Page 23 of The Reaping Rose

I didn’t fully understand what Wilder meant when he said those words. Not until this vision of him stands at the center of the cell and freezes.

Dread pools in my core.

“Look at me.” My heart starts racing. “Wilder⁠—”

A blade drives straight through his chest. The crunch of metal slicing through his spine makes me jump. A thread tears inside me; the pain is unlike any physical wound. Like a part of my soul is carved out.

“No.” I reach, getting nowhere.

Suspended where I stand and not allowed to run to him.

Tears run in hot rivers down my cheeks as Wilder drops to the ground in a pool of blood. The blade speared him, but I’m the one who felt it. Who feels it now, widening a hole inside my chest.

I blink and the scene resets.

Wilder is kneeling on the other side of the runes again, refusing me his gaze. The longer his eyes avoid mine, the more desperate I become.

This time, when he stands, an arrow meets his throat. Then another.

Another.

A gurgled scream tears from his lungs. Covering my ears does nothing. I hear it all.

I see it all.

Wilder dies again and again, and even if I know it’s not real, the loss is unbearable. My mate, who I’ve struggled to forgive for his lies these past few months with this distance between us, is still a part of me. The prison forces me to watch him die over and over, denying me his face the entire time.

All I get is that blood-drenched sword slicing through body in a hundred different ways, cutting into the deepest parts of my soul as he falls to the ground again and again.

The sword slices through his throat this time, and I slam my eyes shut before his head falls. But I hear it. Even as I cover my ears and try not to. The prison makes sure I hear it.

The harder I resist, the stronger the prison holds me in place. A bug trapped in a spider’s web.

What was I thinking coming here? That I was strong enough to survive this?

I wasn’t even strong enough to survive the Rite. Physically, I’m left standing, but my heart is still in ashes at the palace. My will is not strong enough to withstand this.

Not in this place.

I can’t do this.

See through the stars. The haunting echo of Wilder’s words rings in my thoughts, but it isn’t him.

It’s simply another way this prison is trying to break me. Hanging him on a thread so fate can slice a blade through it. No matter how many times I save him, it’s never enough. I’m never enough.

I’m half of too many things, spliced together. Human and Fae. Strong and weak. Tired and lonely.

My shoulders sink. A sob shudders through my body. Only then, when I open my eyes, is Wilder gone. And I can’t decide if that’s better or worse because at least when he was in front of me, I hadn’t lost him. There wasn’t a sea between us.

It takes me a long time to move forward again. Long after the prison’s web releases my arms and legs.

The next step, I’m numb, wondering if this is why Wilder’s eyes were so cold the first time I saw him. A century in the prison would melt my sanity. How did he survive?

A tunnel widens, and I wait for more visions—more nightmares. But there are none. This time, as I walk forward, the prison lets me.

“Why are you here, daughter of the stars?” A whisper sounds in my ear like the ones that hide in the shadows of magic.

“I’m here for my mother,” I answer.