“Hard pass,” I say, because apparently today’s theme is ‘self-sacrifice, again.’
The gap purrs, pleased by the idea of me making terrible choices.
“It feeds on repeats,” Voren murmurs, eyes on the dark mouth. “Patterns. History done again.”
“Then we break the pattern,” Dastian says, bright with mischief. “Or fake it. I can do fake. I am fake’s patron saint.”
Not-Me doesn’t blink. “You’ve made everything complicated. You dragged gods into our bed. You forgot what we are.” She tilts her chin at the gap. “Give it back. Cross clean.”
“I don’t do clean,” I say, stepping toward her. Up close, she smells like oilstones and chapel floors. I hate her a bit for how simple she is. I love her a bit for the same thing. “And you’re not me. You’re the bit that thinks if I make my bed square enough, I won’t bleed on it.”
Her mouth twitches. Insult lands. Truth lands harder.
Dreven’s shadow curls around my ankles in a warning I don’t need. “Choose your currency,” he says quietly. “Not theirs.”
I stare at my cleaner, sadder self and pick my currency.
“Keep your lecture,” I tell her. “I’m done paying in me.”
I turn to my gods. “I want a lie with bones.”
Dreven’s mouth curves like I’ve just suggested arson. “Spine coming up.”
“Salt it with endings,” I say to Voren.
He nods once. “I’ll lace it enough to taste true.”
I jab a finger at Dastian. “And you? Crisp the edges. Not fireworks. Heat.”
He grins. “Disrespectful. I like it.”
I plant my feet over the mouth-not-mouth, lift my blade, and nick the inside of my forearm. Not deep. Enough for the light to flare under my skin in a hot pulse. It wants the stage; I give ita slit curtain. “You want an old skin?” I say to the hungry gap. “Have at it.”
Dreven lays shadow along my cut, thin and sharp as a scribe’s line, partitioning the light from the blood. Voren threads a wraith-filament through that seam, cold biting clean. Dastian warms it, just enough to set it, no theatrics. Between the three of them and the hinge of me, a thing curls out of my arm.
It’s not flesh. It’s not light. It’s the layer I peeled off in small, obedient strips for years—the bit that flinched, the bit that saluted, the bit that thought dying neat was better than living messy. It sloughs into my palm like a translucent glove.
Not-Me goes still. “Don’t,” she warns, like she has a say.
“Watch me.”
I hold the moulting over the gap. It leans up like a dog for a treat. “Take this,” I tell it, voice flat. “Not my life. Not my light. My leash.”
The mouth opens without opening. I drop the shed skin.
The gap chews, slow and greedy. The corridor shudders, then goes quiet in that way that means something awful is happy. A strip of bridge knits itself from the edges: not wraith-light, not shadow, but a tight rope of both, lacquered in heat. It looks like a scar.
“Cross,” Not-Me says again, but it lacks bite now. She looks smaller. Mortal. Honest. I almost pity her.
“Keep the blade sharp,” I tell her, because I can be generous when it costs me nothing. Then I put my foot on the scar.
It holds.
Dreven ghosts at my shoulder, shadows hemming the line so the realm can’t rethink it. Voren follows, frost threading along the underside to keep the chew instinct from waking back up. Dastian brings a low hum that tells the bridge to stop being dramatic and just exist.
We move. The gap breathes under us like a throat swallowing. I don’t look down. I keep my eyes on the sick pearl glow beyond, on the steady pulse like a metronome.
Chapter 17
