I keep reading, but the papers tell conflicting stories. Some suggest collaboration, shared research, joint observations. Others read like someone desperately trying to understand an enemy's methods. There are attempts at reversal formulas, all marked "failed." There are victim lists with notes like "saved none" and "arrived too late."
One page lists physical and psychological traits. Silver hair is noted as "strong anchor resonance, void compatibility marker?"
The more I read, the less certain I become. Is this the work of partners or enemies? Hunter or fellow monster?
Something glints beneath the papers. I push them aside and find a silver butterfly hairpin. The one I gave Melara for her twentieth birthday. There's a dark stain on one wing. Blood. Her blood.
No box, no note, just the hairpin lying there among the research. Like it was kept as a reminder. But a reminder of what? Failure? Guilt? Or trophy?
I'm going to kill him.
I grab several pages, the drawing of crystallization, the notes about Melara, the list with silver hair mentioned. Evidence, though of what I'm no longer certain. The hairpin goes in my pocket, its weight familiar and painful.
I slip out of the chamber just as footsteps echo in the corridor. Not Mikaere's grinding stone or Päivi's rustling pages. These are deliberate, measured. Nezavek.
I hurry back to my quarters, the stolen evidence burning against my skin. The bond pulses, and I feel his attention turn toward me. He knows I'm agitated. Can probably taste my rage and horror through our connection.
Good. Let him come.
I hide the pages under my mattress, crude but effective for now. The hairpin stays in my pocket where I can touch it, remember why I'm here.
When sleep finally takes me, the dreams are confusing, fragmentary.
I see Nezavek finding Melara in a crystal gallery, his shadow form recoiling from her partially transformed body. He pours void energy into her, desperate, frantic. "Please," he whispers, and I feel his anguish like a knife in my chest. "Not this one. Letme save this one." His pain tastes like copper in my mouth, so real I wake choking on it.
But I'm pulled back under. The dream shifts, twists.
The same hands that tried to save now hold a scalpel made of shadow. He cuts into crystallized flesh with steady precision while something inside me screams. His voice is calm, taking notes: "Nerve responses remain active at 80% transformation." I try to run but I'm frozen, watching. The woman on the table has Melara's eyes. She blinks at me. Still aware. Still terrified.
Another shift. Violence explodes across my vision.
Nezavek fights something made of ice and bone, the Collector. They tear at each other with prehistoric hatred. Black blood splatters, freezes, shatters. Nezavek's roar shakes reality itself. "You took them all!" The Collector laughs, a sound like breaking glass. "We took them together, brother."
No. That's not right. Is it?
The scene fractures. Now Nezavek stands at an auction, but I'm seeing through his eyes. He scans faces with predatory focus. Silver hair makes his attention sharpen. The need burns in him, not desire but desperation. He's dying, dissolving, searching for something to hold him together. He sees me and recognition hits: anchor, salvation, the sister of the one he failed to save. But underneath, quieter: mine, want her, need her, finally.
Which feeling is real? I can't tell anymore.
The dreams blur faster. Melara's voice: "Save her." Nezavek's hands covered in crystal dust. The Collector's elegant script. Angular notes reading "failed, failed, failed." My sister screaming. Nezavek screaming. Me screaming.
I see him cradling something small and silver, the hairpin. He's shaking. "I'm sorry," he whispers to it. "I'll find her. I'll protect her. I promise." But his shadow form flickers, and for a moment I see something else underneath. Something hungry. Something that collects pretty things.
I wake gasping, my sheets soaked with sweat, my body shaking. The bond throbs with confused emotions, his or mine, I can't tell. My chest aches like I've been sobbing, though my eyes are dry.
I don't know what's real anymore. The grieving savior or the calculating monster? The desperate hunter or the careful collector?
All I know is that Melara's hairpin is cold in my hand, and somewhere in this realm, Nezavek can feel my terror through our bond. Good. Let him feel what his existence does to me. Let him know that I'm drowning in uncertainty.
The worst part? Some piece of me, some traitorous part that remembers his touch, wants to go to him. Wants him to hold me and tell me which version is true.
I hate myself for that weakness most of all.
YORIKA
Mikaere's trust is a weapon I've been sharpening for days.
"Lord Nezavek summoned me," I tell him, keeping my voice steady despite the knife tucked against my wrist and the rage burning in my chest.
