Slowly, the room comes back into focus. Jacey is crouched at my feet, rocking back and forth, her fist shoved into her mouth. Tessa are Niklas are both curled in a fetal position. Bram and Talon stand near each other, wide-eyed and frozen. I wonder if we’re all experiencing precisely the same thing, or if the potion works with each of our minds to create something unique—a custom-tailored agony.

I kneel next to Jacey and wrap my arm around her shoulders. “Jacey, can you hear me? It’s Saskia.”

Her head tilts in my direction, but she doesn’t stop moving. “It’s not real, Jacey. You’re safe.”

I keep talking softly to her, and gradually her eyes focus. “Saskia?”

I squeeze her arm. “Welcome back. Now help me with the others.”

As we remind the others of where they are, of what is real and what isn’t, Bram’s words float through my mind: The Fortress doesn’t train soldiers to fight. It trains them to survive torture.

And I realize I lied to Jacey earlier. She’s not safe.

None of us are.

We wouldn’t have the courage to move forward if not for the cold. But my skin prickles with needling sensations. What if the cold is causing irreparable damage? We have to keep going.

The cavern has so many twists and turns, it’s impossible to know how far we have left to go. Each time we turn a corner, I’m hopeful we might see the exit, but so far, it’s been nothing but an endless maze of fear.

Avoiding the bones is the only strategy that makes sense, but it’s nearly impossible to execute. Niklas brushes against the tip of one bone while trying to dodge another, and suddenly a sea of enormous spiders emerges from the floor and races across our toes. Tessa screams and tries to kick them away. But her foot makes contact with another bone, and we’re subjected to an image of her father—drunk and raging—that makes us all feel as if we’re five years old, helpless and scared.

“I can’t do this,” Tessa says, once we’ve finally managed to pull ourselves from the illusion.

“You can,” I tell her. “You are.”

But I’m not sure I can do it either. My nerves are stretched so thin, I feel like I’m fraying at the edges.

As horrible as the hallucinations have been, none of them have belonged to me yet, and waiting—worrying about what might manifest—is its own kind of torture. Will I see the prison boat? Gran’s death? My mother’s?

Does it count as a fear if it’s already happened?

Maybe if I’m very careful, I can avoid getting sucked into an illusion.