She twitched.
“Ursula?”I lifted my head, wrapping my hand around the side of her face.“Ursula, wake up,” I said again, this time an order.
Her lashes trembled, and her gray skin began to pinken.“I’m here,” I said again.“Wake up, that’s it.Wake up for me.”Her lashes fluttered, then her eyes opened and bright-green, stunning irises blinked up at me, the gold beginning to fade.
“Silas?”she choked, her gaze darting around the room.
“It’s okay, you’re okay.”
“It was so dark.”
“It’s over,” I said, shaking hard as relief rushed through me.“You’re not going back there.”
She blinked up at me again, then shifted experimentally before moving to sit up.
I didn’t want to let her go.“Are you okay?”
She nodded, looking confused.
“What do you remember?”
“Not a lot.”She darted a glance at the empty bottles, all five of them.“It’s all a blur really.”Her gaze slid to mine.“You helped me drink them?”
I nodded.
“Was it bad?”
“Yes,” I rasped.
Her gaze faltered, dipping away before returning to me.“And you?Did you drink yours?”
“Yes.”My part of the trial would live in my nightmares for eternity.Felditch was clever, and fucking demented.I didn’t need to drink the same number of poisons as Ursula to live my own personal version of hell.No, that was watching her go through that horror and agony and being utterly useless—helpless.
Felditch had forced me to powerlessly watch Ursula suffer, holding her in my arms terrified I’d lose her with every poison she drank, before finally making me drink the poison he’d left for me and throwing me into a hallucination of my own.An alternate reality where I’d fought to save her and she was taken over and over again.But worst of all, was what happened afterwards, when he’d made me force-feed her the final potion—the one that would take her life.He’d made me bring about my own biggest fear.After fighting to keep her alive, he’d made me kill her.“I never want to experience anything like that ever again.”
“Felditch is a sadistic motherfucker,” she rasped.
Stairs up to the door, leading out of the dungeon, appeared.We were free to leave.
“Can you walk?”I asked her.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
I wasn’t.I would never be fine again.
Ursula stopped.“A gold disk, there has to be one here somewhere.”
I turned, and we both scanned the room.I spotted it, wedged between two black stone tiles on the floor.Calling my sword forward, I shoved the tip in the narrow gap, levered it out, and snatched it up.Urs led the way up the stairs, and pushed open the door.When we walked out, night had fallen, and there were two other doors visible on the field.The vampires and the witches, both doors had deep gashes through them, blood slowly oozing from the wounds.One of the witches was curled up on the ground outside it, silently weeping.No one else was around.
Ursula rushed to her.The witch jolted, screaming when Urs touched her.
“I won’t hurt you,” Urs said.
“She’s gone.They killed her.She’s gone,” the witch said over and over again.
I looked across the field and Felditch was striding toward us, a shimmering silver cape billowing out behind him.He aimed his staff at the witch, and she vanished.
Ursula shot to her feet.“What did you do to her?”