I felt the violation as if it were my own skin being breached. A cold, spectral intrusion passing through her, a psychic shock that ripples back to me in a wave of nausea. A pressure behind my eyes, a tearing sensation in the fabric of my own mind as Esther’s magic did… something. Something invasive. Something wrong.
The world went black for Esme, and for an instant, the feed through our bond cut out, leaving me in agonizing silence. It lasted for minutes, then hours, and now she’s pushing through the rest of the trial—with me infuriatingly unable to see a single heartbeat of it.
What did that bitch do?
I refuse to leave. I stay in the chamber for every excruciating moment, pacing, waiting, listening for anything—until finally, Esme stirs. Until she’s back.
Her eyes flutter open. The silver runes on the floor fade. She pushes herself up, her movements stiff, her expression dazed. Blythe is at her side in an instant, a vial in hand. Brynn and her mother rush forward, their faces etched with relief.
“You did it,” Blythe says, her voice tense with approval. “The second stage. It is done. You’ll have twelve hours’ rest until the third, and final, trial.”
But I am not listening to her. I am watching Esme. Only Esme. She blinks, her gaze sweeping the room, taking in her family, the chamber, the fading magic. Her eyes meet mine.
And there is nothing that indicates she remembers. Remembers the hour we shared.
No uncontrollable flush in her cheeks. No lingering heat. No echo of the water or the steam or the desperate way she clung to me. Just the familiar, guarded assessment she usually gives me. The appraisal of a soldier measuring a threat.
A curse burns the back of my throat. I should have expected this.
She looks away, turning her attention to Blythe, who is already drawing a line of blood from her palm to smear on Merlin’s grave. The ground shudders violently—more violently, I’m sure, than the previous time—but I barely feel it. When the ground and dust settle, Brynn congratulates Esme, her voice bright with a relief that I cannot feel.
All I feel is a cold, creeping dread that begins to solidify into a certainty as hard and sharp as stone. The intimacy, the choice, the memory—it’s gone. Wiped clean.
That bitch. That meddling, jealous ghost…
She didn’t just pass through Esme. She took something.
She took our hour. She took me. And looking at Esme’s exhausted yet beautiful, defiant face, I realize with certain clarity that my fight is no longer with a coven or an invading army. It iswith the ghosts of her own past. And for the first time in a thousand years, I’m unsure if it is a war I’m prepared for.
But I am. I must be.The flicker of doubt is a human luxury, one I extinguish with cold, ancient fire. That old hag may have won this skirmish, but the war for Esme’s soul has just begun.
32
DAYN
Iwatch her mother lead her from the chamber, Brynn fussing at her elbow. Esme moves like a puppet whose strings have been cut, her exhaustion profound. She doesn’t look back at me, and the absence of that glance is a wound deeper than any blade. She is a slate wiped clean, and the last words written there were mine.
The fury in my chest feels like a contained supernova, but it is somehow also a quiet, patient thing. The kind of rage that builds empires and ends them. Esther Salem has made a fatal error. She thinks she has removed an obstacle. Instead, she has given me a cause. Before, I wanted Esme as my queen, a powerful, strategic match to secure my future and hers. Now, I want the woman from the grotto. The one who trembled in my arms and chose to burn with me. I will settle for nothing less.
I let the Salem women leave with her, granting them the illusion of safety, of privacy. My battle is not with them. They are merely custodians of the prize. I turn my attention to Warden Blythe, who is methodically extinguishing the ritual candles, hermovements precise, betraying nothing. But I feel the tension in her, the way the air crackles when my shadow falls near her.
“A fascinating trial, Warden,” I say, my voice a low murmur that carries in the sudden quiet of the chamber. “Its parameters seem… malleable.”
She doesn’t look up from her task. “The Infinite Challenge adapts to the subject. It seeks the core of their strength and the heart of their weakness.”
“And it allows for outside interference, from those not officially connected to the trial?” I let the question hang between us, sharp as glass.
Blythe finally straightens, turning to face me. Her face is a mask of placid control, but her eyes are wary. “The Sanctuary’s ancestral wards are absolute. No outside influence can breach a trial.”
“No living influence, perhaps,” I counter, taking a step closer. I see a flicker in her gaze. She knows. She felt the ghost’s intrusion, even if she didn’t see what happened. “But the dead are notoriously poor at respecting boundaries. Especially when they’ve had a hand in writing the rules.”
Her lips thin into a bloodless line. “Esther’s connection to the coven is unique. Her presence is a blessing, not an interference.”
I bite back the words burning in my throat.Blessing?What Esther did was a violation—a surgical excision of something precious and private, even if it did happen within a construct. But revealing that knowledge to Blythe would be tactically foolish. Our bond, the ways our magic intertwines, the ways in which I am still learning to manipulate it—these are advantages I won’t reveal. Not when the pieces on this chessboard keep shifting beneath my fingers.
“Whatever happened within the construct was between Esme and her ancestors,” Blythe continues, her voice hardening. “It is coven business.”
“The moment she put my ring on her finger, she became my business,” I say, my voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “The moment she took my blood, she became my future. You and your coven of witches and ghosts seem to be forgetting who and what I am.”
