Then Stellan steps back, composure sliding into place like armor. “We should return separately. Can’t give her any reason to suspect we’re coordinating.”
“I’ll wait here. Clear my head.”
He nods once, then melts into the shadows with that unnerving grace of his. Gone so completely it’s like he was never there at all.
I’m alone with the well and the darkness, and somehow the solitude is comforting. The bond still burns quiet beneath my ribs, but now I can feel the echoes of Bree like they’re a part of my soul.
The imposter thinks she’s won. Thinks she’s claimed Bree’s place so thoroughly that no one will question it.
She’s wrong.
And by the time we’re done, she’ll know exactly how wrong she is.
I touch my wrist where the phantom shackles burned, feeling nothing but my own cold skin and raised scars that weren’t there before. The memory lingers—pain and connection and proof that somewhere, Bree is real and alive and waiting.
We’re coming, little queen.
Just hold on.
Part Two: The Devastating Truth
Chapter 9
Bree
I open my eyes to nothing.
Not darkness—nothing. The air tastes of ash and metal, burning the back of my throat. Like someone carved out the space where light should exist and left only absence behind.
I try to sit up and my hands find ground that feels wrong—too soft, like dust that’s never been walked on, but cold enough to make my fingers ache. Everything about this place feels borrowed, temporary, like it’s deciding whether to exist from moment to moment.
The only light comes from directly in front of me.
A mirror, tall and silver-framed, glowing with its own pale radiance. And standing in it, wearing my face—
Riley.
She looks exactly like me, but everything about her posture screams confidence I’ve never possessed. She stands where I was just moments ago, in the chamber, alone but looking perfectly calm about it.
“No!” The word tears out of me before I can think. “You can’t—”
Riley tilts her head, studying me through the glass like I’m something curious she found. Her mouth curves in a smile that looks wrong on my face.
“Oh, but I didn’t,” she says, voice carrying perfectly through whatever barrier separates us.
My stomach drops. Not denial—delight.
“What do you mean you didn’t?” I scramble closer to the mirror, pressing my palms against the surface. It’s cold, solid, completely unyielding. “If you didn’t do this, then how—”
A sound cuts through the darkness.
Not a sound—anoise. Something that bypasses my ears and crawls directly into my bones. Animalistic and inhuman, like a scream that’s been turned inside out and left to rot in the dark.
I clamp my hands over my ears even though it isn’t sound. My bones vibrate anyway.
I jerk back from the mirror, every instinct screaming at me to run. But there’s nowhere to go, nothing but black stretching in every direction.
“What was that?” I whisper.
