Serenna scowled at Vesryn across the ring—she hadn’t meant to send him that scattered thought. He smirked, unsheathing a dagger to idly flip.

Your arrogance concerns me, she snapped. Don’t you have—

Ayla headbutted her.

Serenna shrieked, reeling back as her teeth impaled her lip. The sharp pain in her mouth sliced through her foolish hesitation.

Flinging out a hand, Serenna launched a wave of force at the prince. She snatched Vesryn’s knife out of the air with a whip of power. Yanking her magic, the weapon soared across the ring like an arrow. Breath hitching, Serenna begged the stars that she’d catch the dagger by the hilt instead of the blade.

Miraculously, the leather grip smacked into her waiting palm. Serenna shoved the blade against Ayla’s throat. Baring her teeth, Serenna’s lip burned as it split further.

“Yield,” she seethed.

Ayla’s nostrils flared. Her eyes dashed to the magus monitoring the duels, but they didn’t intervene—likely deferring to the prince, allowing him to decide when to stop the escalation.

Serenna knew he wouldn’t.

A pulse of Ayla’s power hummed in response, poised to retaliate. Serenna jammed the knife into her sister’s ivory skin, drawing a stream of blood.

“I yield,” Ayla hissed through her teeth.

“Louder,” Serenna ordered with hideous satisfaction, drunk on victory. “I don’t think the prince heard.”

After forcing Ayla to squeal her surrender, Serenna wiped Vesryn’s dagger on her sister’s tunic and lurched to her feet. Releasing her magic, Serenna thumbed the streak of blood off her mouth, wincing at the stinging cut.

Eyes swinging toward the prince, her chest heated when Vesryn grinned his approval. He jerked his head for her to join him.

Recapturing her breath, Serenna lifted her chin. She glided out of the ring, her throat too dry to swallow as every onlooker watched her approach the prince. Nothing is unusual about us talking—he’s my trainer for the tournament. Attention riveted on her, Vesryn’s emerald eyes hypnotically reeled her in.

Serenna’s stomach fluttered when the prince opened a portal. She sensed Vesryn’s emotions warring through the bond—concern, fury, agitation. She withdrew her attempts at deciphering him, her own alarm compounding as she worried she was somehow responsible for his irritable mood.

“I have a special activity planned,” Vesryn said as she joined him. He glanced at the looming gateway. “Some extracurricular practice before...the tournament.”

Serenna’s attention hooked on his fingers tapping against his thigh. Sweat trickled down her neck as she handed Vesryn his dagger, her hands nearly shaking with mirrored unease. Recalling her forced participation in the prince’s other unconventional “training,” the cogs of Serenna’s mind churned through every guess of where he could be taking her.

She didn’t come up with an answer before following Vesryn through the rift, leaving Centarya behind her.

CHAPTER 6

SERENNA

The portal’s compressing chill rippled over Serenna as a roaring silence rushed through her ears. Stepping out on the other side of the rift, she blinked into darkness, smothered by stagnant air. An eerie sense of foreboding percolated from the void’s surroundings. She tensed, every nerve firing as her heartbeat ricocheted against her ribs.

“Vesryn?” Serenna whispered, her hushed voice swallowed by shadows.

A vibration of Essence answered. Azure illumination flared to life in the corridor, the orbs whirling around them. The prince’s hand clamped over hers like a fetter, the tension in his fingers feeling more controlling than comforting.

Serenna tripped over her boots as Vesryn practically dragged her down a hallway lined with iron-barred cells. Unable to see within the brig’s depths, the grim stillness had her imagining the area was devoid of inhabitants.

She tightened her grip against the prince’s palm, glancing up at him. The contact of his skin against hers had Essence nearly jumping through her veins, straining to twine with his magic through the bond.

“Where are we?” Her quiet question still sounded too loud, the pressure of silence too ominous to disturb.

The hovering illumination highlighted a tendon flexing in Vesryn’s neck as he clenched his jaw. “Kyansari’s dungeons.”

His curt answer had the hairs on Serenna’s arms lifting. “Why?” Waiting for a reply that didn’t come, she peered into the black cells, sifting for a reason. Shoulders weighed down by the oppressive gloom, she suppressed a shudder, attempting to inquire again. “What are we doing here?”

