Longing. Devotion. Love.
The memory fractures, dissolves, slips away before I can hold onto it. I’m left gasping, one hand pressed to the window glass, the other clutched over my heart where something is breaking open.
That was real. That memory was real—not something Lakhu planted, not something manufactured to manipulate me. It felt different. Tasted different. Like truth instead of poison.
Zyphon loved me. Years ago, before I died, before everything went wrong—he loved me. And I...
I don’t know. I can’t remember what I felt. Can’t separate the truth from Lakhu’s lies, the real from the manufactured.
But I remember his face. The way he looked at me. The same way Drayke looks at Selene, the same way Rurik looks at Aisling.
Not like property. Not like a tool.
Like the center of his world.
I stay at the window until dawn breaks over the mountains, watching the light chase away the shadows, wondering what else I’ve forgotten.
Wondering what else I’m about to remember.
THIRTEEN
ZYPHON
The screaming wakes me.
I’m out of bed before I’m fully conscious, shadows coiling around me as I tear through my door and down the hallway. Three doors. That’s all that separates my quarters from hers. Three doors that feel like miles when I can hear her voice—raw, terrified, the sound of someone fighting nightmares that won’t let go.
Fire greets me when I reach her room.
Not normal fire. Shadow-flame—dark at its core, edged with purple and black, crawling up the walls and across the ceiling in patterns that have nothing to do with natural combustion. The bed is engulfed. The curtains are ash. And in the center of it all, Nasyra kneels on the floor with her hands pressed to her head, screaming words I can’t understand.
My shadows surge forward without conscious direction, wrapping around the flames, smothering them. The darkness inside me recognizes the fire—same origin, same magic, two halves of the same broken whole. It takes effort to control it. More effort than it should. Her power fights mine even as it reaches for it.
The fire dies. The room goes dark except for the faint glow of my shadows and the embers still smoldering in the ruined fabric.
Nasyra looks up. Her face is streaked with tears, her mismatched eyes wild with terror and confusion. For a moment, she doesn’t seem to know where she is. Doesn’t seem to recognize me.
Then awareness returns, and with it, the walls.
“Get out.” Her voice is hoarse from screaming. “Get out of my room.”
“You were on fire.”
“I’m aware.” She pushes herself to her feet, swaying slightly. “I don’t need your help.”
“The bed would disagree.”
She looks at the charred remains of her mattress. Something flickers in her expression—embarrassment, maybe. Fear. The knowledge that her power is slipping beyond her control.
Footsteps in the hallway. Drayke appears in the doorway, Selene behind him. He takes in the destruction with a single sweep of his gaze—the scorched walls, the ash-covered floor, Nasyra standing in the wreckage with shadow-flame still flickering at her fingertips.
“We need to talk,” he says.
The war roomis cold at this hour. Dawn hasn’t broken yet; the torches cast long shadows across the map table where we’ve gathered.
Nasyra sits on one side, wrapped in a borrowed robe, her jaw set in a stubborn line. She hasn’t looked at me since we left her ruined quarters. Selene hovers nearby, radiating protective concern.
“This can’t continue,” Drayke says. No preamble. No softening of the blow. “Your power is unstable. If you’d been anywhere else in the fortress—near the armory, the library, the other sleeping quarters?—“
