Chapter 2

Darkness surrounded me, my face squashed against a hard, bare chest that smelled faintly of blood and a dense summer forest. I tried to think around the consuming pain, to claw my way back to consciousness, but couldn't dig myself out of this soupy, throbbing blackness.

Rocking. I was rocking back and forth.

My legs were on fire.

That was Tavion's musky scent, his strong arms protecting me against a buffeting storm.

When I did manage to open my eyes, what I glimpsed couldn't be real. Torchlight reflected on roughhewn stone walls blurring past us.

Stars in a sky vaster than the universe.

Firelight flickering in an ancient, ruined room that smelled vaguely of incense.

My only constants were this excruciating pain and Tavion. Powerful arms holding me, his scent surrounding me as he cradled me gentler than I ever imagined possible. Urging me to live, though I wasn't sure survival was up to me anymore.

Not with this fire running through my veins, planting strange, obsessive ideas into my head.

Corvus's corrosive venom was poisoning more than my flesh. He was corrupting my mind, weaving an inescapable tangle of thorny vines through my thoughts, supplanting them with horrific images and foul creeping impulses that were not mine.

Kill. Corrupt. Ruin.

Fear settled deeper into me, my shivering body—burning like fire on the inside, freezing on the outside—writhing against Tavion's as his voice turned more desperate. I couldn't understand the words, but his tone told me everything.

He was scared.

Enough to keep talking, to fill my head with his deep, steady voice, to keep Corvus's demonic whispers at bay. I would have been lost without Tavion; he became the lifeline that tethered me to everything that was good and decent.

So I put what little strength I had into curling my fingers around Tavion's arms and holding on.

Keep talking, I urged silently.

Keep talking, keep holding me, and keep me safe from the monsters.