Page 59 of Heart of Night

“Let’s see how he does when she’s awake.” He injects her with the second serum and waves Katrijanov over.

The general lowers the blade to her skin just as Ayna’s eyes fly open.

Twenty-Nine

Ayna

I’m in a cage. I’m-in-a-cage-I’m-in-a-cage-I’m-in-a-cage, and I can’t breathe. I-can’t-breathe-and-I-can’t-see. Can’t see and can’t hear. Can’t hear because I feel everything at once. The cool humidity settling on my skin, the scratch of something hard against my arm, the fabric sliding over my body like a shroud, the leather cutting into my wrists and ankles.

My wrist. My mangled wrist.

I try to yank it free, but the bonds won’t give.

Then I smell him. Like a gust of warm wind, his presence envelops me. Wind and pine. Not only pine but an entire forest of evergreens and blossoms. Earth and moss and the salty tang of a coastal brine.

Myron, I form his name with my lips, but my voice won’t respond. Or I don’t hear myself speak as my senses fail me.

“Ayna.” I hear him, though. Recognize his velvet voice even through the strain making it sound like it’s been dragged across glass shards.

My head snaps in his direction on instinct, and my eyes open. No … they have been open for a while, but I couldn’t see because I’m on sensory overload. It’s all there, yet I can’t process it the way I’m used to.

“Myron,” I try again. This time, he hears me. His ocean-blue gaze is on me, his pale features drawn and tired.

And there is blood on his face. It’s smeared around his mouth, dripping from the corner of his lips.

“I’m here, Ayna.”

I can’t tell if he’s whispering or shouting, everything is revolting inside my body at the sight of Myron injured. The bruises I’d already seen earlier fade from my perception at the sight of fresh blood.

I will kill whoever did this to him. I will rip out their hearts and feast on them.

The thought is as startling as it is satisfying.

“Who—” I don’t get to finish asking him who hurt him so I can make my list of people to eviscerate, for a sharp pain shoots up my arm as something etches into my skin, and I scream, the sound reverberating through the stone chamber. Ephegos’s face appears, blocking out the view of Myron as he leans in, his champagne-scented breath assaulting my nose.

“Welcome back, Ayna. Or should I say, welcome to the world of fae?”

“Breathe, Ayna.” Myron’s voice anchors my soul as the rest of me seems to become unraveled. Like a spool of rope on a ship, I come apart. Like a cloud tossed into the wild storms above the ocean. My heart is a pounding, painful lump in my chest, reminding me that I’m alive, that I can’t escape the agony of the blade slicing into my arm.

I smell my own blood now, little tendrils of rust and salt that aren’t strong enough to tune out the song of Myron’s scent.

“In and out. You’re strong. You’re capable. You are a survivor.” Myron’s words carry me through the blurring world even when they are glazed with the bone-grating texture of fear.

The knife reaches my shoulder, cutting away the fabric of my dressing robe.

“I have a theory I’d like to test, Ayna,” Ephegos murmurs as he leans over me again. I haven’t had a chance to process the meaning of his words from before, what he meant with the world of the fae.

“What are you doing to me?” My voice sounds off. Too smooth for the agony in my body, too rich for the way my dry throat is tormenting me.

The blade pauses, lifts from my skin, and I wait for the pulling agony that a knife wound is—I’ve experienced enough of them to know, and this one runs along my entire arm. Nothing happens. Where I expect blood to gush from my severed skin, my arm remains unusually dry where a pair of hands runs over it like a cat over a carpet, careful not to hook claws into the torn tissue.

“Let’s see how fast you heal.” Ephegos lowers himself a few inches until his face is level with mine, then lifts one hand from my arm to wave behind me. “Adrian?”

I have less than a breath to comprehend that he signaled to Katrijanov to step forward, which he does. There is no warning other than the gleam of malice in the general’s eyes before he strikes me in the face.

Pain explodes in my cheek, leaving something wet trickling along my jaw. Blood. He split my skin with that punch. From the corner of my eye, I notice the spiky, silver ring on his middle finger.

“Take your hands off her.” Myron’s roar fills the stone chamber like a strike of thunder.