I drank. Ugh. Raihn was right. It was disgusting.

I glanced at him after handing the goblet back to the acolyte, and the corner of his mouth curled. “Good lu—”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Feathers.

Feathers everywhere. Black, smothering, so dark that all color curled up and died in them.

Everything was distant and numb. I could not get my mind to work well enough to process any of it.

The feathers shifted. Light seeped between them. Or… no, not light. Eyes. Gold eyes. Terrible, cruel gold eyes.

I blinked, and then the eyes became a face that glared down at me from above. A man, with severe features and a neat beard and long black hair that flew out behind him, mingling with the wings that unfolded around us both.

I had never seen this person before. And yet, the sight of him filled me with paralyzing terror.

I blinked again, and the winged man’s face was replaced with another one. This one, I did know. I knew every angle of it. I pretended I didn’t see it every time I closed my eyes.

My old lover leaned close to me, so close the familiar cool of his breath ghosted over my cheek. “Did you miss me?” he whispered.

I struggled but couldn’t move.

Blink. The two faces merged, changing back and forth with every pulse of my panicked heartbeat.

They grabbed my hand, pressed it to their chest—pressed it to the gaping wound there, right in the center. They leaned closer. Their lips touched my ear.

“Did you miss me?”

Their blood was hot on my hand, running all the way down my forearm, as I struggled, frantic, with nowhere to go.

My arm was warm and wet. My heartbeat was out of control. Sharp pain shot up my back. I was in pitch darkness, and yet, too many sensations surrounded me—like two different worlds were colliding, each feeding me conflicting senses.

Oraya.

This was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

Oraya! Calm down. Breathe.

But even my own thoughts were lost, like my mind had become a gaping, cavernous maze I no longer knew how to navigate. Something else was here, something was—

ORAYA. CALM THE FUCK DOWN.

So loud it shocked my thoughts into silence. Raihn’s voice. It was Raihn’s voice booming through the back of my skull.

But… in my mind. Not my ears.

Breathe, Oraya. Both of us. We need to—we need to calm down. Alright?

For a moment I questioned my sanity.

I felt a shiver of wry amusement up my spine—a wordless, soundless chuckle—and it was such a bizarre sensation it nearly sent me spiraling again.

You aren’t alone in that, princess.

I put my hands straight out in front of me. I could see nothing, but they lay flat against smooth, toothy stone. The cold unyielding firmness steadied me.

And yet, even though my palms were now pressed firmly against the wall, I felt something else, too—felt them wrapped around the hilt of a sword. Felt the way my muscles strained to lift it, and a shock of pain up my back as I did.

My hands were here.

My hands were there.

“That’s you,” I gasped. “I’m feeling you.”

My physical voice felt dull and flat compared to the one in my head.

Yes, Raihn answered.

A mind bonding. The potion. It must have been a spell. It would take rare, powerful magic to forge a temporary bond like this—but I supposed Nyaxia’s church had all the resources to make the impossible possible.

Ix’s fucking tits.

Another uncanny vibration up my spine. I shuddered.

Don’t do that.

What? Laugh?

It feels strange.

The laughter is what feels strange? That’s what goes too far for you? How fitting.

Strange was an understatement. Every single part of me railed against the unwelcome presence in my thoughts—each nerve and muscle screamed at the additional weight of another set of senses thrust upon them.

Fuck, Oraya, do you feel this tense all the time?

I was too embarrassed to admit that too often, I did.

Special circumstances, I replied instead. You’re just as bad.

The truth. His anxiety was just as strong as mine. Different—a rolling undercurrent rather than staggering waves—but every bit as powerful.

If it was this overwhelming in just a dark box, what was this going to be like when we were actually in battle? It almost made me sick just to think about it. I felt the echoing pang of Raihn’s concern, too.

Well, we’d have to make it work. Half of the contestants would die today. We needed to get out of here.

I ran my hands along the wall, and felt Raihn doing the same, wherever he was. Smooth stone here, smooth stone there.

Cells. They were cells.

That made sense. Nyaxia and Alarus had been imprisoned by the gods of the White Pantheon as punishment for their unlawful relationship. Nyaxia might have been a lesser goddess then, and Alarus weakened to a fraction of his former power, but it still proved to be an unwise decision. The two of them fought their way out of captivity, slaughtering exactly half of the keepers of Extryn, the legendary prison of the Pantheon.

This must be our Extryn.

We’ll probably have to fight through whatever’s out there together, when we get out, I told Raihn as we both felt around the walls of our enclosures. Let’s get these open.

Once we found each other, we would be nearly unstoppable. I was certain of that.

I’m touched that you think so, Raihn replied, sensing that thought. I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that he actually was, and I felt it.

Here. Look.

My fingertip hit a little patch of metal, high up in the corner of my cell. I pressed down, and stone shifted. Click.

The door swung open, letting in a flood of cool light—from the stars, the moon, and the hundreds of torches floating above the colosseum. It was night, but compared to the darkness of the cell, it blinded me.

I blinked into it for half a second. And when my eyes adjusted, I almost let out a laugh, just because what the fuck else was I supposed to do.

Before me was carnage. Just utter carnage. Most of the contestants hadn’t even made it out of their cells yet, and the sand was already soaked with blood. Monsters tore each other apart in the arena—every kind of beast one could possibly imagine. Demons like the ones from the first trial, this time with knobby, milky-white wings. Massive cats, black with gray spots and bright red eyes—creatures I’d only ever seen in storybooks, from the House of Shadow. Hellhounds—enormous, hunched wolves with pure white fur, darkness rolling from their skin. They roamed the dunes of the House of Night in packs and have been known to slaughter entire settlements.

Far beyond all of that—past all that certain death—was a wall made of piled white stone, cutting across the center of the colosseum. A rocky path led up to its peak. Two golden doorways stood at the top, tall and narrow, pulsing with silver smoke. The stands were packed, a sea of shrieking faces surrounding the arena, thrilled by the most dramatic of the Kejari trials.

Another vision collided with this one as Raihn’s door swung open and he took in a mirror image of this sight—from, I realized, the other side of the wall.

Fuck, he murmured.

Fuck was right.

Iron boxes like the one I had just stumbled out of lined the outskirts of the sand pit. The one right beside me was still closed, and the muffled sound of wordless screaming came from within. Another door opened and one of the Shadowborn contestants stumbled from their cell, clutching their head, only to wander straight into the jaws of a hellhound.