Nyv doesn’t give the dragon more than a glance, her stormy gray eyes sharp and cautious. “And you’re just another lizard who thinks he’s a king,” she snaps, cold as frost. “We’re full of those, too. Let’s go.”
Byzu doesn’t flinch. Instead, he lets a short, smooth laugh escape. He follows, hands loose at his sides, stride confident, the weight of him impossible to ignore. Every step radiates curiosity, hunger, and the unspoken thrill of a challenge.
Not the reaction she was wanting.
I can’t help the smirk that touches my lips as they disappear around the corner. But the amusement fades as quickly as it came, leaving me alone in the silent, cold corridor.
I turn back to the door to Merlin’s chamber, my hand rising to touch it before I stop myself. Behind that wood, they are preparing to wake a god or a monster. They are gambling withEsme’s life, and Brynn is standing right in the blast radius. And for the first time in a long, long time, I find myself praying to any entity that might be listening that they all walk out of that room alive.
18
ESME
My eyes are fixed on the altar, on the hulking slab of dark stone that is Merlin’s final resting place. The air around it is so cold it feels like it’s pulling the heat from my skin.
Dayn's presence, behind me, burns into my back like a brand. I'd braced for him to intervene, to grab my arm or growl some command. But instead he just... waits. Watches. I’m not sure why I find that more disconcerting.
“The old communion rites are insufficient for our purpose,” Warden Blythe begins, her voice low, arresting my thoughts. She gestures to the slab. “We are not merely seeking guidance. We are attempting to channel a fundamental force, the very Ide of a progenitor of our line, and anchor it to our failing spiritual grid. To do that, the conduit must be… tempered.”
She turns her assessing gaze on me. “The old trial system, long since abandoned, will be repurposed. Three trials, Esme. Each one designed to stress and strengthen your connection to the bloodline, to the very essence of what it means to be a Salem.To make you a vessel strong enough to contain a god. To prove yourself worthy of it.”
“The old trial system was abandoned because it was deemed too psychologically destabilizing,” Brynn cuts in, her voice strained. She takes a step toward me. “Esme, they literally drove witches insane with?—”
“As I explained,” Blythe interrupts sharply, “while following the template, this will not precisely be the old trial system. The conditions now are different, not least because of Esme’s particular… configuration.” Her gaze locks on me. “I am confident you’re strong enough to succeed.”
I nod, lips pressed into a line, keeping my focus fixed on the elder darkblood—on those bird-of-prey eyes, her severe, silver-streaked hair—and no one else. The soldier in me is sick of the preamble. All the forethought and second-guessing. “Let’s just get the first stage done,” I say dryly. “Then we’ll see if I’m still alive.”
“The first trial is the Grave Recall,” Blythe says, her voice steady, her cool gaze never leaving mine. “In this, you will not simply commune with an ancestor, you will become them. You will inhabit their final moments, feel what they felt, wield the magic they wielded as they died. It is a powerful test of empathy and control.” She places a shallow silver bowl on the floor before me. “The connection must be pure. We will select the one whose presence runs strongest in you… Esther.”
My stomach clenches. Esther. My grandmother. My namesake. The formidable spirit I’ve communed with my entire life. I wasn’t even able to reach her earlier, but now I’m about to see through her eyes as they closed for the last time… if this works.
“Kneel,” Blythe commands.
I obey, sinking to my knees on the cold stone. The fabric of my robes pools around me. My heart hammers a steady,disciplined rhythm against my ribs. This is it. No more stalling. Just duty.
I narrow my eyes, determined to block out every other presence in the room as the ancient yet formidable darkblood begins to chant in the Old Tongue—that primordial language of darkbloods few have mastered, said to predate written history itself, born when magicals first split into light and dark.
Blythe’s voice rises and falls in a hypnotic cadence. She sprinkles a fine black powder into the silver bowl. It ignites with a flash of violet light, and the scent of burnt sage and something ancient, like petrified lightning, fills the room. The light from the bowl casts dancing shadows on the walls, twisting the familiar chamber into something alien.
“Esme Salem, blood of her blood,” Blythe intones, her eyes locking with mine. “Let the river of time bend. Let the veil between souls thin. Recall the grave. Remember the end.”
The violet light surges, spilling from the bowl and rushing toward me. It hits me like a thousand icy needles piercing my skin, my mind, my very soul. The chamber dissolves. Brynn’s horrified face, Dayn’s burning golden eyes, the stone walls—they all melt away into a screaming vortex of color and noise. I am unmade, torn apart, my consciousness scattered like dust.
Then, just as suddenly, I am re-formed.
The first thing I feel is pain. A deep, grinding agony in my left side, as if a white-hot spear has been driven through my ribs. The air is thick with the coppery stench of blood—my blood—and the acrid smell of spent spell-fire. I’m leaning against the rough bark of a massive, black-barked tree, the same kind that surrounds Darkbirch, but older, wilder. My own hands—no,herhands, slender and pale and stained crimson—are pressed against the wound in a futile attempt to hold myself together.
Magic thrums in my veins, a familiar, powerful current, but it’s frayed, exhausted. My vision swims.
Around me, the forest is a slaughterhouse. Darkblood bodies lie twisted among the roots of the ancient trees, their robes stained dark with their own lives. The air rings with the clash of enchanted weapons and the shriek of dying magic. I can see them through the haze of my failing sight—clearbloods, moving in disciplined formations, their armor gleaming with silver purification runes, their hands blazing with white light. They are winning. They have already won.
But fear is distant, a faint echo behind the roaring wall of pain and a cold, unyielding fury. I am Esther Esme Salem. I am the matriarch of my line. And I will not die kneeling.
With a gasp that feels like swallowing broken glass, I try to push myself up, to find my feet, to raise a hand and call the darkness. My mind screams the incantations, but my body—Esther’s body—refuses to obey. The hole in my side is a gaping maw of agony, and I can feel other, smaller wounds weeping blood down my back and legs.
Five of them are coming for me now. Their faces are grim masks of certainty, their steps measured. The end. They see a wounded matriarch, a prize to be taken, a final nail in the coven’s coffin.
The warrior in me, the part that is purely Esme, rages against this broken vessel. I want to fight. I want to tear the shadows from the trees and wrap them around their throats. I want to feel their bones snap in my hands. But all I can do is kneel, my breath a ragged, wet sound in my own ears.
