“Then she’d strike. If she couldn’t drive a wedge between you and Lore, she’d find a way to take you from him until it was over.”
“No, she…” Fates. Her words before she died… Something about me deserving someone better, that Lore might not be all he seems.
It couldn’t be true.
Could it?
“I wish I was lying.” Dorion strode around me and reached for the sword embedded in Moira's belly. “But this will prove it.”
He wrenched the sword free.
She seized, her arms stiffening, her back arching in a shudder that didn’t look fae. Her skin dulled first. The soft flush of her cheeks faded to porcelain white, smooth and pasty. Cracks spiderwebbed across her hands and arms like fissures in old porcelain. Her gown unraveled into ash that scattered across the stones, revealing a thin, seam-lined shell of smooth, bone-colored clay.
I staggered back a step. “No…”
Her hair fell away in brittle strands. Her lips split open, revealing a hollow blackness where her mouth should have been.Her eyes didn’t close. They didn’t even blink. They remained wide, glassy discs reflecting my face.
Not Moira.
Notanyone.
Dorion didn’t move. He let the bloodied sword drop from his fingers; it clattered when it hit the floor.
“I assume she died not long before you arrived at Evergorne,” he said hoarsely. “The real person thisthingconsumed. I assume she was one of the servants, one with no family. Prager then used her body. Hollowed it out. Then tied her to you, infusing her with a spell that fooled everyone into thinking they knew her as Moira.”
I shook my head. “It can’t be true. She remembered things I didn’t say out loud. Shecared.”
But had she?
“She mirrored what you needed,” Dorion said gently. “What you missed. That’s what makes memory golems so dangerous. They don’t act. They echo. The more you show a golem, the more they reflect back to you. I thought something was wrong when I met her in the carriage on the way here. I’m sorry I took so long to see what she was, to act.”
To kill her.
No,notMoira. A memory golem.
I knelt and touched her cheek that felt as hard as stone now. Cold and smooth and final.
“But she wasn’t evil,” I said.
“Not in the way we see good or bad,” Dorion said. “She was bound to turn. Once you trusted her completely, she would’ve killed you. Love is the trigger. That’s when she would’ve snapped. And Prager would’ve laughed when it happened, savoring how she’d fooled you.”
Lore crouched beside me, placing his around my back. “Thespell made her everything you'd wanted in a friend. That doesn't make what you feel any less real. I should have protected you from this thing, but I didn’t see through the façade.”
Prager’s spell fooled us all.
I shook my head. “She thought the stars were beautiful. She once said each was the heart of someone precious we’d lost, that we only had to look up and it would be like they were with us once more.”
I’d seen Kinart there.
Would I now see the person I’d believed was my friend?
I looked at her again, at the shell of what was left, and the horror started to settle in. All those moments… They were mine. They’d never beenhers.
I gritted my teeth and stood, drawing in a sharp breath before everything inside me broke.
“She’s gone now,” Dorion said, quieter. “And when the spell finishes coming apart, you’ll start to forget.”
My heart stopped. “What?”
