I trudged through the swamp, knee-high in murky water for half a mile before something strange appeared in the distance. A black tower rose high above the trees. Its surface gleamed in the sun, reminding me of the towers of the King’s City.

I attempted to shift so that I could reach it faster, but my magic didn’t seem to work here. I ran, wondering if the fairy, Sabine, lived there in the tower.

When I reached it, a door appeared at the base of the tower, but when I reached for the doorknob, the entire door solidified and disappeared. Confused, I walked around the tower, searching for another way inside.

On the far side of the tower, instead of a door, a single open window appeared on the second floor, just out of my reach. I took several steps back and made a running start, jumping as high as I could and planting my hands on the window ledge. Using all my strength, I pulled myself up, my shoes sliding against the smooth, slick surface of the tower’s outer wall.

Once inside the first room, I stared in awe. This was an exact replica of the room I’d slept in as a shadowling. I turned to glance out the window, but instead of a swamp stretching into the distance, I saw the King’s City, exactly as it was when I was young.

When I turned again, my mother was sitting in a chair beside my bed. “Mom?” I asked, but she didn’t look up or seem to notice me there at all.

She clutched something in her hand, and when I stepped closer, I noticed it was a locket. The locket I had given Lea when we were first engaged. The locket I later gave to Harper.

I looked down at my wrist, but the broken necklace I kept with me at all times was gone.

“Mom, what are you doing here?” I asked, kneeling in front of her.

“You just had to go after him, didn’t you?” she asked. “I tried so hard to keep our family together and safe, but look what you did. You wasted your life trying to save him, and now he’s gone, anyway. You’re both gone. And for what?”

She lifted the locket to her cheek and began to rock back and forth, tears flowing from her eyes.

“Aerden?” I asked. “What are you talking about? He’s safe in the King’s City, and I’m right here. You’re the one who abandoned us.”

She looked up then, her eyes glazed over with sorrow.

“No,” she said. “You’re wrong. No one is ever safe here in the King’s City. Aerden is dead. He fell in the King’s Games, and you weren’t there to help him. You should have been there, Denaer.”

My stomach knotted. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

“Andros is on his way to rescue Aerden and Lea,” I said. “They’re safe.”

She shook her head. “You’re so foolish,” she said. “Do you really think the king would allow those traitors into his kingdom? Andros was captured, and Aerden is dead. Everything you fought for has been for nothing, can’t you see that?”

“I refuse to believe that,” I said, but the fear had already worked its way into my heart. “This isn’t real.”

I closed my eyes, remembering John’s warning to me.

Don’t believe anything you see in there.

“You’re not real.”

When I opened my eyes, I was kneeling in water up to my waist. I tried to stand, but vines had wound their way around my ankles and legs. I reached for the dagger I’d brought with me, but it was gone.

In a panic, I checked my wrist. Harper’s locket was gone, too. I was sure I’d worn it into the swamp. I hadn’t taken it off since the day she was taken from me.

I plunged my hands into the water, frantically searching for it. I must have dropped it during the hallucination. But the necklace was gone.

I ripped at the vines holding me down, but they were strong and thick, pulling me deeper into the swamp. The more I struggled, the tighter they seemed to become.

I willed myself to calm down, taking several deep, controlled breaths. Slowly, the vines loosened, and I was able to free myself and walk over to higher ground a few feet away.

I glanced around, trying to decide which direction to walk. At this point, I was so turned around, I couldn’t even be sure which way I’d come in from.

But at least now, I’d had a pretty good taste of what this Swamp of Nightmares was all about. Illusions. Fears. The more trapped in an illusion I became, the deeper the swamp would pull me in. The more I struggled against it, the tighter it would hold me.

All I needed to do was to keep my head, refuse to believe anything I saw or heard was real. I just needed to stay calm and keep moving forward. I could do this. Easy.

With a deep breath, I picked a direction and started walking again.

