Something that makes Zyphon the villain.
I think of his face in the ravine. The grief etched into every line. The way he stood there bleeding, refusing to fight, speaking of a lifetime of dying.
I’ve never forgotten. Not for a single day.
What if he was telling the truth?
What if everything Lakhu told me was a lie?
The questions hurt. Physically hurt, like someone’s driving spikes into my skull. I curl onto my side, pressing my palms against my temples, and try to breathe through the pain.
I don’t know what’s real anymore. Don’t know who to trust. Don’t know anything except that I’m trapped in a cage of stone and lies, and the only person who’s shown me anything like honesty is the monster I was meant to kill.
The monster who wouldn’t fight back.
The monster who looked at me with love.
I stare at the ceiling until exhaustion drags me under. My last thought before sleep claims me is a fragment—a memory or a wish, I can’t tell anymore.
Zyphon’s hand reaching for mine. His voice, low and warm, saying words I can’t quite hear.
And the feeling—fierce, undeniable—that once upon a time, I loved him too.
FIVE
ZYPHON
She’s not their willing weapon.
I watched them drag her back to Lakhu’s camp—watched her fight every step, kicking and clawing and spitting curses even with enchanted manacles killing her shadow-flame. Watched the prince reveal the predator inside. Watched them lock her in a cell while she screamed that she wasn’t anyone’s tool.
She’s a prisoner. Not a partner. Not an ally. A weapon being forged against her will.
The distinction matters more than I can articulate.
I’ve spent the last day mapping the camp from the shadows, cataloging guard rotations, identifying weak points in defenses built to stop anyone but me. The wards recognize something kin in my darkness and let me pass without alarm. The only advantage this existence has given me that I’m actually grateful for.
Now I crouch outside her window in the hour before midnight, close enough to hear her breathing, separated by iron bars and lies. I learned the scope of untruths last night.
In the late hours of the morning, I hovered outside Lakhu’s tent, silk walls doing nothing to muffle the conversation within.His advisor’s voice, clinical and detached: “The Fire-Bringer’s memories are holding. She’s accepted the story about her brother. The hatred is genuine.”
“What about the other memories?” Lakhu had asked. “The ones involving the dragon?”
“Suppressed. She may experience fragments, but nothing coherent. The emotional resonance was too strong to erase entirely, but we’ve channeled it into rage rather than recognition.”
They didn’t just resurrect her. They rewrote her. Took the truth and twisted it until I’m the villain, until her brother is the victim, until the love we shared has been perverted into a weapon aimed at my heart.
I open the telepathic link.
Drayke.
The response comes instantly.Zyphon. Where the hell have you been?
Shadow-territories. I found Nasyra.No point dancing around it.She’s alive. Someone resurrected her.
Silence stretches across the link. I feel Drayke processing, trying to reconcile the impossible with what he knows of me—that I don’t exaggerate, don’t dramatize, don’t make claims I can’t support.
Nasyra.His mental voice carries the weight of recognition. He remembers. They all remember—the century after her death when I barely spoke, barely ate, barely existed.How?
