Itrack her magic to a ridge overlooking a ravine.
The forest opens here, offering a clear view of the landscape below—dark trees stretching toward darker mountains, their peaks lost in clouds that seem to absorb what little light remains. The ravine cuts through the earth like a wound, its depths invisible from this height. Somewhere down there, water moves over stone, the sound barely audible over the whisper of wind through dead leaves.
She’s below. I feel her, the shadow-flame pulsing with an irregular rhythm that speaks of emotion barely contained. The signature flares and dims, flares and dims—anger, maybe. Or fear. Or both.
My own darkness reaches toward her without my permission, tendrils stretching down the ridge, hungry for the fire that mirrors its own tainted nature. I yank it back. Control it. Barely. My hands shake with the effort, cold sweat prickling along my spine.
I descend the ridge in silence, picking my way down rocks slick with moisture and moss. The air grows colder as I drop below the tree line, thick with mist that clings to my skin and dampens my hair. Each step takes me closer to the impossible,the miraculous, the terrifying unknown of what awaits at the bottom.
What will I say when I see her? What can I possibly say that would make any of this make sense?
I’m sorry I was too late.
I’ve spent every waking hour wishing I could die in your place.
I kept your flowers alive because I couldn’t keep you.
Pathetic. All of it pathetic.
The shadow-flame signature grows stronger as I descend. Clearer. The wrongness of it becomes more apparent. What happened to her? What did they do to bring her back, and at what cost?
I reach the bottom of the ravine and pause. The trees here grow thick, their branches interlocking overhead to create a canopy so dense that midday looks like midnight. I can barely see a dozen feet in any direction.
But I sense her. Close. So close my shadows are vibrating with barely restrained hunger, pressing against the inside of my skin, demanding release.
“I know you’re there.”
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Feminine. Furious. Achingly, impossibly familiar.
“Show yourself, dragon.” A pause loaded with venom. “I’ve been looking for you.”
I step from the shadows.
And there she is.
Nasyra Hawk. Three hundred years dead. Standing twenty feet from me with shadow-flame dancing in her palms and murder in her mismatched gaze.
She’s exactly as I remember and nothing like I remember at all. The same pale skin, almost luminous against the darkness. The same black hair falling past her shoulders, tangled now withleaves and twigs. The same impossible heterochromia—one eye deep and dark, the other pale and sharp—that I’ve seen in every dream for three centuries.
But the warmth is gone. The spark of mischief that used to light her features. She looks at me now with nothing but cold rage, her jaw set in a line that speaks of violence barely contained. The shadow-flame in her hands crackles and spits, casting flickering light across features that could be carved from ice.
“Nasyra.” Her name tears from my throat, ragged and broken. “You’re?—”
“Don’t.” She cuts me off, her shadow-flame flaring brighter. Heat washes over me, wrong and cold despite the fire. “Don’t say my name like you have any right. Don’t look at me like you’re seeing a ghost.” A bitter laugh. “Though I suppose that’s what I am.”
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t do anything but stare at the woman I’ve mourned, standing before me with fire in her hands and hatred in her eyes.
“I’ve been looking for you, Zyphon Koros.” My name sounds like a weapon on her lips. “I’ve been looking for the monster who killed my brother.”
The words hit me harder than any blow. Her brother. Balroth. The one who betrayed her, who led her to the altar, who held her down while they drained her blood. The one I killed with my bare hands while the darkness took root in my soul.
She thinks I’m the villain.
She doesn’t remember.
The realization crashes through me, devastating in its implications. Someone brought her back. Someone manipulated her memories. Twisted the truth until she believes I murdered her beloved brother without cause, without reason, without the context that would make that kill justified.
She’s been weaponized against me.
