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It seems too easy to be true, but it is e when the next rotation of soldiers will stand at ain, hard A spike of pain shoots through --this is what I’d felt in htmare has already ended A sudden fear hits htly shut Perhaps I ah to lance toward the door The pull is froy, his barbs inWhen the tug couards are not waiting there Instead, it is Enzo, swathed in shadows My breath catches in my throat His eyes are pools of black, completely devoid of any spark of life His expression is nonexistent, his features seeaze darts down to his arht, a mass of destroyed flesh My heart freezes

Did Raffaele send hiuards to step aside and let him in I stare at him, unsure what to do next

"Why are you here?" I whisper

He says nothing in return I can’t even tell if he’s heard ait seeer on why it looks strange There is so stiff and uneven, inhuers in both hands

I htmare Enzo narrows the black pools of his eyes I try to push through our tether to read his thoughts, but this ti darkness It is beyond even hatred or fury--it is not an emotion at all, but the lack of all eh Enzo’s vessel of a body and pulling y that bind us The touch feels ice cold I shudder, pressing ainst the wall But the cold claws of Enzo’s changed energy continue to reach forcloser and closer--until they hook into ht

My energy lurches The whispers in my head burst free and roar insensation The control I have over radually take on Enzo’s voice--and then, a new tone, one froainst the floor, dragging o no farther Enzo approachesbut his armor and my robes His soulless eyes stare down at ers His hands clamp down on the chains that encircle my wrists and--in a moment that reminds me of the day he had rescued me from the stake--he heats the chains until they turn white-hot They clatter to the floor His lips curl

"You have so that is mine," Enzo murmurs, in a voice not his own It resonates within nize it as the voice of Moritas, speaking through the Underworld

She has co me cry out in pain She will kill me in order to take him back

"Why don’t you jump, little wolf?" he whispers

And, suddenly, I feel a desire to step out ofmyself froy turns on ains control An illusion wraps aroundthe skeletal hands of the goddess of Death herself, hanging desperately on as I float in the waters of the Underworld, trying not to drown Cold hands pull athere," Moritas says, her featureless face leaning down toThe words cohtmare, but I can’t wake up It can’t possibly be real Perhaps he will be nearby and save iano, help me! But he isn’t here

I blink, and now I a out of my cell’s ajar door to stand on the hipped steps outside Enzo follows behind rasp h our tether, and the ice of her touch burns me Fires protected inside colored lanterns illuht I squint in the darkness, then turn my face to where the stairs wind up and around ap between the cells appears, where a thin raht landscape and then the ocean beyond I strain to see any sign of ers I approach the rae with both hands The tether pushesme over the wall

The whispers shriek over the wind Why don’t you juh my illusion--the Underworld wavers, then vanishes in a ind of se of the ra at the stairs behind us, a crossbow in his hands He is pale, his face draith fear, his lips tightened into a determined line The hips his hair into a furious river, and his pale robes stream behind him in waves of silk and velvet Had he woken, too, at the strangeness of Enzo’s energy? His eyes dart into the prince

Raffaele lifts the crossbow higher He isn’t aiain His eyes shine wet in the night "Leave her"

In the past, Enzo would have wavered His eyes would clear, the pools of dull darkness ain for those I knoell, dark and warht scarlet But even Raffaele’s presence this tiaze I feel nothing of Enzo at all in our tether