Page 154 of The Blood Rites

I don’t yet know who the eleventh was. I can’t bear to think about it.

Movement stirs on the opposite side of the clearing. Two shadows, upright and waiting.

Kael. And Vaelis.

I stop moving.

He is alive. He looks tired—gaunt, even. But he is standing, and his eyes find me across the arena. The pull between us is physical. Immediate. The moment our eyes meet, my lungs empty out like I’ve been punched in the gut. I want to run to him, to crash into him and never let go.

But I can’t.

Marissa is not here.

Nyxen stiffens, his lips thinning into a hard line.

Vaelis stands at Kael’s side, one hand resting on his back, while Kael’s arm is draped over Vaelis’ shoulder for support. They look like brothers—two men carved from nightmares, beautiful and deadly. Kael leans forward, as if ready to sprint the distance to me, but Vaelis holds him back.

I want to scream. To ask them where she is, if they’ve seen her. But all I can do is stand, hollowed out.

I drop to my knees. Not because I am weak, but because I can’t bear the weight of all the promises I’ve failed to keep.

The number beneath the crown pulses, counting my sins.

I whisper Marissa’s name—like a god I don’t believe in but pray to anyway.

Thunder cracks as lightning slams into the stone pillars jutting from the earth.

I barely register the chaos around me.

If Marissa isn’t here, who is she with? Is she already dead?

The questions burn in me as the world readies to bury me. Four people unaccounted for. One is already dead.

That leaves—

No.

Morwen wouldn’t kill Marissa. She couldn’t.

Which means one of the girls is already gone.

And selfishly, horrifically, I hope it is Morwen. At least then, I have a chance.

I have to get up. I have to find her.

It’s not fair. How can the Mother Shard be so cruel?

I’m not ready.

But the stage doesn’t care.

I have to play my part.

Twenty

With Nyxen at my shoulder, we head towards Kael and Vaelis, both of us dripping from the cave flood, mud streaked up our legs. Across the grass, under the humming shadow of the Mother Shard’s crown, Kael looks far worse than I realised. Vaelis braces him on his left side, practically holding him upright. Kael’s posture is all wrong, his spine twisted so subtly, only someone obsessed would notice. He’s trying to look composed, but every breath makes his jaw flex in pain.

The moon has shrunk to a silver slice, cutting everything into shadow and glare. Around the clearing, the stone pillars throb with blue-white energy, each one scorched by the earlier lightning strikes. I can’t stop staring at the death counter. The number eleven hovers in the air below the crown, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.