Screaming.
Crying.
A horrible cackle.
The pungent sweetness of surging magic invading my nostrils. A gasp that left my lungs and throat ablaze like someone had stuffed my mouth with hot coals. But that was nothing compared to the tourniquet of invisible barbed wire twisting my torso, shredding my skin and muscles.
Darkness collected at the edge of my vision, transforming into a pair of soulless eyes, peering down against a backdrop of gray sky.
A scream caught in my chest.
The eyes disappeared over the edge of the gold box I’d been left in.
The air smelled strange. Like magic and decay. Life and death.
Death.
Suddenly, I remembered.
I’d died.
This wasn’t a box. It was a coffin.
Rían sprinted past as though he hadn’t noticed me lying there, helpless and hurting. I tried to sit up, but all I managed to do was turn my head.
Black smoke leaked from a shrieking black-haired woman kneeling in the grass. A second woman with brown hair collapsed, clutching her chest. The blood-drenched dagger in her hand fell next to another body. A man with dark hair, staring at the clouds through sightless black eyes.
The smoke twisted toward the dagger, now bursting with unnatural green light. The dark-haired woman reached a shaking hand toward the blade. Rían snagged the dagger, glanced at the struggling woman, then drew the tip along the dead man’s palm.
My eyes darted to my own blood-smeared hand and the silver scar stretching from my middle finger to my wrist.Had someone done the same to me?
The man Rían had cut jerked upright, his face changing into another face.Tadhg.
His hair wasn’t brown but gold. He saw the brown-haired woman and let out a gut-wrenching wail. Crawling to her body, he rolled her over and—
Keelynn?
The world stopped.
She wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t she moving? I shouted for my sister. My limbs came back to life with a burst of heat and excruciating pain, like all my bones had been broken, set wrong, and had to be broken again to reset.
I writhed in the gilded coffin, struggling to see past the pain.
Blood trickled from Keelynn’s nose.
Her mouth.
She choked and twitched.
“Keelynn!” She shouldn’t be here. She should be married to Robert. She should be happy.
WHY WAS SHE HERE?
Why was Tadhg bending his head? WHY WAS HE KISSING HER?
Why was a strange black stain spreading from her mouth, down her chin, to the base of her throat?
Rían finally looked at me from where he knelt, clinical coldness in his eyes.I managed to catch the sides of the box and roll myself onto the grass. On legs shakier than a newborn foal’s, I stumbled for my sister’s body.