I pressed a quick, impulsive kiss to his lips, and he shuddered.
“Just as I’ve been yearning for you,” he said roughly, his large hands circling my waist as he kissed me back. It was passionate and all-consuming, an explosion of desire that had been suppressed for far too long. I gasped as he held me tighter, enjoying the pleasant flutter in my stomach that his eagerness coaxed out. But the kiss was over as quickly as it began. When he pulled back, his eyes were shining. “A light in the bitter dark. A clever, bewitching girl who rose above the darkness that sought to consume her whole.”
The shadows around us tightened, cocooning us, shielding us from the Nocturne’s incessant pull. It made me remember the shadows that had called to me during all those bleak, lonely nights in Norhavellis. The shadows I’d tried desperately to ignore.
“I was just a shadow of myself before—” He stopped abruptly, understanding flashing across his face. “I was a shadow of myself; a shadow missing its whole.Youmerged us. Now I have everything. My memories, my power, mylife—I have it all.”
“And that… upsets you?” I asked, not grasping why he suddenly looked so pained.
“No,” he answered, holding my chin as he searched my eyes. “But what you just did defies simple dream logic.” He turned away, warring with something within himself. “Something isn’t right, Esmer. It shouldn’t bepossible—”
A warbling, desperate cry made us both jump up; the demon I had spared earlier was crawling toward us on the rocks. Before we could understand what was happening, it shuddered violently as its wings fell off, its fur melted into skin, its wrinkled scalp grew hair, and its limbs arranged themselves into shorter, more precise variations. Variations that were indisputably human.
“You saved me,” the woman sobbed, grasping at the stone as she tried to stand. “I was trapped in that monster’s body, but together you pulled my soul free.”
Together you pulled my soul free.
Together.
That admission rocked something deep inside my heart, a part of myself that had been aching to find its purpose for far too long.
The woman looked down at her hands, which were smooth and no longer clawed, then closed her eyes, smiling widely as her body began to disappear. “I’m being called home,” she cried. “I’m home.”
And then, in a burst of star-flecked shadow, she was gone.
“Her soul wastrappedin a demon’s body?” I said, my mind racing to make sense of the preternatural transformation.
“She looked just like the demons in my castle,” the Shadow Bringer sputtered. “Maker, even her cries sounded like them.”
That’s it.
It was the answer to a question that had disturbed me since I had first set foot in the Shadow Bringer’s castle. His demons wanted out—but perhaps what they wanted was more than just freedom from the castle? They didn’t listen to the Shadow Bringer as though he was their lord; rather, they were bound to him as though his darkness called to some hopeful, desperate part of themselves. Except the Shadow Bringer hadn’t realized this—hadn’t known how to use it in a way that could free them.
But somehow, together, we could.
Together wejust did.
“What if that’s where souls go after they’re fully Corrupt?” I began,starting to formulate a theory that left me nauseated. “A demon can fully take over a dreamer’s physical body, but where does the human’s soul go in the meantime? The tales sayyoudevour the dreamer’s soul if the Light Bringer doesn’t reach them in time.”
The Shadow Bringer shook his head. “And we both know that isn’t true.”
I thumbed my chin. “Corruption can be a slow process. A progressive descent into a full demonic takeover.” I shivered in disgust, remembering Eden as she lost her battle to Corruption. Sometimes she was lucid. Herself. But in a matter of days, she was more demon than girl. “When Eden was herself during her Corruption, she’d tell me about her visions. They were scary and very… dark. I always thought her Corruptive demon was tormenting her during these dreams, but maybe she was actuallyinhabitingher demon.”
“And when Corruption fully occurs, the process is permanent,” the Bringer supplied.
I stumbled on, growing more and more certain that I was right. “It would make sense for the dreamer’s soul to anchor itself to the closest thing resembling a body. And that that body would be the demon’s. A soul for a soul, a body for a body.”
The Bringer looked utterly horrified. “If this is true, it will change everything.”
“Those demons in your castle—what if those werepeople? The souls of those lost to Corruption and left uncleansed by the Light Bringer.”
He shook his head. “Impossible. They have never displayed any semblance of humanity.”
“But neither did that woman,” I insisted. “While trapped, the souls might forget they were ever human in the first place. And our shadows are the key. Our shadows canfree them, Bringer.”
Overhead, in the clouds, Mithras jumped down from the Revel.
He was coming to betray Erebus—coming to show the Weavers that his friend had summoned demons from the Nocturne. And oncethe Weavers knew, it would be chaos. We would be hunted, just as Erebus was all those years ago.
