Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 262

Chapter 262

Chapter 262

IVORY

The transition dumped us into the fourth chamber with the same disorienting sensation I was starting to recognize-reality folding, consciousness stretching, then snapping back into a body that was somewhere completely different from where it had just been.

I landed on solid ground. Actually landed, with gravity functioning normally, my boots hitting stone with impact that jarred through legs that had gotten used to floating. Beside me, Aria stumbled slightly, clearly experiencing the same adjustment difficulty.

We were in a tunnel. Not a chamber this time-a corridor carved through rock, maybe ten feet wide and equally tall. The walls were smooth, almost polished, showing tool marks that

suggested deliberate construction rather than natural formation. And running along both walls at regular intervals: torches.

Actual fire. Burning in wall sconces with flames that provided warm orange light instead of the eerie bioluminescence we’d been navigating by for hours. The sight was so normal, so mundane compared to everything else we’d faced, that it felt wrong somehow.

“Fire needs oxygen,” I said immediately, my healer’s mind cataloging the implications. “If there are flames burning this steadily, there must be adequate air supply. We’re not going to suffocate in this section.”

“Small mercies,” Aria said, her voice still rough from the oxygen deprivation we’d just survived. She was checking herself over, looking for injuries or problems from the zero-gravity trial. Finding nothing obvious beyond exhaustion.

I did the same assessment on myself. The healing compound had done its work-my arm was fully functional, no pain from the wolf bite that had nearly crippled me. The various cuts and bruises accumulated over the trials were gone. Even my energy levels felt relatively good despite everything we’d been through.

But I knew we were operating on borrowed time. The compound’s side effects would catch up with us eventually. Our bodies’ ability to heal would be compromised for weeks, maybe months after this. Using it had been necessary but we’d pay the price later.

The timer on my wrist showed 7:47:32. Less than eight hours for two more trials. The math was getting worse with each section-we’d used almost an hour on the zero-gravity chamber, had lost another hour to the penalty from fighting the pit creatures. We were burning through time faster than we could afford.

1/3

Which direction?” Aria asked, looking down the tunnel that extended in both directions from where we’d materialized. Identical in both ways-smooth walls, torch-lit, no obvious indication of which path led toward the trial objective and which led to dead ends or traps.

Before I could answer, before I could even begin to assess which choice made more sense, the torches flared. All of them simultaneously. The flames grew from steady burns to roaring fires that reached toward the ceiling, the heat intensifying until I could feel it on my face from fifteen feet away.

Then the flames changed color. From orange to blue to green to colors that didn’t have names, that made my eyes hurt to look at directly. And in each flame, images began to form. Faces. Scenes. Memories.

“Another vision trial,” I said, recognizing the pattern. The crystals had triggered visions. The trials had shown us things from our pasts or our fears. This was just another variation on that theme-using fire instead of crystals to force us to confront whatever the Ghost Council thought we needed to face.

But Aria wasn’t responding. I turned to look at her and saw that she was staring at one of the flames with expression of absolute horror. Her face had gone white, her breathing rapid and shallow in ways that suggested panic rather than just the lingering effects of oxygen deprivation.

“Aria?” I said, moving closer to her. “What do you see?”

She didn’t answer. Just kept staring at the flame, her eyes wide and fixed, her body beginning to tremble.

I looked at the flame she was focused on, trying to see what had affected her so strongly. Saw images forming in the colored fire-a woman I didn’t recognize, young and desperate-looking. A child. A scene that looked like violence or danger, though the details were hard to make out through the flame’s distortion.

“Your mother?” I guessed, remembering the visions she’d described from the earlier crystal trials.

Aria nodded, still not looking away from the flame. “Her death,” she whispered. “I’m seeing how she died. What happened. What she was protecting me from.”

I wanted to pull her away, to shield her from whatever trauma the trial was forcing her to relive. But movement caught my attention-one of the other flames was showing images that made my own breath catch.

Kael. During his curse years. Scenes I recognized from my own fragmented memories of that time. But these weren’t my memories-they were his perspective. Showing me moments I’d

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