I couldn’t be sure how much time passed before something glittered in the distance. The sun didn’t seem to move across the sky here, so it was almost as if time itself had ceased to exist. For a moment, I considered walking in the opposite direction of the glittering object. If I avoided the nightmare altogether, maybe I would eventually find my way to the fairy’s hideout.

But when I turned around, the glittering object appeared in front of me again.

I shook my head and turned left, deciding to take my chances in this direction.

Several feet ahead, though, the same glittering object appeared in the distance. There was no avoiding it. Whatever it was, I would have to face it to move forward.

Carefully, I stepped toward it, squinting to make it out so that I could mentally prepare myself for whatever new torture awaited.

But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I crossed over the next piece of solid land.

I closed my eyes against it, determined not to look at it again.

“This isn’t real,” I said loudly. “Show yourself, Sabine. Your tricks won’t work on me.”

“Jackson, please help me,” Lea said. It sounded so much like her, I couldn’t help but open my eyes, just to be sure.

A gleaming arrow embedded with a row of diamonds protruded from her chest as she lay on the ground, her blood soaking into the ground beneath her.

She reached her hand out to me and attempted to sit up, but a flash of pain caused her to wince and lay back. “Please, don’t abandon me again,” she said. “Not when I need you most.”

“I won’t,” I said, but as I moved to kneel at her side, I remembered the illusion and held my ground. “This isn’t really you. I can’t help you.”

She clutched the diamond arrow and attempted to pull it from her chest, but she screamed at the pain, the sound echoing in my heart a thousand times.

“Stop,” I shouted, squeezing my eyes shut and placing my hands over my ears. But when she spoke again, I could still hear her. As if her voice was inside my head.

“I really loved you, you know that?” she asked. “Look at this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, though, huh? Did you ever think it would come to this? I left everything behind to follow you, thinking that someday you would love me again. But look at us. I’m dying, Jackson, and you won’t even look at me. What kind of person have you become that you would abandon your closest friends to the darkness? It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

In the back of my mind, I knew this wasn’t real, but something in her words felt true. I had abandoned her. When the hunters had attacked the domed city and it had been a choice between Lea and Harper, I had left Lea there in the woods to save someone else. What kind of person did that make me?

I had to explain myself. To make things right.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I never meant to hurt you. You have to believe me, Lea.”

I opened my eyes, only to realize that Lea was gone, and I was once again deep in the water, vines circling me up to my waist this time. I could feel them writhing across my skin, tightening and pulling me deeper.

Frustrated, I tugged at the vines, trying to calmly loosen them, but only getting myself more entangled as one of the vines wrapped around my wrist.

Calm. Stay calm.

I took several deep breaths and released the anxiety Lea’s vision had caused. Yes, I had hurt her, but I had every right to follow my own heart. Deep down, I think she understood that.

I had carried the guilt of betraying Lea with me for so long, it had become a part of me, but as the vines began to loosen, I realized that in order to move forward with my life, I would have to start forgiving myself for the mistakes I had made. I was not perfect. I would never be perfect, and that was okay.

The vines released me, and I stood, my body drenched from the chest down.

A slight breeze blew across the top of the water, and I shivered as I searched for higher ground. There was nothing here, though, but trees whose roots descended into the murky water and seemed to go on forever in the darkness below.

I could only hope that meant I was getting closer.

It sounded so simple. Just don’t get involved. Don’t interact. But it was different to see and hear my friends and family like that. To know that at least part of what they were saying was true. These were things I needed to answer for, and I felt compelled to validate my choices.

But this second illusion was that much more dangerous. Next time, the water would be nearly up to my neck at this rate. What would happen if I found myself underwater and couldn’t get free?

As an answer to my question, I tripped over something in the deep water and stumbled forward, my hand grasping for a nearby tree to steady myself. I glanced back, only to see the outlines of several bodies bobbing just under the surface of the water, their eyes and mouths open as if in shock. Vines wrapped around them, holding them there for all eternity.

Were they still trapped inside their nightmares? Living their fears over and over? Or had these people found some type of rest here in the swamp?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.