Page 125 of Lady of the Nightmares

“What happened? Why the fuck didn’t you fight back?”

She scowled at me. Aine hadn’t used her powers in ten years or so as far as I knew, but to save the castle? My sister would have…I was almost sure of it.

“I couldn’t. They did…something. They had this powder. At first, I thought it was an accelerant to the fire, but then, I may as well have been human for how weak I was.”

Scion and I exchanged glances. I’d never heard of anything like that.

“We’ll discuss it later,” he said roughly. “We need to get out of here before the castle comes down around us.”

I looked around, noticing but not commenting on the fact that clearly none of them had the crown. It wasn’t hard to guess who had it now.

* * *

Scion’s commentabout the castle was more right than even he might have imagined.

We landed again on the lawn, and my cousin glanced over at me. His exhaustion was clear, having just dragged Gwydion, Elfywn, and Thalia out of the castle in addition to himself. Scion could shadow walk through almost any circumstance, but even he was struggling to recover.

Now, though, he seemed to become alert again. “Where is she?”

I didn’t have to ask who he meant; his panic at not immediately seeing her was telling enough.

At the very least, I could tell in that moment that I no longer had to worry about Scion attacking Lonnie. He might not have accepted it, might not be entirely aware of it, but she owned him too.

If I knew him at all, he probably thought she was going to destroy us, but I didn’t think so. We were monsters long before she arrived. Fragmented, fucked-up shells of what we were supposed to be. If morphing into something other than that was destruction, I was happy to see theaftermath.

“I told her she should run,” I told him. “She’s likely—” I didn’t finish my sentence.

The ground trembled, and a roar erupted from the castle as stones flew everywhere in an explosion of fire. The tower where we’d been only moments before crumbled, falling to the earth in a billow of smoke, and the walls of what was left of the castle collapsed in on themselves.

I could only stare until, a split second later, an anguished, horrified scream tore through the night.

An all-too-familiar scream that had me running before I knew what I was doing.

50

LONNIE

THE OBSIDIAN PALACE GROUNDS

Iwill be the villain who burns cities to the ground until I can pull a single worthy hero from the ashes.

I let out a harsh laugh. “That sounds like exactly the kind of twisted nonsense a fairy might say.”

Ambrose Dullahan raised an eyebrow and leaned toward me slightly. “Your self-loathing is highly disturbing, Elowyn.”

I tensed, not liking that implication one bit.

I took two steps back. “Well, go burn down something else. No matter what you offer, I will not go with you.”

His lip curled. “Not even to see your mother?”

I gaped at him, the words ringing in my ears. Too much—impossible to comprehend, let alone answer in a single moment. “What do you mean?” I said finally. “Is she alive?”

He was about to answer when behind him, all that was left of my world shattered in a single moment.

I watched in horror as the vibrant orange flames consumed the castle, inch by inch. The last tower groaned and creaked before it gradually started to collapse into a pile of smoldering rubble. The earth below shook as it tumbled from its peak, sending ripples of smoke and debris in all directions, caving in on itself until nothing remained but dust. The fire spread quickly, consuming everything in its way. Sparks from the burning embers flew high into the sky and descended like fireflies back to the ground, igniting more buildings in its wake until the entire landscape was engulfed in an inferno.

I felt my heart pounding and tears streaming down my face, my throat constricted before a deep guttural scream erupted from within me.Primal.It was a scream of long-suppressed pain and anguish, as I’d not let out since the day my sister died.

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