I sit down next to him and cradle his head in my arms. “Dineas.” My voice breaks. “Wake up, please.”

Chapter Forty-eight

Zivah visits me in my dreams. She holds me close and whispers my name.

“Wake up,” she says, but I don’t want to. Because if I open my eyes, I’ll be back in my living nightmare, and she’ll be gone. The past few days have been bad enough. Just give me a moment of peace.

But she keeps calling me, and a cold cloth passes over my face. I groan. “Don’t make me go back.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

If she’s really sorry, she wouldn’t be trying to wake me up. But it’s no use. I’m drifting back to reality. I open my eyes, and the hateful walls of my cell appear around me, the jail I don’t even remember entering. Gods, how did this happen?

I expect Zivah to waver and disappear, but she’s solid, holding me close even though I’m covered in grime.

I don’t understand.

“Did they arrest you too? If I’ve gotten you in trouble…”

She shakes her head. “I’m here to get you out,” she says. “But we don’t have much time. You must come with me now, and I need you whole.”

“Whole?”

Zivah rummages in her bag and takes out a vial. “I need you to drink this.”

In my mind, I see the vial fragments Arxa had shown me. “What is it?”

“It’s a potion to help you remember.”

I pull away from her. “They say you manipulated me with your potions. That you made me lose my mind.”

Zivah glances at the door, and when she looks back, her eyes are sad. “I can’t prove anything to you. You have to decide whether to trust me.”

She unstoppers the potion and puts it in my hand. It smells foul as always, and I wrinkle my nose. Can anything good come from something that smells so bad?

She’s getting restless now, her eyes continually drawn to the door and the corridor beyond. “Please, Dineas. You need to trust me, and you need to do it now, or we’ll both die.”

I stare at the potion. I’ve been missing pieces of my past for months now, and I suppose I’ve learned to trust my instincts. My instincts tell me that Zivah doesn’t mean me harm.

And with that, I drink it down.

I’m back in the place I never wanted to be again. The cursed stone walls that haunted my dreams and even now make my soul shrivel inside of me.

“Are you back?” asks Zivah.

I look over my arms, my shoulders, the angry welts on my wrists. They haven’t yet had time to do much damage. “I didn’t think you’d come for me.”