Blaise must recognize some of them, though, because her voice goes stony. “Where did you find those?”

“Written all over the floor of that wretched dungeon they kept you in,” says Az. “As well as those you couldn’t seem to manage to scrub off the floor in that dazzling ballroom. I made a few modifications of my own. Do you like them?”

Blaise’s expression melts back into the impassivity she seems to have perfected.

This is one of those moments when being gagged is rather inconvenient, because I, for one, would love to ask what in Alondria they’re talking about.

“I don’t think there’s any use in binding Asha’s magic to her body,” says Blaise. “It seems she and her magic both like the setup they already have.”

Az shakes his head, causing his cheek to brush against mine. “I’m not binding Asha’s magic to her body. Like I said, I made some modifications. Besides, does it look as though I’m drawing these runes around Asha?”

When he’s done, he pulls me away for a better look.

The runes written in Az’s blood sear hot, then settle into a pale white circlet that hangs suspended in midair.

“You’re binding the Rip? I thought you wanted to open it,” Blaise says.

“All in good time,” Az says.

I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all, says my magic.

Yeah, well, I don’t like it either.

You can’t open it, Asha.

Part of me wonders if I already have.

But then Az brushes a strand of my matted hair, tucking it behind my ear, and whispers, “It’s time. I need you to open the Rip.”

I nod frantically, as if in understanding. Perhaps Az really is delusional enough to think Kiran has been forcing me to love him, and that the separation from him will have caused the effects to fade by now.

But Az just shakes his head, and when he speaks, anger boils in his voice. “I hate what he’s done to you, bending your mind like he has. Forcing you to forget how much we love each other. That you were mine first.”

My entire body stills at that comment, tears of fury springing into my eye at the audacity of it.

But Az knows my allegiance isn’t with him.

So how does he plan to force me to open the Rip?

Panic floods my bones as it occurs to me just what method Az employed the last time he tried to force my hand.

Dinah. Father.

My entire body is trembling, the panic of that awful night flooding back with the vigor of Calias’s waves.

No, no, no, no.

“Blaise,” Az says.

I’m going to kill her. I’m going to kill Blaise if she’s touched them, threatened them.

But when Blaise steps in front of me, I recognize no threat in her brown eyes.

She takes my hand from Az, exposing my wrist, apology written all over her face.

CHAPTER 39

NOX

I fall.

I fall through fog and smoke. Dreams and desires.

I decide that I’ve plunged myself to my death.

Not for the first time, I wonder what will await me on the other end.

If it’s Blaise, sitting over my sleeping body. If her voice is the first I’ll hear, or if it will be Claudia’s or any of the others I’ve murdered. Those who deserve better than to have to see me again on the other side.

Perhaps they’re waiting for me.

Perhaps they always have been.

I land, but it’s not on solid ground. It’s in a substance that’s sticky. Somehow firm and pliable at the same time. It cushions my landing, slowing me as I rip through whatever the substance is.

I find myself wondering if, in slipping through an eyelet, I’ve landed on the Fabric itself. If I’m tearing rips through it, shearing through separate realms to cushion my fall.

The soft, sticky substance beneath me gives way once more, and I find I’m wrapped in it. My fae vision adjusts to the fog, able to see more clearly now that I’m in it rather than looking down upon it from a distance.

Something silky, glimmering like liquid diamonds, stretches out around me, above me, below me. The material that broke my fall. It hits me that this must have been what cushioned the scorpion’s fall, why we never heard it crash into the ground.

Because I haven’t hit the ground yet either.

Nausea turns over in my belly when, all at once, the fog in my vision clears and I recognize exactly what I’ve landed in.

I’ve landed in a web.

I fight back the urge to gag, but my reflexes have me kicking frantically against the webbing that’s tangled itself around my limbs. I don’t know how far I’ve fallen, but I broke through several layers of the film, judging by looking upward and the fact that I’m not dead from the impact. The webbing must run as deep as the lower half of the cavern, obscured by the fog that drifts up from the ocean.

It takes me a moment, but I wrench my foot out of a tangle of web.

Of course, at that exact moment I hear a scream.

Zora’s face flashes before my eyes, her mouth warped into a mingled wail of terror and howl of delight, before she comes crashing into a section of webbing above me and slightly to my left.

The weight of her fall breaks the webbing beneath her.

On the way down, she grabs onto my hand, yanking me with such force that the webbing beneath me snaps, and we go plummeting downward.