He cleared his throat. “Do you have enough energy for one more round of glamours?”
Between the relentless attacks on my mind and combat training, I was exhausted. Like a reflex, my stomach churned with nausea in anticipation of enduring his glamour again, but I nodded. Now was not the time to show signs of weakness, not when Casimir must surely relish the chance to balance the score.
“My guess as to the reason our training has gone so poorly is that the memories you’re conjuring are too complicated. Too personal,” I said. My feelings for August were too messy and gray to sort out in the short span of his visions. “You need to show me someone I really hate.”
If I could taste his glamour just once, I might be able to capture its magical signature, long enough to memorize it.
He studied me closely, his eyes like rough-cut gems in the reddish light. And then he grinned. “That should be easy. You’ve no shortage of enemies.”
I huffed a laugh and allowed myself to feel cautiously optimistic.
“We’ll try it your way,” he agreed. “But then we’ll stop for today. I don’t want you vomiting in the middle of a lecture later.”
I grimaced from my perch on the velvet bench and braced myself for the wave of nausea that would inevitably follow what could only be a brutal vision.
“Ready?” he asked, tentatively reaching out a hand to hover just above my wrist.
I could feel the blazing heat of him mere inches away.
I shut my eyes, and the magic instantly clawed its way in, sinking its teeth into my mind. My thoughts warbled as the room began to shift and spin.
My arms were bound to a chair in a dark, dank room. Something warm and wet was dripping into my eyes, blurring my vision.Blood.
I lifted my gaze to meet a pair of cruel emerald eyes. Evren stood before me, wearing his signature haughty smirk.
“Want another taste, Farrow? Or are you going to talk?”
Blearily, I peered at my surroundings. My gaze fell on a someone lying in the corner of the room, unmoving.
“August?” I rasped. “What did you do to him?” Rage burned like acid in my blood as I glared back at the Bloodweaver. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” I breathed.
“You’regoing to kill me? Malcolm’s daughter?” He laughed. “You don’t even know him. What he’s done.”
The corrosive anger coursing through me vanished, all at once. What was he talking about?
What did any of this have to do with my father?
“Fuck you,” I said, spitting out a mouthful of blood along with the curse.
“That temper of yours is going to get you killed one day, Little Arrow.” Evren sneered before his fist collided with my cheek.
I cried out in pain, spitting out a tooth along with more blood.
But I knew those words. They were my father’s words, already burned into my bones, so why was Evren saying them? He’d never heard them. There was only one logical explanation: that Evren’s words, the venom in them—they weren’t real. None of this was real. Was this a nightmare? Why wasn’t I waking up? I was supposed to remember something. But what? My own blood tasted bitter on my tongue—nauseatingly metallic, but there was something else, too. A glimmer of ash.
It was the metallic tint of magic. Aglamour.
“Fight it, Arden.”
The words struck the tepid waters of my mind like a bolt of lightning, thrust from the sky. Mind whirling, I tried to remember why I was here and how I was supposed to escape—but the glamour gripped me with claws like iron, holding fast. I imagined pushing out that metallic tang, spitting and choking on it, ripping my mind away from this horrible scene.
Fight it. It was Casimir, training me to resist glamours. Casimir, whose name was written on my skin. Casimir, who had concocted the antidote to my poisoning. Casimir, who had held me in his arms and kissed me on the cold veranda. Casimir, who was intoxicating and warm and not ashamed of me?—
None of this was real.
My vision began to blur at the edges, the room warping and twisting in a nauseating kaleidoscope of light and color. My skull collided with the floor, and the world guttered into blackness.
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