Parvani swallowed. Turning slowly, she took in her mother’s face, the tired lines at her mouth, the grief already settling in her eyes. Blinking her own watering eyes, Parvani hugged her.

“I’ll find a way back,” she said. Somehow.

Her mother cradled her head and through her veil kissed the thumbprint of vermilion on her forehead. The sign of one about to be wed. About to be lost.

About to die.

Parvani turned back to the cave and took a deep breath, potentially her last. She would not look back at her mother. She wanted the last of her to live in the feeling of her kiss, warm and safe on her brow like a blessing.

This is my choice.

She took one step, and then another. The hem of her dress whispered eagerly against cold stone. Another step. Another.

The shadows swallowed her feet. She lifted her ink-stained hands and let them also be fed into the gathering dark. It was hungry—it wanted her. A shudder rolled down her spine, a strange sort of ache settling into her limbs, in her lower belly.

As she wandered farther down, a weight began to grow around her. Dread seeped in like water through porous rocks. Breathing became difficult, and her heart faltered in her chest until, eventually, it stopped beating altogether.

She panicked. Clutching her chest, she cast around for someone, anyone, to help her. There was only the darkness, its tendrils caressing her face as if telling her it would be all right. Parvani sobbed. A shadow wiped her tears away.

Is this what Ranya had felt, right before the end? This steady and terrible knowledge that she was about to become undone?

You know what to do.

This is my choice.

Vengeance was a fragile word she held beside her now-still heart, but it forced her to keep stumbling blindly into the dark.

Her hands grazed the sides of the cave. Here and there she caught a glimmer of tourmaline, amethyst, adamantine. A breeze fluttered her veil. Whispers caught her ear. On the air was a scent of marigolds, thick and cloying. It almost reminded her of home.

When she lifted her head, she saw that she had left the path. Before her was a cavern lit with soft blue, and somewhere beyond was the sound of rushing water. She drifted to an outcrop of stone in order to find the source of that water before a voice stopped her.

“The new queen finally arrives.”

She turned her head. Three women stood on the other side of the cavern, under a patch of algae that seemed to be giving off that ethereal blue glow. Their skin was ebony and their heads were shaved, their bodies crafted with long, elegant limbs and curves that would make a mountain range envious. Gold glittered upon them—on their shoulders, on their bellies, even on one’s face—as if a foil had been grafted onto their flesh.