Extract: Fury Bound by Sable Sorensen

*The following excerpt contains spoilers for Dire Bound*

It will be morning soon.

My body has been operating on adrenaline alone, and the sudden reminder that so much time has passed settles a heavy blanket of exhaustion over me. I rub my eyes, struggling to keep them open.

“I’ll…” I pause, trying to remember what I was going to say. “I’ll speak to everyone in the morning, then. You should get some rest.”

I don’t realize I’m tilting over until my foot snags on stone in a clumsy, futile attempt to catch myself. I thud into Stark’s chest, his calloused, tattooed hands closing around my arms.

His touch sears me back toward momentary wakefulness, and I push him off, blinking rapidly.

“Go to bed,” he says gruffly.

“Absolutely not.” I’m too tired to even glare. “I’m not leaving Saela’s side.”

Stark huffs and drags his hand through his hair. He marches past me, Aldrich and Helene trailing in his wake, and grumbles something that sounds an awful lot like “Stubborn woman.”

Saela has quieted down somewhat. She still thuds herself against the bars repeatedly, but she does it weakly now, her temple just barely tapping the iron. Her eyes settle on nothing, see nothing.

A few minutes later, a loud scraping sound jars me from my misery. Stark sets a sleeping pallet down on the dungeon floor. He swipes his hand over it to remove some dust, then pats it like he’s trying to convince me it’ll be comfortable.

I thud down onto it without argument, too weary to try to find something to fight him about. But I’m determined to stay awake to watch over Saela, so I lie on my side as Stark settles in beside me, back against the stone wall.

I can’t help it, though. My eyes are too heavy, and no matter how much I resist it, I feel them close.

The familiar spiraling sensation of falling into a dream hits me. I open my eyes to try to stay awake.

But I’m not in the dungeons anymore.

I’m somewhere dark, a room of unending grays and shadows, with no floors or walls or ceilings. The shadows swirl around my feet like fog.

It feels too real to be a dream, and my breath catches in panic.

Turning, I look in every direction, but there’s nothing but the endless expanse.

“You’re finally here, my child,” says a deep, echoing, eerie male voice—the same voice that’s been speaking to me all along. The voice that told me to get the crown. Whose voice?

And where is it coming from? My gut churns with the feeling that something is very wrong.

I whip around, looking for the source, but still nothing is there. The shadows trail upward like smoke. They drip downward like stalactites. I start to shiver.

Where am I, I open my mouth to ask, but no sound comes out.

“You’re here, but you’ve let open a door you cannot close…and so he’s here, too,” the voice tells me.

He’s angry with me, I can tell—whoever he is. A tremor of fear skitters through me.

The shadows start to swirl violently, spinning around me, closing in. The funnel of darkness tightens and tightens, until it starts to wrap around my throat and choke me.

I scream in my sleep and awake with a breathy gasp. My nails dig into the cot. I’m not sure how long I was out, but Anassa and Cratos must have returned and left again because there’s a dead elk in Saela’s cell.

And a gruesome sea of blood staining the stones.

My sister is asleep in a ball on the floor, her entire face and arms up to her elbows drenched in gore.

I swallow down the sobs as I sit up. Stark is still asleep, propped up against the wall, his head leaned against stone. It can’t be comfortable there.

Moving over, I kneel beside him. His thick, dark lashes twitch as he dreams. I reach out to touch him. Just to wake him, I tell myself.

But before I can, pain spikes through my head. I wince as my hand flies up to the spot of agony. It’s invasive, as if someone is slowly pressing a needle into my temple, deeper and deeper, inch by inch.

And once it’s lodged deep enough, I hear it.

Him.