Vesryn remained silent, tugging on her arm when she balked, steering her around a corner that spilled toward a stairwell. Serenna’s legs became leaden with fear, but the prince gave her no choice but to quicken her stride, driving her down the steps, deeper into the suffocating prison.

On the lower level, stone doors lined the hallway, concealing what lay on the other side. Vesryn stalked halfway down the corridor before finally releasing her. Apprehension slid down Serenna’s spine as she rubbed feeling back into her twinging fingers.

The prince jerked his chin toward the smooth door indented into the rockwork, his command clipped. “Untangle the shield.”

Pulse thundering in her ears, Serenna braced herself, wiping her clammy palms on her chestnut leathers. The prince’s face held less expression than the surrounding stones, resigning her to the fact that asking more questions would yield no answers.

Floundering in a sea of uncertainty, Serenna searched the bond for reassurance. Her shoulders jerked tight when she angled her awareness toward the prince. Vesryn wasn’t barricading himself—she doubted he could, with that volcano’s worth of wrath ready to erupt.

Serenna jumped when the prince snapped at her, his words reverberating off the stones. “Stop reading me and open the stars-cursed door.” His fingers twitched at his sides like he was restraining himself from wringing her neck.

Heart hammering—more so with fear of him now than anything else—Serenna raised a feeble confession, words breathless with nervousness. “I—I don’t know how to untangle wards.”

I’ll show you. Vesryn’s growl was a violent jab in her head as he telepathically unfolded images of a shield’s lattice in her mind.

Confusion twisted through her from the rapid shift in his mood since they’d left Centarya. For the first time, Serenna sensed he was at the end of whatever scant tolerance he currently possessed.

Chest tightening with an uneven breath, Serenna’s fingers trembled when she raised her hand to the door. The cool rock scraped against her palm as she wrestled to clear her thoughts. Vesryn’s impatience, crashing into her in waves, only engulfed her further in unease. Abandoning the futile attempt of calming her mind to summon Essence, Serenna resorted to channeling her fear to haul the corresponding talent from her Well.

Violet light fountained under her fingertips, lacing along the rock like a spider’s web. The invisible woven ward silently hummed in response, igniting to reveal a crystalline grid. Threads of power slithered against the stone as Serenna twined Essence around the shield’s knots, unraveling the magic locking the door.

She spared a quick glance at Vesryn, about to ask if it was possible to sever the ward with a slash of rending, but she sensed that he wasn’t in the mood to suffer a conversation. I wish he’d explain what this is about.

Serenna retreated a step when the shield’s remaining fibers disintegrated, crumbling like ash. Waiting for further instruction, her Essence shimmered around them.

Flicking his wrist, Vesryn shoved the rock inward with a pulse of force. Serenna cringed, stone grating against stone as his magic drove the slab away from the opening, sliding against the ground. A sudden burst of light radiating from the chamber made her squint.

Serenna’s stomach clenched when Vesryn seized her wrist, his fingertips stronger than steel. He dragged her inside the cell. After several moments of blinking against the blazing brightness, her eyes focused on a hulking figure across the room.

A wraith.

Serenna gasped, terror stripping the breath from her lungs. The monster went wild, snarling and gnashing its fangs. Fear impaled her like a javelin of ice, freezing her mind, shattering any thoughts. Essence deserted her as the sight of those blood-red eyes had her instinctively dashing to flee.

Before Serenna could scamper a pace, Vesryn nearly ripped her arm out of its socket, hauling her back to his side. Panic speared her as she frantically flailed against the prince’s unrelenting grip.

“Calm down!” Vesryn shouted, spinning her around to face the wraith. “Stars, it’s secured.”

Unable to draw in enough air, Serenna panicked as the prince forced her to stare at the creature. His fingers gouged into her shoulders, anchoring her in place. Upon seeing coils of rending shackling the wraith to the opposite end of the stark cell, Serenna slowly reclaimed control of her breathing.

The chained wraith’s bared fangs dripped saliva, as if desperate to shred them with its teeth. Dirty from the squalor of the prison, tattered clothing hung from its gaunt form, clinging to indigo skin. Its crimson eyes rolled, savage and feral, a mindless beast in humanoid form. This wasn’t one of the wraith from the attack.