Darkness wrapped around me. Darkness and the sweetly sick stench of rot. And heat . . . the heat was terrible, stifling, choking. The heat of a desert. Or of the deepest pits of the Underworld.

Water roared nearby, rushing in a steady beat past my ears. It seeped through the stone, deep, deep, deep beneath the Hall of the Dead, dripping from the cavern roof in fat, lazy drops.

But the smell . . . I fought against the smell. Tried to escape it, but there was nowhere to go. Not when the heat and the water and the stench told me where I was. Slowly, with every movement an agony, I turned. I looked.

My father’s eyes swam before me—hard, gray iron. He smiled, cold and cruel. “You see them?” he whispered in his smooth baritone.

But I didn’t want to see them. Didn’t want to look at the three beings I knew were just there, beyond the gloom. They were known as the Fates to those who dwelt in the Above. Clotho to spin, Lachesis to weave, and Atropos to shear the threads of the Tapestry of Life. Little more than haggard skeletons, their bones clicked and clacked in time with Lachesis’ loom as they worked.

“Look how they toil,” my father said. “Ugly, yes, but vital. Brutal. Inescapable . . .”

“No,” I cried, fighting the terrible stench of decay and the fevered heat of their chamber. The snip of Atropos’ shears sounded by my ear as she cut another life’s thread. As she tore apart the weaving, filament by filament. No. Don’t cut it. Not yet.

Heat exploded and I fought—fought against that shearing, ripping pain as my own thread was rent from the tapestry. “No!”

“Damn you, Myridian!” a voice cursed. “Hold Still!”

My eyes opened. Blackness clouded the edges of my vision, but movement forced my gaze to focus on a figure that hovered above me. Feminine hands held me, something metallic flashing in the dim light. Shears?

“Get away!” I jerked from Atropos. From those scissors that would send me back to my father’s realm. “I won’t go back. Not yet.”

A breathy sigh and the heat dwindled to a kiss of warmth. “Aidon,” a gentle, honeyed voice said. “Aidon, you have to be still. Please, let me heal you.”

Hands moved over my brow, calming, and I breathed as deeply as the pain and stench and heat would allow. My heart slowed a bit and I relaxed into the touch.

“Good,” the voice said. “Good. Just a bit longer, now. Just a little more pain.”

Then there was light, rosy, and warm. And pain, as the voice had promised. Scorching, familiar pain.

Fire spread through my blood and my vision began to clear. It was not a half-rotten bag of bones that knelt above me. The metallic flash of shears was only a single brass brooch pinned at the shoulder of a simple gown. And the light—incandescence that lit the space between us and cast a soft sheen against hair shimmering a burnished gold—erupted from delicate hands. Warm, amber eyes held me and full lips whispered words I was too delirious to understand.

I reached out to her with the one hand I could still use—the one arm that wasn’t consumed with Arachne’s poison—and brought my palm to rest against her cheek.

Aurora’s skin—every inch of it—glowed like dawn rising.

She should have been bathed in her light’s heat, but she wasn’t. Her skin was cold. Too cold.

Sweat dotted her face. But she grew colder as she poured her heat into my body.

Horror spread icy needles through my chest. Healing me . . . healing me was hurting her. Too much magic flowed from her body into mine. Yet still, her light flickered and flared. Her fire burned through my veins, devouring the spider’s filth.

STOP! I tried to scream, but the words would not pass the dry ache in my throat.

A line of blood slowly trickled from her nose. Her eyes fluttered, rolling back in her head. “Stop!” I begged, voice finally sounding like a dry whisper.

My warning was useless. Her body slumped forward. She collapsed against me, the contact shooting pain from the wound at my collar down to my fingers, but I ignored it, so much more bearable than the constant throb of the poison. Poison that had been eating me alive with such torturous leisure.

I wrapped my weak arms around her and held her tight against me. Red-gold hair tickled my nose, the vanilla and sunlight scent of her replacing the sickly sweet smell of infection. My hand pushed apart the folds of her gown, ignoring the supple breasts beneath and searching . . . there. Her heart beat under my palm, solid and steady. Relief like I’d never known flooded my chest.

I let my head fall back. My eyes closed, and comforted by the feel of her, soon I was helplessly pulled into the deep darkness of healing sleep.