The light inside the obsidian pillar wasn't white. It was a thick, oily violet that smelled of ozone and ancient dust. I felt my feet leave the floor, my body suspended in a gravitational vacuum that made every bone in my body ache. Beside me, Silas was struggling, his indigo eyes wide with a terror I had never seen before.
"Elena!" he choked out, reaching for me through the shimmering haze.
I didn't reach back. The words he had just spoken the admission that he married me for my DNA, for this specific moment of "harvest" were echoing in my mind louder than the hum of the machine.
Shadow Marriage. Our entire life together had been a choreographed lie. The villa in Dar es Salaam, the nights spent whispering about the future, the way he looked at me when Toby was born it was all a perform
