Page 79 of A Fate Everlasting

I could have laughed. Or screamed. Or cried. I had never met someone so utterly frustrating. Every time I felt like I knew him, every time I felt close to asliverof truth, he torched it. He was right, I hadno ideawhat he cared about. I had no idea who he was, really.

He might have felt familiar, a constant presence in the back of my mind. The Thread. But he was a master illusionist and a gifted liar. Every time I thought I understood him, grasped onto something, it slipped just out of reach. Again.

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to tear him apart, to rage, to fight… but it was over. Verrine had won. Elsewhere had won. Just before the doors slammed shut, I saw something cross his face.I was too tired to puzzle it out this time.

The Thread buzzed beneath my skin. It wanted to reach for it, to sever it. A feeling crept through me like an echo, a reverberation. Grief. Not just for this but for Hugo, too. I could still feel the warmth of him in memory, like the touch of a hand that lingers. I didn’t know if the feeling was mine. If it wasn’t, I hated him for making me feel it now.

All I wanted was to feel nothing at all.

37

Ithought, at the very least, the silence here would bring peace. It only made the noise in my mind grow louder. I was right about the Sanctum of the Seraphim. It extended farther than the throne room where Dante had revealed himself as the Prince of Elsewhere.

Guards had led me through so many doors I had no recollection of the way out. Everything was made of the same grand black marble, all of the tunnels and rooms that stretched below Evermore and made up the Sanctum.

Orders from the High King. The girl must be secured until she has Fallen.I still didn’t know why they’d taken me here, underground and away from the dorms. My mind reeled, chasing fragments I couldn’t quite fuse. Dante, the High King, the Archangels, the binding spell. They wanted me to Fall.

Was this where they had taken Ruby, too? Was this where they took all the students who showed any ounce of disruption?

No. I doubted very much that every defiant student was placed in a room like this one. Godwin said Ruby was in the lower levels of the Sanctum, and I could still see light spillingthrough the cracks in the stained glass high above me. I must be in the upper levels. This was Dante’s doing.

But why? Why not throw me in with the other students?

The room they’d placed me in was beautiful, in the way a trap was. Gilded and inviting, built to make you forget you were caged. A grand fireplace roared on the far side of the room, its flames silver instead of gold, casting flickering shadows against the obsidian floors. I could feel his touch all over this place.

His presence laced the walls, brushing my skin like an unseen hand. He was everywhere, in the hush between heartbeats, the quiet corners of my mind and now in the place that I slept.

A day had passed. I knew it not because I had seen the sky, but because the routine had settled into something unbearable. The heavy, dark curtains were drawn tight, sealing me away from the world. I counted time in heartbeats, each one a memory of Dorian’s hands, his voice, the last look he gave me before everything fell apart. Even here, in the suffocating dark, it was Dorian I clung to.

Meals arrived on silver trays. Wine came in crystal goblets. I refused it all. Whatever I wanted was given to me. Books, fresh clothes, even a porcelain tub filled with hot water appeared at my request, but the doors remained locked. My every whim was indulged except the only thing I truly wanted.Freedom.

My back ached again as I curled into the velvet armchair by the fire, staring at the locked doors. I pressed my nails into my palms. He hadn’t come yet. I didn’t know if that was better or worse, because waiting meant hoping. I’d found hope far crueler than silence.

I didn’t realize I had fallen asleep until I felt his voice in the back of my mind. There was a gentle ripple in the silence, a charge curling against my skin like the moment before a storm splits the sky.

The doors opened. He stepped inside like the weight of this place, of what he had done, of what he was now, meant nothing. This was not the voice that haunted my mind, the boy with a mocking smile I’d feared in detention. No, he was gone—if he’d ever existed at all.

This was the Prince of Elsewhere.

I hated that he was ruinous. That his beauty was not softness but cruelty, darkened by this war. But most of all I hated the way my breath caught, the way my body, traitorous and weak, recognized him as somethingfamiliar.

He was every terrible thing I had been warned about, the monster lurking beneath my skin, and yet, I could not tear myself from him. I had never been able to.

“Little thief.” Dante whispered my name like it was a curse.

I stirred. “Took you long enough.”

He smirked cruelly. “Apologies,” he murmured. Then, he threaded through my mind, playful. “It’s not easy being a regent.”

Did none of this matter to him?I resisted the urge to throw something at him. Instead, I forced a tight smile. “I see. And what? You came to gloat?”

Power curled just beneath his control as he said, “No. I came to check you were okay.”

“You care, all of a sudden?”

“You need to be of sound body and mind to make the Fall.” A smile twisted at the corners of his mouth. That seemed to be all they cared about, all they wanted from me. Allhewanted from me. “Are you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” I hummed. “Maybe if I feign madness they’ll finally toss me out.”

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