He smiles, and it’s the smile from an actual construct, empty, hungry. Yet the voice that rolls out is Dayn’s—raw, familiar, unbearable.
“Hour’s up, little witch. Time to graduate.”
The ground trembles. Out of the cracked stone rise blades—hundreds of them—each one a mirror of the sword I dropped back in the ruined city. They hem us in, creating an arena boundary.
I understand with the clarity of a guillotine: the trial never left. It only lulled on borrowed time, paused in a flaw Dayn forced open. Now we’re spat right back into the fire.
Blythe’s preparatory explanation echoes in my mind:“An Ide is lured when the soul is driven to its breaking point, for only the strongest can summon an Ide. You have it in you, Esme. Just remember: mercy will hold you back. There is no room for it in war, and none in an Ide trial.”
I taste bile in my throat as Dayn—no, the thing wearing him—tilts his head. Strange runes around his throat brighten, and I suddenly feel the bond between us flaring so violently my knees buckle. Power floods in, but it’s not the intoxicating kind he’s fed me before; it’s like molten metal, scouring every vein. I clamp my teeth tight to keep from gasping.
He starts walking. Each step drives another scalding wave through me, as if the ground were pumping his life directly into me—too much, too fast. My vision tunnels. I draw my shadows instinctively, but they shred the moment they materialize, as if his own power drinks them.
Ten paces shrink to five. He doesn’t bother with weapons; he is the weapon. Dark claws flick out even in his human form, scales rippling up his arms in obsidian-gold patches. The construct’s smile never wavers.
He halts an arm’s length away. Heat ripples off him as he raises one clawed hand and traces my cheek with the back of a knuckle, tenderness and menace braided so tight I can’t tell which is real.
“I gave you an hour,” he whispers. “Now pay the toll.”
His power convulses again. Inside my chest something feels like it’s tearing—fabric of soul, not flesh. I feel the rip travel downward, splitting memory from identity. The cave, the grotto, the way he said my name like it was sacred—all of it is scraped out, pinned against this new reality for inspection.
He leans close, mouth at my ear. “Kill me, or I’ll unmake you piece by piece. You know I can.”
Yes. I know. I feel the first piece tear free—my mother’s face dissolving into static. Another follows—Brynn’s laugh scattering into shards of glass. They hover around us like embers before winking out. The trial feeds on them, forging its fuel from everything I love, fused now with the violent voltage of dragon power.
I bite down on the scream clawing up my throat and force my feet to move. He stalks; I circle.
“Stop,” I rasp, but I don’t know which Dayn I’m talking to—the one who asked for my choice or the one who will peel it from me molecule by molecule. “Please.”
A flicker stutters behind his eyes, a warm gold pulse under the sharpness. It’s small, a candle shuttered in a storm, but I see it. Ifeel it. Our bond thrums a counter-beat, the memory of hot mineral water, his mouth on every part of me, the wordhere.
The construct smiles wider, crueler, and the bond squeezes as if clenched by a fist. Pain detonates behind my eyes. The ground tilts and the blades circling us seem to hum, urging me to grab one, use it, end this.
“Make your move, Salem,” he says, close to mocking. “Or your brother will be next.”
The trial wants rage. It wants me feral, mindless. And gods, it’s easy to give it. My shadows strain, shiver—then wither under the furnace of him. I swallow hard, force my focus smaller, to the ring tight on my finger and the heat it’s still holding like a secret.
I step in instead of out.
He tilts his head, amused—then I’m against his chest, palms flat, breath mixing. He’s so much taller; I have to reach high to catch his mouth. I kiss him. Not soft—devouring, desperate, the kind of kiss that tries to barter time. His breath rushes in like he didn’t expect me to close distance. His hands tighten at my waist, claws pricking cloth, a warning disguised as a caress.
“I remember,” I whisper against his lips, voice shredded. “I remember the water. I remember you asking.” The yellow in his gaze sharpens, but beneath it a thin seam of gold glows, seeming to flicker like a candle.
The blades surrounding us sing in the windless air. But I don’t reach for one, I reach inside.
His power rips through me like a live wire, searing every nerve ending raw. The pain is exquisite, unbearable—but beneath the inferno, I feel something else: a gossamer thread, delicate as spider silk yet unmistakablythere, woven from the mineral-rich steam of the cave, from the heat of his breath branding my neck, from the bruising grip of his hands as they'd pinned mine exactly where he wanted. I mentally seize thisfilament with desperate hands. It sizzles against my consciousness, scorching my very essence, exactly as I knew it would. This connection transcends flesh—it is him, distilled to his purest form; it is me, stripped of pretense; it is the stolen hour we carved from chaos and the inconceivable choice he entrusted to me alone.
“I’m sorry,” I say into his mouth, and taste iron, and salt, and steam. “I’m going to use you.”
“Always do,” the construct purrs, and the gold flickers harder, like a pulse. For an instant I swear I hear him, the real him, under the cruel smile.
Do it.
I move.
My left hand stays on his face, fingers in his hair, holding him exactly where I need him—nose to nose, breath to breath. My right drops and opens. I don’t call the blades. I don’t call the shadows. I lay my palm over his heart.
Skin to furnace. Ring to ring. The power surging in me screams.
