Chapter 16 · Feast of Nightmares

"Stop screaming, Selena. You're only making it easier for me to find you."

Cane’s voice didn’t come from the air; it echoed inside her skull, vibrating against her teeth. One second, Selena was standing in the white marble halls of Luminis—the smell of incense and purity everywhere. The next, the floor liquified. The white stone turned into a black, viscous sludge that dragged her down, swallowing her waist, then her chest, until she was pinned against a ceiling of jagged glass.

"Where am I? Cane!" she shrieked, her voice sounding wet and distant.

He appeared out of the gloom, walking on the surface of the black sludge as if it were a polished ballroom floor. He wasn't wearing the rags of a sacrifice anymore. He looked like a king of a dead world, wrapped in shadows that writhed like living snakes. He stopped inches from her, his face obscured by the dim light, but his eyes—those cold, void-colored pits—burned through her.

"You're in your head," Cane whispered. He leaned in, his breath cold against her ear. "The place where you keep all the things you pretend aren't there. The lies. The blood on your hands.