“Look at yourself,” he murmurs, turning me back toward the mirror.
I do.
My reflection stares back. The Ether around her is more black than silver now, moving with purpose and control I’ve never had before.
She looks powerful. Dangerous.
I remember standing here before. Staring at myself in the black silk. Thinking I looked like Riley—confident, certain, everything I wasn’t.
I thought I was pretending. Playing dress-up.
But I see it now. I wasn’t trying to be her.
She was showing me what I could become.
What I was always meant to be.
His.
For just a moment, I swear I see another hand beside mine in the glass. Different. Unfamiliar.
Then it’s gone.
Ethos doesn’t notice. He’s already speaking again, his voice a constant pressure that leaves no room for other thoughts.
“Tomorrow, I want you again.” His breath is warm against my ear. “I need you.”
I should say no. Should pull away.
Instead, I just nod. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe my silence is just heavy enough that it feels like consent.
His smile curves against my temple. “Good girl.”
The warmth flickers once more, weaker now. Barely there.
I let it fade beneath the hunger that feels like coming home. Beneath the certainty that this is where I belong.
I don’t notice when he steps back into shadow. Don’t register when the chamber grows darker.
I just stand there staring at my reflection. At the black Ether curling around me like smoke. At the girl who finally knows what she wants. At the girl who is finally everything she always wanted to be.
Even if what she wants will destroy her.
Chapter 28
Seth
I’m still shaking.
Not from cold—the Void doesn’t have temperature. Except for that god forsaken chambershewas in. But from whatever just happened, whatever that was, when something locked into place so final that my entire body felt like it was being torn apart and rewritten at the same time.
The thread in my chest hums. Steady. Real.
I press my palm flat against my sternum, half expecting to feel something physical—a mark, a scar, anything that proves what just happened wasn’t my mind finally breaking.
Nothing. Just skin and bone and that impossible hum beneath both.
“What the hell is it?” I whisper to the darkness.
