Rough hands gripped her, Cairn shouting, raging shrieks of You little bitch, but she didn’t hear them. Not as a trickle of blood snaked down Maeve’s cheek. Black blood. As dark as night. As dark as the eyes that the queen fixed on her, a hand rising to her cheek. Aelin’s legs slackened, and she didn’t fight the guards heaving her away. A blink, and the blood flowed red. Its scent as coppery as her own. A trick of the light. A hallucination, another dream—
AELIN OPEN YOUR EYES! THAT WAS NOT A TRICK OF THE MIND?!
