Something snapped in his eyes. Something wild, fierce, unbound. He stumbled back, wings shuttering. Hesitating. He flew to the pillars, just as Erebus had. It was all so similar—his expression. The urgency.
The look of death in his eyes.
Only this time, when he jumped, I followed.
I thought I could fly.
I was wrong.
Outside the bounds of the Revel, my wings were worthless and limp. Wind ripped into my face, swept through my hair, and tangled my dress’s delicate layers. A slipper—then another—fell off my feet. My mask slipped past my chin, catching at my neck, and I clawed at the silk ribbon and beadwork until it, too, fell away. I cursed loudly. The roar of the wind carried that off, too.
But I was dreaming.Dreaming.I should have been able to fly.
Why can’t I fly?
I tried to summon my imagination, but my thoughts were jumbled. I couldn’t think beyond the roaring wind. Couldn’t see beyond the hair that whipped into my eyes. My wings twitched, slowly slumbering into life, but it was too late.
Without anything to steady me, I plummeted like a rock. And slammed face-first into the Shadow Bringer.
He spun around with a snarl, wings flaring, and twisted a hand in the front of my dress, pulling me close. With his other hand, heunsheathed his blade and thrust it under my jaw. It was all so instinctual—a cloak of violence worn a thousand times.
“Youfool!” he shouted, stopping our plummet with a single push of his wings. “I nearly cut off your head. I thought you were a demon. Or a—”
“Do Ilooklike a demon?” I snapped, clinging to his chest even as I pushed his blade away. “And since when do demons wear dresses, or silk slippers?”
His eyes were unusually sharp as he stared at me. “You can’t control your wings.”
“Clearly not.”
“Then why did you jump?” he asked, repositioning me in his arms. “It was pure foolishness to follow me.”
I thought I could fly. And I wanted to help you.
“Take me back to the Revel so I can keep dancing, then,” I said, but the words snagged. Felt dry and wrong.
“It’s too late for that,” he said, eyes hardening. “We have a future to mend—if we’re not already too late.” His chest heaved against mine, betraying every emotion that hid behind his wall of shadow. I had never heard him sound like this. So broken and frantic.
“Five hundred years.Five hundred yearsof rotting away in the dark. There has to be a way out,” he said.
The Nocturne stretched below us, still as glass, reflecting the sky’s remaining stars. Near the horizon, the barest hint of dawn trickled in. For a moment, it was just us, the clash of sky against sea, and our mingling breath.
“Your village and its Corrupt have confined you. Stifled you. Forced you to live a life you didn’t want for yourself.” His voice broke then. “Now consider what that miserable reality would do to you over more than five lifetimes. Five lifetimes alone.”
Visions—memories—flashed before me, demanding my attention and pulling me under. They made me into the Shadow Bringer. Made me see and feel the world as he did.
Erebus waded into the Nocturne, cloak dragging underneath its starlit waters.
Here was what he had waited for. His power; his purpose.
It was all forthis.
But when he placed his bare hands upon the waters, ready to destroy the demons once and for all, the Nocturne changed. To his horror, the water darkened, twisted, and boiled. Cracked apart like hollow bones. Demons roared under its waves and broke free from its depths. They screamed violently into the night, desperate for blood and dreamers’ souls. The Nocturne’s shadows—its darkness—could not be cleansed. Erebus could not do it. He had failed.
He stumbled back.
Mithras was wrong. Their plan for Erebus to cleanse the Nocturne while Mithras gathered the hidden demons infesting the Revel—all to be crushed by the combined power of the seven Weavers, ending the demonic plague on the Dream Realm—was wrong. Erebus was no hero. His powers held no noble purpose. He was a blight, a curse, a disease. And for that, humanity would be destroyed.
Erebus looked to the sky, desperate to find his golden-eyed friend.
