Mireth clung to Eryx. they didn’t run to me. They didn’t smile. They didn’t cry out in joy.
They hesitated.
I took a step forward, and theyflinched. It was subtle. But enough to shatter something inside me I hadn’t realised was still whole.
I dropped to my knees on instinct, not knowing what to do with my hands, my words, my everything. “Mireth,” I whispered. “Eryx. I’m here.”
Eryx took a shaky step forward. Mireth held him back.
A sob clawed its way up my throat, but I swallowed it. I didn’t reach for them. I didn’t dare. I just knelt there, trembling andbloodstained, trying not to fall apart while the silence stretched taut around us.
Then Mireth stepped forward. “Mama?”
The name cracked me open.
I nodded, tears spilling freely now. “Yes, love. It’s me.”
Eryx followed her, stumbling into my arms, burying his face in my neck as Mireth knelt beside him. I held them both, held them so tightly I feared I’d crush them—but they clung to me in return.
Relief surged through me.
But beneath it, something fractured.
They were still mine. But they were afraid of the darkness clinging to me. And I didn’t know how to wash it away.
Varyth knelt beside me, silent, solid, grounding. One of his hands came to rest lightly at the curve of my back, his touch barely there. But I felt it like the first warm breeze after a storm.
His voice was low, meant only for me. “They’re safe. You’re safe. That’s what matters now.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, trying to hold back the trembling that threatened to undo me.
But his presence sank into the cracks.
I should’ve felt comforted. I should’ve collapsed against him, let the warmth numb the edges. Instead, Ashterion’s words rose like rot from a grave, curling around the base of my spine.
There are others who are much more adept at hiding what they are.
The memory twisted, and I could almost hear his voice in my ear again.
I shoved it down. Hard.
Down into the tainted parts of me. The places I’d been carving out piece by piece since that first moment in Xyliria’s court. Since the decisions I’d made. Since the screams. Since the blood.
So much broken. So much I didn’t know how to put back.
I tightened my arms around Mireth and Eryx, pressing my cheek into Eryx’s soft curls as Mireth clung to my side like she wasn’t sure she could let go again.
I didn’t deserve this.
Didn’t deservethem.
Didn’t deserve Varyth’s quiet strength beside me. His patience. His promise of safety when I was half-convinced I was the most dangerous thing in the room.
But they were here.
They weremine.
And even if I was too much of a monster to ever deserve this again…
