Elodie’s POV
I had never been so afraid in my life. Not when I was banished. Not when Damon rejected me. Not when Nathan left me behind during our failed escape. Not even when I woke up burning with fever and too weak to stand. Those moments had been painful. This was different. This was terror.
The kind that settled deep inside your bones and refused to leave. I sat alone in a small unused storage room hidden within one of the older sections of the palace, trying to calm my breathing. Failing. Completely failing. Because Lina's words kept replaying in my head.
They aren't trying to make you sick anymore.
They're trying to kill you.
I pressed my hands together tightly. Trying to think. Trying to remain calm. Trying not to imagine all the ways I could die inside this palace. The proble
