do not give up!”Archer yelled.

My limbs screamed, but I kept moving. I clawed through the depths, fingers scraping mud, until they struck iron bars.

“I can’t,”I cried into my mind.“I can’t breathe.”

“Then take mine. Take every last breath if it means you’ll live.”

“I can’t find the handle!”

“Take my hands. My soul. Just, find me.”

I yanked the iron handles and crawled through the tunnel until my hands hit the rungs of a ladder.“I’m fading,”I gasped.“I need air.”

“Almost there,”Archer urged.

The world tore open as I broke the surface. I dragged myself onto a stone floor, collapsing to my hands and knees, lungs heaving. “Archer?” My voice was raw. “Archer?”

I stayed kneeling, breath ragged. Light spilled through a narrow slit high on the wall, casting long shadows across the wet stone. Somewhere, water dripped in a steady rhythm.

The air reeked of rot and mold. Stone walls rose around me, blank and unending, more tomb than cell. Only one door stood at the far side of the room, and there was no handle on this side. Cully had told me to wait, which was easier said than done. But locked in here, waiting was the only option I had. I pressed my back against the wall and forced my breathing to steady.

The silence shifted.

A woman’s voice cut through the cell. “A lone Blanche child. How strange.”

I spun, heart hammering. “Who’s there?”

“A forgotten heir. A death-touched girl painted in truth.” The voice echoed, threaded with a melody of madness. “I smell whatclings to you. I know the lives traded for your own. I painted you long ago.”

I got up from the stone and scanned the room, trying to find the source of the voice. It sounded close. “How do you know who I am?”

---