Ereshya. He was kissing—
Morgana! I was Morgana, born in the South of the Lumerian Empire. I grew up in the country of Bamaria. I lived in Cresthaven. I was twenty-one years old. I had two sisters. One older, one younger. Meera. Lyriana. I had a cousin whom I adored. Jules. Another I couldn’t stand. Naria. I was a mage. I was a student. I was a noble. And I was a lady.
I was real.Iwas real. AndIwas alive. Mortal. Not a Goddess. Not a Guardian. Morgana. Morgana! Not Ereshya. Not Ereshya.
Not. Ereshya.
I gasped for breath, my chest so tight it hurt. An akadim growled in the distance, and I scrubbed at my eyes still seeing images of that beach destined to sink beneath the tides of the ocean.
Staring down at my hands, I saw larger ones than I was used to, elongated fingers, darker skin on my body, tanner than I had ever achieved in this life. Not the hands of Morgana. These were the hands of …
I thrust them under the covers and tried to breathe, still trying desperately to calm my pounding heart. Gods, I was so sick of this. Of everything. Of the damp, darkened corridors that plagued my days. The endless Glemarian winter. The smell of must and sulfur. The incessant dripping sounds that came at all hours. Worst of all, I was sick of the grunts of monsters roaming the caverns at night.
A dark shadow filled my mind.Calm. Calm. This is only temporary. You’ll have your own palace soon,Aemon thought.The finest in the Empire. Finer than anything the Emperor has ever dreamed of.
I stared straight ahead, and grimaced, focusing on imagining an onyx wall around my thoughts, a dark labyrinth blocking him from entering.
But with a brush of his magic against me, the wall crumbled. His power was growing alarmingly fast every hour, just by being near the shard of the Valalumir I possessed. It should have strengthened my own power, too, but I hadn’t figured out how to use it yet. Instead, I could only sense Aemon drawing more deeply from its magic. Siphoning its power as easily as he took oxygen with each breath.
Shadows darkened my room as he stepped through the threshold, his aura heavy with something that stirred inside of me, memories of an endless, and eternally starry night.
You could come out with me, he thought.If you want.
He sat on the edge of my bed, dressed as I’d so often seen him in his Arkturion armor and cloak. The gold seraphim feathers that curved over his shoulders had been shined and sharpened to perfection. Even his red cloak appeared brand new. For over a year, this had been the form in which I’d always ignored him. This wasn’t my consort. The other version of him was. The one I was always waiting for, the one I saw in the darkness, the one who removed his armor in my presence. The one I’d allowed to be someone else—someone secret.
“You haven’t forgiven me yet,” he said. “And I understand. But I need you to remember that we are still on the same side.” He tilted his head, his eyes raking up and down my body leaving a shiver, pulsing in my core. They were his eyes, my lover’s eyes, and they were Moriel’s all at once. “Come with me,” he pleaded. “Breathe fresh air, feel the sky above your head, the sun against your skin. Leave this cave you hate so much. It will be good for you.”
I still refused to respond, attempting to keep my mind blank, to reforge my mental walls.
“Kitten,” he admonished, “Your stubbornness does not serve you. You’ll only wear yourself down trying to keep me out. You need your strength.”
“Stop it!” I cried. “Stop invading my mind! Stop calling me that! Stop! Just stop!”
“Hmmmm. There you are.” His lips curled into something seductive and sinister. “Tell me. What would you like me to call you, if not kitten? What if I called you Ereshya?”
My heart beat faster, and something inside of my soul wanted to answer yes. Wanted to claim the name, to claimeverything that came with it. His love, my power, the strength and rule of a Goddess. Of a Guardian. Even the memories I was having—the ones that felt more recent and real than my own as Morgana—they, too, wanted me to answer yes. Wanted to be Ereshya. My body remembered his body perfectly, and my soul wanted to hear another name on his lips. An ancient name. My first name.
But I shook my head.
“You’re remembering, aren’t you?” he said. “Remembering who you were.”
“So?” I snapped. “So what if I am? What does it fucking matter?” It had been three nights since I’d made my choice. Since I’d betrayed my sisters, and taken the indigo shard from Lyr. I hadn’t handed it over to Aemon yet, even though it was once his. It was all that remained of the Indigo Ray he’d protected as Moriel. As much as he was pleased with my deception, I hadn’t done it for him. I knew Godsdamned well what he was, knew he was dangerous. He’d led me and my sisters into grave danger just to get what he wanted. He’d forced us to become pawns in his game, and then had us tortured, and nearly gotten us and our bodyguards killed.
I had no intention of forgiving him for that. Not now. Not ever.
Nor did I have any intention of giving him what he wanted.
“It matters when your past memories return,” he said. “That knowledge, those memories, they aren’t harmless. They change things, they change you. When you remember who you are, who you were, you remember your truth. And when that happens, you can never be the same again.”Ereshya,he purred the name into my mind, causing shivers to race down my arms.
“No,” I said, carefully eyeing the Valalumir shard on the bed. I’d taken to sleeping beside it. Unnecessary since it had been cursed by Auriel for its protection. He’d made it so itcould never be taken by Moriel, or anyone else, ever again. And thanks to my betrayal, because Lyr had handed it to me, it was mine. Until I surrendered it to him.
IfI surrendered it to him.
Aemon had only asked me to relinquish my claim once since that first day. I’d refused, waiting for him to explode and attack me with all of his strength, and magic. Or worse, order his akadim to attack me for him. I’d braced for it. But he’d remained calm, and nodded as if I were being perfectly reasonable.
“As you wish,” he’d said at my refusal. And then he turned away from me to talk at length with an akadim. I’d noticed this one in particular because he was different from the others. He had the same paleness in his skin, the same fangs slicing past his lips, and the glowing red of the beasts’ eyes. But the similarities between him and the others ended there. He somehow looked less demonic than the rest. He was shorter, his hands were clawed, but almost finely so, and something in his face retained its mortality in a way I couldn’t explain. He seemed intelligent, alert, almost as if he were halfway between being alive and akadim.
I waited the rest of that day and night for a second request for the shard, waited after Mercurial came and taunted me one last time that I’d made a mistake.
