Rather than try to shape it, I let the filament I found in the water—thin, fragile, gold—run straight through my hand into him and back again, a circuit closed by mouth and breath and the last of my sanity. The construct’s smile cuts me, but under it I feel the flicker of him, the way he leans the smallest fraction into my touch like he did in the grotto, as if bowing his throat to a knife he’s chosen.
“Eyes on me,” I whisper, stealing his own command, and when his pupils flare I move.
I turn the conduit inward.
Seizing the wildfire roaring through me—the thing that has been flaying me—I hook my fingers in it, and wrench. Inward. I pour him back into himself.
His power punches into his chest under my palm like a starimploding. Heat climbs my arm, blistering, and the ring on my finger goes white-hot, the air around us cracking with the smell of burning pine and coin. The construct snarls, tries to rip free, but my left hand fists in his hair and drags him into the kiss like a benediction, like a binding. Now he tastes of iron and jasmine steam and something that breaks me.
For a heartbeat, the yellow in his eyes fractures. Gold rises—not hungry, not cruel—just Dayn. The one who waited. The one who said one hour and meant it.
The gold under the yellow in his eyes floods wide, just for a breath. And then his weight disappears from my hands, his body breaking apart into burning ash at my feet.
30
ESME
The golden dust settles on the dark ground, clinging to my clothes and skin like a phantom caress. The arena of blades shivers and retracts into the ground, leaving the plateau empty. Hollow. I stand in the silence, my arm aching from a burn that isn’t there, the ring on my finger a dull, throbbing weight. The space where he stood is a void that pulls at the air, at the light, at the breath in my lungs. I did what the trial demanded. I won. It feels exactly like dying.
The obsidian ground cracks beneath my feet, not violently, but with the quiet decay of a dream ending. The blood-dark sky pales to a familiar bruised twilight. The metallic tang in the air gives way to the scent of damp earth, of yew trees and old stone. Wrought iron fences, their spear-points glinting with phantom moonlight, rise from the dissolving ground.
I know this place. My feet are planted on the manicured grass of Darkbirch’s cemetery.
But why am I here now?
My eyes focus and I realize I am standing directly in front ofthe cold granite face of my grandmother’s grave.Esther Esme Salem.
It feels strange now to see my name mingled with hers, a woman I used to feel so close to… and despite the fact that I recently witnessed her last moments, so intimately, I still feel a distance has lodged between us. A distance I’m not sure will ever fully close.
The engraved letters seem to stare back at me, half-accusing, though I’m not sure why.
I brace myself, my hands clenching, every muscle tensing for another attack. An army of the dead. A grief-wraith born from my own bloodline. I must be ready for anything. There are still hours left of this damned trial.
Then a chill that has nothing to do with the night air slithers across my skin. Mist coalesces before the gravestone, thickening and solidifying into a familiar, imposing form.
Esther stands there, with all the spectral authority she has always commanded, her silver-streaked hair pinned in a severe bun, her darkblood robes immaculate. Her sharp eyes are narrowed, her weathered face a mask of… cold, absolute fury. Something about her pure, icy presence tells me this isn’t just part of the trial. That she isn’t a construct.
“You were meant to drink his blood,” she snaps, her voice slicing through the silence. “Not sleep with him.”
A hot, mortifying flush climbs my neck, my face, my entire body. She knows. Somehow, in this twisted reality, she knows. She sensed or saw. The intimacy of the cave, the stolen hour, is ripped open, laid bare under her disapproving gaze. The shame hits me like a physical sickness in my gut. But on its heels comes a rage so pure and white-hot it burns the shame to ash.
“You were really watching?” The question is a raw tear in my throat.
“I am always watching,” she retorts, as if it is her divineright. “You are the future of this coven. I watched you throw it away for a moment of pathetic, fleshy weakness.”
“Weakness?” I take a step forward, my knuckles bone-white. The lifetime of deference, of reverence, of swallowing her every command, suddenly shatters. “You told me to drink his blood! You pushed me into his path with no warning, no explanation! Do you think I planned any of this? What did youthinkwas going to happen?”
“I expected you to follow the plan. To take his power, not to wallow in his bed!”
My voice cracks as I almost bellow, “There was no plan!” The sound ricochets off the headstones. “You just—you just appeared with some cryptic half-truths and expected me to figure it out! Did it slip your mind to mention the blood bond? Or the marriage part? Gods, Esther!” I surprise myself by addressing her by her name, something I have never done in my life. I'm shaking so hard, fists clenched so tight my nails almost break skin. “Youpushed me toward him and now you're what—surprised he got under my skin? That's on you.Allof it. Every single damned thing that's happened started with that blood. You lit the match, andIgot burned!”
Her spectral form seems to vibrate with agitation. The air around her grows colder, the mist at her feet swirling like angry spirits. “Do not presume to understand my designs. And lower your tone, child. Your feelings… that act… that corruption… has compromised you. I see it clouds your judgment and weakens your resolve at the very moment you need to be sharpest.”
“It made me feel alive,” I breathe back. The words escape before I can stop them, shocking us both. The admission feels raw and bleeding in the air between us.Something your plans never managed to do.“Besides.” I steady myself. “Don’t you know it’s what Helena wants? That I… sleep with him?”
A laugh escapes Esther’s throat, a deep,scornful thing. “And what do you know of Helena, other than what the dragon king has told you?”
I swallow, clenching my jaw. Admittedly, I don’t know much about my great, great, great grandmother, beyond her attempts to forge alliances with dragons… and her failure to do so.
