ground, just as a fireball rushed past my head and exploded past me in the tunnel. Why were they all trying to kill me? Had Armando decided he could drain the blood from my corpse if I tried to escape?
“Rylan!” I screamed, scrambling back to my feet and forcing myself to stumble forward into the choking smoke and debris.
“I’m here!” His answering shout was somewhere ahead of me. “I’m all right!”
I nearly collapsed with relief, but instead I made myself start running again. I could hear the men behind me. Close. Too close.
“It’s a cave-in!” he shouted again, his voice tight with desperation.
His words didn’t compute until I’d made it a few more feet and run into a blockade — a wall of dirt and debris, with a few tiny flames licking at the darkness.
I was trapped.
“Alexa!” His frantic yell came from the other side of the rubble. I was just barely able to make out his face, staring at me, in a small gap. “Start digging, you can make it. Hurry!”
I shook my head. “Run, Rylan. Go. You promised!”
“No. I’m not leaving you here! You’ll die!”
“Go, Rylan — warn Damian! You have to keep your promise!”
“You’ll die,” he repeated, an agonized shout.
“I’m just one person, Ry! You have to stop this — it’ll be a massacre. You can’t let all our people die to try and save me!”
He shook his head, but then more dirt fell from above us, piling on top of the already massive mound of rubble.
“Tell Damian I love him — tell him I didn’t want to die!” I cried over the rising sounds of the Dansiians getting closer. I glanced over my shoulder. They were running toward me. The black sorcerer had his hand raised, more fire waiting to be thrown at me.
“Stop! I surrender! I surrender,” I repeated, my voice breaking on a sob as I dropped my sword. It clattered to the ground as I lifted my hands.
“Alexa!” Rylan howled my name. He sounded like he was crying.
“I love you, too, Ry,” I shouted, just as the first Dansiians reached me and grabbed my arms, pulling me back from the cave-in. “Now go!”
A whole swarm of hooded men rushed toward me, but they parted as Rafe walked through their midst, his one eye trained on me with pure, undefiled hatred burning in its green depths. I quickly looked away.
He strode up to me until he was close enough to grab my jaw and yank my head forward. I squeezed my eyes shut. “You will pay for this. And I look forward to it eagerly.”
And then he hit me in the head with the hilt of his sword, just as Rylan had done to Akio. The darkness swooped up to claim me, and I fell forward into my enemy’s waiting arms.
When I woke, my head pounded and my arms ached. I slowly realized I was sitting on a hard surface with my arms stretched out to either side of me, chained to a wall at my wrists. My legs were bound as well. Only my head was free to move. Part of me didn’t want to wake, didn’t want to face the reality that Eljin was gone. That Rylan had escaped but was severely injured and probably had very little chance of surviving, let alone making it back to warn Damian in time. But it wasn’t in me to quit, to give up. Instead, I lifted my chin, blinking away the grasping darkness and the terrible, pulsing pain behind my eyes.
But what I saw made me long for the oblivion of the darkness once more.
I was in The Summoner’s lair again.
To my right was the row of cots, just like the one I was chained to, that held the other subjects, moaning and thrashing on their beds. To my left were the sacrificial altars the black sorcerers used. The smell of burned flesh and blood mixed with vomit was nearly overwhelming. I breathed slowly through my mouth — to calm my heart and my heaving stomach.
“Ah, she awakens.”
I looked up to see The Summoner walking toward me, his silver eyes unwavering on mine until I looked down at my legs, all too aware of what his brother, Manu, had been able to do to me in the dungeons when I’d interrogated him. I didn’t know if they had the same abilities, but I wasn’t keen on finding out.
Because I was looking down I was unprepared for him to stab me in the arm.
My body