ESME
Irequest an early dismissal from Corvin since I’ve emptied all the information I have, and he grants it. My mother turns toward me, her mouth parting to speak, but I’m already moving. I can’t. Not now. I can’t face her questions, her concern, or the heat of Dayn’s stare a moment longer.
I slip out of the chamber through a narrow side door reserved for service, my movements silent. The heavy oak closes behind me with a soft click, muffling the voices of the council and sealing me in the familiar quiet of our academy’s corridors.
I just need to walk for a moment. To feel the cold stone beneath my boots and breathe air that doesn’t taste of politics and sulfur. This place is supposed to be my home. My sanctuary. It feels like too long since it’s been either.
The main entrance hall is empty at this hour. Late morning light spills through the high arched windows, catching the dust motes drifting in the air. Portraits of past Head Trainers and Wardens line the walls, their painted eyes stern, unyielding. I used to feel pride looking at them, a sense of belonging to that long, unbroken line of magicals who once defended this place.
Now… I’m not sure what to feel. Every shadow here carries a memory, but it’s like they’ve faded around the edges, like old ink left in the sun.
I bypass the path to the dormitories and head toward the western wing, toward the training grounds. The rhythmic thud of practice dummies being struck, the sharp crack of blades meeting enchanted steel—the sounds are a balm to my frayed nerves. This is a language I understand. Violence. Discipline. Control. Things that made sense before my world was ripped open by… a dragon’s kiss.
I swallow.
Through an archway, I see a class of younger students running drills in the main courtyard. Their movements are clumsy, eager. Except in the far corner, I spot Isola executing a near-perfect disarming sequence, her face blank as her opponent's practice dagger clatters across the stones. The youngest of my three cousins, already moving like a shadow. The other first-years give her a wide berth.
A wave of nostalgia washes over me. I remember being one of them, my muscles aching, my lungs burning, feeling nothing but the singular focus of the fight. A simpler time, when my only goal was to be the sharpest weapon in Darkbirch’s arsenal.
I turn down a less-trafficked corridor, the one that leads past the armory and the advanced combat simulators. The air here smells of ozone and whetstone. It’s a clean, sharp scent that cuts through the fog in my head.
Ahead, Riona, from my year, and eight other students are sharpening silver daggers at a workbench. Riona is the only one who looks up as I approach, her light brown eyes taking in my state in a single, sweeping glance. She doesn’t ask questions. She just gives me a single, sharp nod—a gesture of pure, uncomplicated acknowledgment.I see you. I’m still here. I nod back, the brief, silent exchange more comforting than questioning. Sheknows me; knows how I am right after returning from a mission.And this wasn’t like any mission before.
Just past the armory doors, Atlas and five other guys from third and fourth year lean against the wall, heads bent over a complex warding schematic. I leave them to it, moving silently past. These aren’t ordinary activities; all are targeted for war.
A reminder that I don’t have long to myself.
I choose a final route and find my way to the northern battlements, a place I used to come to think. The wind is sharp up here, whipping my hair across my face and carrying the scent of pine from the surrounding forest. The wall overlooks the training grounds on one side and the vast, dark expanse of the woods on the other. It feels like standing on the edge of my own life.
I lean against the cold stone, letting the wind scour the heat from my skin.
I used to know exactly what I was. A blade.
Sharp. Certain. Useful.
Salem steel, Darkbirch edge. They taught me that purpose mattered more than pain: don’t ask why you’re cutting, just make sure it’s clean.
Now I stand feeling… unbalanced. Something fundamental has been altered in me, as though my center of gravity has shifted overnight. My movements feel… borrowed. Even my physical reflexes are no longer entirely my own.
I look down at my palms in the cold northern light and swear I see a shimmer that shouldn't be there: a ghostly warm glow beneath my skin, like metal remembering another master's fire. His fire.
They call it a bond.But what does that mean? What does it lead to?
Complete your union.
Brynn’s words echo in my head, a sharp whisper. Helena didn’t mean it as a metaphor. I know she didn’t. I knew that evenin the sudden, suffocating silence of the council chamber… in the way Dayn’s eyes had flared with a dark, knowing fire.
I can’t know whether I should trust Helena. My faith in our ancestors’ spirits has taken a knock, thanks to my grandmother’s commandment to—blindly—drink a dragon’s blood, without so much as a footnote about the consequences.
But what I do know—feel—is that the bond between Dayn and me isn’t just a connection. It feels like… an engine. An appetite. Like it wants something. Like it’s been pulling at me ever since Heathborne, a subtle, constant pressure at the base of my skull, my throat; a hum in my blood; a hunger in my core.
And I don’t know where it’s leading.
Where it wants to lead.
And that’s the part that terrifies me.
A piercing shriek tears through the air, shattering my thoughts. Not practice. The coven’s external breach alarm.
