Queen of the Underworld | Book 3

• eleven •

Song: Blood // Water - grandson

I was going to die.

I was certain of it.

The pain I felt in my stomach was excruciating. It was as if someone had stabbed me with a dagger and dragged it across my stomach in an effort to have my insides spill out. It was piercing, blinding and felt like pure, hot-white fury. I felt the blood draining from me, my life force was fading.

I felt magic reaching out like silver tendrils in the darkness. It grabbed onto me like an iron vise and didn't let go.

I felt my life--whole and intact but another side of me was weakening...waning...

It was so weak, it was barely a flicker of a candle.

The pain racked through me again and I yelled in agony unable to take the pain anymore. Something was suffocating me. Darkness was seeping into my throat and lungs. It trapped any oxygen inside me and expelled it.

Every breath was excruciating. Every breath was unbearable.

Something shook me harshly making me slam back into my body immediately.

I blinked in a panic and sucked in a breath to my eager lungs. I couldn't breathe fast enough to stop the dizzy feeling that took over.

I wasn't in floating in the darkness like I thought I was. I was in my bed in my apartment with the covers tangled around my ankles. The person who shook me awake, who rescued me from the nightmare still clutched at my shoulders with a talon-like grip.

I frowned. How did Asmo know where I was? How did he know to wake me?

I barely had a second to recognize the other guards in the room before pain swept through me again making me double over. I clutched my stomach again, the source of the pain. I groaned in agony. "What's happening?"

I couldn't deny the absolute panic I saw in his eyes. The cool, collected Asmo I'd seen in my dreams was no more. Instead, he was replaced by worry and despair. I'd never seen him so distraught.

With quick hands, he lifted my shirt to reveal my stomach, trying to find the source of the pain. I helped, revealing my perfectly unmarred stomach.

I frowned. There was nothing there. I ran my fingers over the untouched skin.

I had been so sure that it was me. They way my magic was rushing to reach out...

Asmo turned me over gently, his eyes scanning my back. "There's nothing there, nothing attacked you."

I felt the pain again, and I winced as it exploded inside me. Only this time it felt like someone was tearing me down my middle. Like my magic was being ripped apart at the seams. I felt it reach out again as if it were grasping for something else...

I finally realized what it meant. My magic was crying out. It was making me feel what someone else was feeling. Someone that shared my same magic...

I gasped. "Oh, gods, Julian."

As I spoke his name out loud, I could feel my magic tugging me elsewhere. It wasn't Skryen, it wasn't even the Underworld. It was somewhere cold, frigid---

And the more I thought about it, the louder the call became until I couldn't take it anymore.

Mehnit, still in her cat form, was on us immediately before I spectered.

We landed on the cold, snowy ground surrounded by lifeless trees. They groaned against the oncoming wind, the empty branches crashed against each other. The darkness of the night seeped into everything around us it seemed to even take all sound from everything around it.