The creature ceased its dance through the meadow and whipped its head toward me. I looked away; meeting its gaze was like trying to look directly on the sun. With a roar that shook the bladed grasses, the creature twisted in on itself, stony arms erupting from liquid limbs, darkness spooling in uneven tendrils from its incandescent core. The metallic smell of blood wafted across the meadow. My stomach twisted, and I hurried toward the castle gates, desperate to be inside before the creature decided to pursue me.
I had longed to return to this world, feeling its absence like a toothache, a constant dull throb. And yet today there was nothing here but horror. What had Hunger shown me, that first time in the Binding? The truth? Or only the reflection of my own desires?
The streets inside the castle gates were nearly empty, the cobblestones torn and ruined. A young knight wandered alone. His face was vacant, empty sockets where his eyes should be. I trembled, tried not to speculate what had happened to his mistress, and crossed to the far side of the plaza.
I peered through an archway shrouded with roses. Here was the cloistered garden I remembered, full of dancing women. I thought with relief of their bright colors and their glad looks, and pushed my way past the roses. But when I found the center of the garden, the fountain ran with blood and the women were all dead, their throats gaping wide.
I rushed back to the street and dropped to the stony ground, retching.
A breeze drifted down to me, carrying the incongruous scent of roses and charred flesh, and I was sick again. The delighted laughter of a child drifted down from the castle tower above me.
No. My heart beat hard and fast. No.
When the child began screaming, I put my hands over my ears, and still the screams echoed through my bones. I crouched down by the bile-soaked stones and clenched my eyes shut. I wanted nothing more than to escape, to be back in the star-studded darkness with Lady Berri on a hillside that smelled only of dead earth. Not here, not in this nightmare of bone and blood and dying children and charnel-scented roses.
Yet when I opened my eyes at last and took my hands away from my ears, I was still in the middle of the cursed city.
Still in the Binding.
I did not know where the heart of the spell was.
Or how to reach it.
But I knew someone who might.
I rose on shaky legs and made my way to the main plaza before the gates. I braced myself against a stone fountain and closed my eyes, summoning up my strongest desires: magic, belonging, Gábor.
When I opened my eyes, Hunger stood before me.
“You should be careful with such desires,” he said. “They might rouse creatures less friendly than I.” He looked around, his eyes glinting. “How did you come here? You’re not meant—” He broke off.
“Not meant to what? To see this? To set you free? You showed me a pretty lie when I came last,” I said. And I believed it.
“Are our desires a lie? I showed you what you wanted to see.”
Yes. I had wanted to believe his vision because it made breaking the Binding the right choice, the easy choice. I should have known better. I shook my head and swung my hand around at the ruined city, the forest beyond. “If I set you free, is this what I unleash on the world?”
Hunger’s gold eyes met mine. “This spell draws power from the creatures it binds. If you break the spell, you free the creatures. But who can say, when you give a creature freedom, what he or she will choose? What will your world look like when you give all individuals the same rights? Can you say with certainty each person will use that power for good?”
I was silent. My thoughts twisted through my head. But one idea emerged clearly: I could not break this spell, not if it meant unleashing monsters like these on the world. The evils of the Circle seemed to pale in comparison.
“I cannot do this.”
Those golden eyes were unwavering. “I know what you are.”
My heart jumped. “Tell me!”
“Break the spell.”
“No,” I said. “I won’t.”
“Then I will not tell you. And I cannot let you leave.”
Panic spiked my throat. I curled my hands, digging my nails into the flesh of my palm. The grounding. Lady Berri had anchored her spell to a ritual—and to me. Something of that anchor must be here. I rushed back to the archway, to the bloody cloistered garden, and stuck my fingers deeper into the earth, questing. But my fingers met only tangled grass roots and soil.
Hunger stood in the archway behind me, laughing. While I searched fruitlessly for a way back, he sauntered toward me and knelt in the grass.
Setting his hands over mine, he stilled my fingers. The silver manacles jangled at his wrists.
He pressed his lips against mine.
Heat ripped through me. I pulled away, gasping, my lips scorching.
“I see your heart,” he said. “Your desires bind you here. To this spell. Even if you leave now, your need will bring you back.”
“No.” I pushed him away and he let me.
The spell needs blood to break. I drew my bone knife across my palm and gasped at the sting. When the blood welled up, I dipped my fingers in it. I swiped my fingers across my forehead and my collarbone, where Lady Berri had set her protective spell. For good measure, I brushed blood across my lips. Then I thrust my bloodstained fingers into the earth again. This time, beneath the flowers and matted grass there was nothing. Not dirt, not clay, not sand. Only a thinly woven mesh, much like the one I’d broken through on my fall into this world.
With a mighty thrust, I pushed myself through the grass and found myself falling, illogically, down again.
When I blinked, my eyes were full of starlight, and I was back on the hard earth of Attila’s Hill. A star flew overhead, dying incandescent. A cold fury burned in me. Hunger had lied to me about the Binding. So had Lady Berri.
I pushed myself upright, my mind already shaping the words I would hurl at her: You did not tell me the spell draws power from the very creatures it holds, the creatures you dismiss. You did not tell me the creatures were terrible and I should unleash them on the world.
I will not break the Binding.
I cannot.
But the words died on my tongue.
We were not alone on the hill. The light I had seen was not a falling star, but a spell. Lady Berri stood a dozen paces from me facing a handful of dark figures, her normally neat hair wild about her head. A red glow enveloped her, and she stumbled back. She swung her hands and shouted, and the entire hill lurched.
I dropped to my knees, biting my tongue. The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth, reminding me of the blood-drenched city I had seen, and I remained on my knees for a moment, dizzy and sick.
Though I wanted only to curl up on the brittle grass of the hill and pretend none of this was happening—not the beasts desperate to escape the Binding, not the fight before me—I knew I could not. I forced myself to my feet again.
“Lady Berri,” I called. A hammer of air hit me in the face, knocking me to the ground in an explosion of pain.
“The Binding,” she said, her words coming in gasps and puffs. “It’s not—”
“I couldn’t do it.” I harbored a thin hope that my words might carry to our assailants, that they might halt their attack. I stood, wiping a thin trickle of blood from my nose with the back of my hand. A brutal wind picked up, whipping at my face. I dodged a flying branch.