He didn’t want to die.
Gods, he didn’t.
But if it saved Merrick, if itsparedIsara from what came next, then it would be the most useful thing he’d done in centuries. And there was something almost poetic about that.
He could see it, now. Merrick standing in the throne room, shadow-crowned and blood-marked, power humming through the floor. Xyliria choking on her last breath, finally, finally silenced. His people freed from her grasp.
And Varyth…
Maybe he would accept the offering. Maybe he would see it as enough. Ashterion’s own death in exchange for the pain they had inflicted on his court. On Isara.
Isara.
Her name flared through him. Her face rose behind his eyelids, vivid andalive. Too alive. It hit something in his chest he hadn’t let himself feel in years. Something tender. Dangerous.
He shoved the thought away.
No.
He forced his mind back to the plan. To the blade. To the thrum of power in the walls of this cursed chamber, the heartbeat of the court that pulsed in time with his own.
It was the only path. Ashterion knew it, down to the marrow. There was no clever manoeuvre left, no final card to play. No bargain that wouldn’t cost more than it saved. Only this.
And still, he grieved.
Not for the throne. Not even for his life. But for what he’d dared, once, to imagine he might have again.
He’d clung to it, stupidly. To theideaof return. As though he might someday step through that door again and find themwaiting. As though forgiveness could be earned if he bled enough. As though the wreckage he’d become could somehowfitback into that place.
But that was fantasy.
He knew better now.
No death could redeem him. No blade could carve his sins away. Whatever waited for him beyond the veil—oblivion, judgment, nothing at all—was more than he deserved.
The steel sang across his skin again, another shallow cut, and he barely felt it. He was too deep in it now. Too far away.
Lost in the memory of golden light on polished wood, the flicker of candle flames at dusk, the echo of footsteps that no longer walked these halls.
He would never return. He would never bethatmale again.
The ache twisted in his chest, dull and constant.
He didn’t flinch when the blade nicked across his collarbone.
And then?—
He heard them.
His shadows.
At first, a whisper. A ripple in the wrong direction.
They hummed to life at the edges of the chamber, a low tune threading through the air. It wasn’t one of his. He hadn’t summoned it. Hadn’t fed it.
And yet… it wasfamiliar.
His breath caught.
