Page 28 of Monster Bride (Shadow Pact 2)

I skidded to a stop on a particularly long step and slammed into the hard brick wall. My burned and charred skin collided with the brick and sent agony screaming through me.

I turned, scouring the darkness for Willa. “Willa? Where are you?”

There was a part of me that knew she wasn’t here. That this wasn’t real. But there was another growing part of me that knew Willa had also gone missing. That knew I didn’t trust Karn. That knew Karn would do just about anything to secure his place—and in this moment, securing his place might’ve meant aiding me with the trial. With finding Willa and bringing her to me.

I blinked as if it’d help clear the shadows. It didn’t, so I raised a palm of shadowed fire and searched the tower.

Within the space of a heartbeat, I blinked and Willa stood before me, a look of anger so intense, it cut me to the bone. She shoved me backward. My naked body slammed once more into the wall. The shove took me by such surprise that I teetered, nearly falling off the step and down to the disappeared ground below. The floor of the tower had long since been swallowed by darkness.

“What the hell, Willa?” I asked. “It’s me. It’s Aisling.”

“You’re amurderer.” I’d never seen her blue eyes go so cold. Her blonde hair bounced with the force of her slamming her finger at me. “You’re a traitor. Youkilledpeople just like us. Those victims. Cassius’s feeders.” Tears streamed down her freckled face.

I cupped her cheeks with my hands. “Mrak brought them back. They’re alive.” And Willa was here and somehow felt more real than Lazarus’s hand had. Her voice sounded more real than Cassius’s had.

This was Willa.

Wasn’t it?

Willa shook her head. “Murderer.”

“No—”

Willa shoved me again—harder this time. I lost my balance and slipped off the edge. My only saving grace was a quick grab on to the side of the staircase as I fell. I summoned magic to my hands again, shadowed fire that burned my skin as I used it to help keep my grip so I wouldn’t fall. My feet dangled below me as I looked back up at Willa.

This didn’t make sense. This was really her. She felt real. She sounded real. But the things she was saying were so awful, so callous.

And true. Because Iwasa killer. I’d turned into one after Mrak helped me burn Lazarus’s feeder community to the ground.

When I’d done the same to Cassius’s.

When my magic—out of control though it had been—had killed innocent feeders.

Willa glared down at me, her sneaker poised to crush my burning fingers. “You are not, nor have you ever been, any better than Lazarus.” She crushed her sneaker against my fingers, grinding them down against the brick. I cried out in pain. “You’re exactly what Lazarus made you.”

“Willa—”

My last attempt to plea with my best friend was cut abruptly off when Willa ground her sneaker against my hand one last time and my grip slipped, my scream tearing at my throat.

I fell.

Down, down, down the tower I’d just climbed. Falling through the red hued air of the Shadow Sanctum. Tumbling past shadow bats and magic until a burning red-orange light formed below me.

I looked down at the fate rising to greet me with blinding speed.

My heart stopped. A forge.

Aforge, just like the one I’d used in Lazarus’s manor. Like the one I’d purchased for Dark Iron.

One that would easily burn the rest of my body to dust.

I scrambled, grasping for a ledge again. The edge of a landing. The last inch or two of a step. My fingers slipped past them, unable to grasp in their broken and burned state until finally—finally—I got a handhold. Tenuous. Ready to break. Already the brick cracked and in my peripheral vision, I saw the burned body of a shadow bat, cracked and charred.

My chest heaved. Sweat beaded along my brow. I was safe—for a few moments, at least.

Tears pricked my eyes as I looked down again. The forge waited below me.

I can’t do this.

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