Shadows rioted around his arm and swept over the skin where my sword hid. I dug my fingernails into my palms, readying myself for the fight that was surely about to begin. I could still smell the blood of Elliot’s demon on my weapon; I had reduced it from a colossus into nothing at all.
Use what you were given, and conquer all that you face.
The Shadow Bringer had tricked me.Baitedme into taking his place. I had felt sympathy for him before. Fascination, even. But maybe that had all been for a reason—to get me here where I was at this moment, his exposed throat a mere breath from my hidden blade.
He sat up straight, smile vanishing. “Esmer, I never left the tomb. I tried for days, but the stone wouldn’t move.”
The blade in my palm felt distant. It slid away, no longer interested in a fight. “It’s becoming difficult to tell when you’re lying or when you’re telling the truth,” I said.
“I haven’t been lying. I assumed you knew I was teasing you.”
“No one in my position would have assumed you were teasing,” I snapped, incredulous. My pulse was racing; I didn’t know why. “In case you’ve forgotten, it’s only acceptable to tease someone if youlikethem—and if they like you back. You betrayed me and left me here to rot, so you can’t possibly like me, and I feel nothing but hatred toward you.”
“I don’t blame you for hating me,” he breathed, turning his back to me and putting his feet on the floor. “But if I remember correctly, we held no alliance. I wouldn’t call it betrayal if we were never truly on the same side.”
He had a point.
“Still, I—”
“And you tried to kill me. Several times, I should add,” he said, turning to look at me. “You likelystillwish to kill me.”
He had another point.
“You can’t blame me for feeling that way,” I said.
He shook his head. “I don’t. As you shouldn’t blame me for taking measures to ensure my freedom, even if it meant that others mightsuffer. Others who tried tokillme. Betrayal is an act reserved for family, comrades, or lovers. We are none of those three things.”
“And yet you came back,” I snapped.
Above us, I could hear his chandeliers swaying softly. It was a sound I had never heard before, likely because there had never been true silence in his castle. There were always screaming demons or unsettling sounds from the hall. The lack of sound was strange. Strange and unexpectedly peaceful.
“They really are gone, then? The demons have escaped?” he asked, feeling their absence as much as I did.
“I couldn’t contain them. I had no chance,” I confessed.
“Then I need to find a way to call them back, or else Corruption will spread ruthlessly throughout the Dream Realm. It will be worse than ever before.”
A resoundingcrackthrummed from the ceiling, sending a web of hair and a massive chandelier crashing to the ground. Dark stones ricocheted across the floor, cracking against the bed, and an obsidian statuette the size of my forearm slammed into the Bringer’s back as Somnus unfurled from the rubble.
“Your escalating personal drama,enthrallingas it may be, is distracting.” Somnus plucked one of the chandelier’s arms from where it tangled in his hair, eyes narrowing in distaste. “Your castle is a wreck, Shadow Bringer. Have you not had enough time to get your affairs in order?”
“Somnus,” the Bringer snarled, shadows writhing about his shoulders and down the length of his hands. The room darkened, shadows deepening and drawing near.
“Shall we talk, or do you insist on violence?” the Weaver said, baiting the Bringer.
“I have no words.” The Bringer let loose a primal, gut-wrenching roar as he leapt into Somnus.
Shadows tore over them like a crashing wave, and they both fell through the front of the bedchamber, tumbling down to the floor below. I staggered from the canopied bed, glancing at the hole where thechandelier once hung. A wisp of a blanket, one of the Bringer’s silk-lined ones, hung by a corner in the rafters, the only evidence of where Somnus had made his perch.
Had Somnussleptthere?
“I have spent centuries imagining how I’d kill your kind!” the Shadow Bringer bellowed, snarling again as a massivecrashechoed up through the chamber. Somnus’s laugh rang out, clear and full of mirth. “You are not allowed to comehere”—Crash! Bang! Crack!—“and tellmewhat to do.”
Somnus released another mirthful laugh, forcing another roar from the Bringer.
I ventured to the stairs leading from the Bringer’s room, tucking back into what was left of the wall, and watched as the shadows poured below, seeping from cracks and corners and under the edges of furniture. They billowed out from holes in the walls and floor, swept out from the underside of my hair. All rushing, desperately, to the Shadow Bringer’s aid as he raged.
And rage he did.
