“I won’t,” I somehow manage. The words come out sounding like a promise torn from somewhere deep inside me.
She gives me a small, crooked smile that does dangerous things to my resolve. “Good. Now, let’s go recalibrate some wards before I lose my nerve.” She turns and heads for the archives, her steps quick and determined.
I follow, falling into place behind her, the phantom heat of her touch still burning on my collarbone. A shadow. A shield.Whatever she godsdamned needs me to be.
22
ESME
The training grounds are my sanctuary. The familiar scent of packed earth, sweat, and steel settles me. I move through a sequence of katas, my muscles burning, each movement trailing ghostly afterimages visible only to me—a new phenomenon since the first trial. One I’m still getting used to.
The coven's spirits hover at the edges of my vision, their whispers brushing against my consciousness like cobwebs. I push through the distraction, my mind finding a cold, sharp focus in the repetition despite the constant awareness of being watched by spirits I’ve never directly communed with before.
My blade sings through the air, a silver extension of my will. Here, I am in control. Here, there are rules.
The second trial has a name: The Infinite Challenge. It’s a beautifully simple yet admittedly terrifying concept. Blythe briefed me before breakfast. I will be dropped into a pocket dimension, a self-contained reality engineered for one purpose: to break me. The rules of this reality will shift every hour on the hour. The things I face, the horrors it conjures, cannot bepermanently killed. Anything I strike down will rise again, perhaps in a new and more monstrous form. I will have twenty-four hours inside. No extraction. No escape until the clock runs out. The only goal is to survive.
It’s a trial of endurance, of adaptability. Of sanity. It is designed to strip away everything—strategy, skill, hope—until only the raw, desperate will to live remains. Or doesn't.
My blade stops, humming, an inch from the scarred wooden practice dummy. A bead of sweat traces a path down my temple.I can do this.
A wave of heat washes over my back, raising the hairs on my arms. The air shifts, growing thick with the scent of ozone and something anciently wild. I don’t need to turn around.
“You’re preparing to die.”
Dayn’s voice is a low rumble behind me, too close. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. I pivot, my blade arcing in a clean, vicious slash that bites deep into the dummy’s wooden neck.
“I’m preparing to win,” I correct, not looking at him.
“There’s little chance of winning in a battle of attrition you were designed to lose,” he says. I feel him move, a silent, predatory glide. He stops beside me, his presence almost a physical weight, a gravitational pull that tilts my world on its axis. “You will exhaust your magic. Your mind will fracture. That is the goal of the trial.”
“Thank you for the tactical assessment,” I say, my voice clipped. I pull my blade free and reset my stance. “Your concern is noted.”
“This isn’t concern.” His hand closes over my wrist, the one holding the sword. His touch is a brand, a searing heat that travels up my arm and settles deep in my chest. The bond between us flares, a sudden, dizzying rush of power and shared sensation. For a second, I feel the ancient, coiled calm withinhim, the vast patience of a mountain. And I know he feels the frantic, caged animal in me. “This is an objection to the squandering of a valuable asset.”
My fingers tighten on the hilt of my sword until my knuckles are white. “Let go of me.”
He doesn’t. Instead, his other hand comes to rest on my waist, his thumb pressing into the sensitive space just above my hip bone. He pulls me back against him, flush against the hard planes of his body. My breath catches in my throat. Every inch of me is suddenly, searingly aware of him—the solid wall of his chest against my back, the heat of his thighs against mine, the way his breath stirs the hair at my temple.
“Your stance is wrong for this,” he murmurs, his lips near my ear. His voice vibrates through me, a primal thrum that resonates in my bones. “You hold yourself for a duel. A quick, decisive strike. You need to be rooted. An oak against a hurricane.” He adjusts my hips, shifts my feet with his own, molding my body to his will. “Feel the difference? The power isn’t in your arms. It’s here.” His hand on my waist presses deeper, a focal point of impossible heat. “Drawn from the earth. Anchored. Unmovable.”
He’s right. Damn him, he’s right. The shift is subtle, but I feel it instantly—a deeper connection to my own strength, a stability I didn’t have a moment before. But the cost of this lesson is a surrender I can’t afford. My body is humming, not just with magic, but with a treacherous, terrifying awareness of his. Our bond is a roaring fire now, singing in my veins, demanding more. It wants to close the last few millimeters between us, to erase the lines, to drag me back into the heat of him. His blood hums in my memory—rich and dark as sin—and the craving claws its way up my spine.
“I know how to fight,” I manage, my voice tight.
“You know how to kill,” he corrects, his voice a low murmur against my skin. “This trial isn’t about killing. It’s about notdying.” He leans in closer, his chin brushing my shoulder. “You cannot out-fight infinity, Esme. You can only outlast it. And you do not have the stamina. Not alone.”
The implication hangs in the air between us, heavy and suffocating.
I wrench myself from his grasp, stumbling forward a step, my blade held defensively. I turn to face him, my chest heaving. “What do you want, Dayn?”
His golden eyes are molten, intense enough to strip me bare. He doesn’t move to close the distance I’ve created, but his gaze holds me captive. “I want you to live,” he says, and the simple, brutal honesty of it hits me harder than any physical blow. “And I am beginning to suspect that, despite your suicidal pride, you want the same thing… So let me help you.”
The words are unexpected, and they wrong-foot me. I was braced for an argument, another lecture about how my path is wrong, rather than an offer. I narrow my eyes a fraction. “Help me how?”
“By lending you my strength,” he says, his voice low. “As you know, the bond between us is a conduit. Incomplete, yes. But functional. Through it, I can feed you my stamina. The raw endurance of a dragon. It will not make you invincible, but it will give you a deeper well to draw from. It might be the edge that helps you survive.”
I stare at him, measuring his offer against the instinct drilled into every Salem witch: trust no one—especially no dragon—and stand on your own power. Taking his help would mean confessing a truth I don’t want to face: that alone, I might break. The thought curdles low in my stomach. But the math is brutally simple: twenty-four hours against infinity. My reserves against the bottomless well of a dragon's stamina. Even Blythe, who trusts Dayn about as far as she could throw him, acknowledged our bond could be leveraged. Tactically… it's sound.
