Disaster didn’t knock; it tore through the guest wing at the stroke of midnight with the violence of a physical assault.
Elena was jolted from a shallow, trauma-haunted sleep by a sound that bypassed her ears and went straight to the marrow of her bones. It was a thin, vibrating keen a high-frequency wail that sounded like a violin string snapping under the tension of a madman’s bow. She scrambled to Luna’s bedside, her breath hitching, and the sight that met her in the flickering candlelight made her blood turn to jagged shards of ice.
Luna was no longer the rosy-cheeked child of the wastes. The girl was convulsing, her small frame arched so tightly it looked as if her spine might shatter. Her skin had turned a terrifying, translucent blue, looking as fragile as wet rice paper, but it w
