Chapter Thirty-Six WITCHING MOON

Chapter Thirty-Six

WITCHING MOON

Week Three, Day One

Year 3000

Sachi knew all the different tastes of fear.

Sometimes, it was cold and bitter, like a draught poured down your throat against your will. Other times, it was hot and metallic, the rush of blood over your tongue. And sometimes fear was silent, still. Waiting for the secret door in your chamber to swing open in the dead of night.

Sachi had thought she knew all the different tastes of fear.

Now, alone on top of this bloody, windswept tower, she learned a new one: Zanya's name, shredding its way out of Sachi's very soul.

She stared at the empty space where Zanya had just been standing, then screamed again and rushed to lean over the low edge of the tower wall. Down, down, so far down below, she saw a veritable crater in the stone.

Zanya lay half-buried in the neat, mocking circle of shattered stone, with Sorin looming over her. Panic threatened to choke Sachi as an unholy sound ripped through the air. At first, she thought it might be Ash's aerial battle—but then the world tore open , and hundreds more soldiers poured from the rifts.

Thousands.

The edges of Sachi's eyesight wavered, turned white, collapsed in until her actual sight was occluded. What she saw then was hazy, a gauzy curtain draped over her. It unfurled like an endless carpet, black as death, and she knew in an instant what it was.

A vision of what would happen if Sorin won.

She saw it all in minute, abhorrent detail, and oh gods , how she wished she didn't have to, but the scenes flashed through her mind in paralyzing slow motion.

More soldiers than she'd ever seen, hacking and slashing until blood drenched the courtyard.

Inga, battered and unrecognizable.

Aleksi's flesh flayed from his bones.

Leather and steel and glossy black feathers, crushed beneath bloody boots.

Naia screaming with helpless fury as Einar was torn apart.

Elevia's twisted neck and sightless eyes, one hand still outstretched toward where Ulric lay, eviscerated.

Zanya's broken, lifeless body.

Ash, with his wings ripped away, dying slowly as he was forced to watch it all happen.

And, finally—alone—Sachi. Shackled and numb with grief.

The next million years passed in a heartbeat. Sorin drained Sachi until the Dream deserted her, then started in on the world , drawing its magic through her until the earth itself began to shake apart. Sachi lived its dying decades in a breath, whispering her apologies to the flailing world even as she drowned in sheer relief.

Because she wouldn't be alone anymore. She could finally join Ash and Zanya.

As quickly as it had descended upon her, the vision swirled away from her sight like eddies of bloody water. Sachi stood, every limb shaking, one thought consuming her until there was nothing else. No fear, no intention. No choice.

She had to get to Zanya.

She climbed onto the wall, swayed there for the duration of one painful thump of her heart, and jumped. Her ruined nightdress rippled around her as she fell, her hair whipping her tear-streaked face.

Halfway down, the Dream took her.