I’m back in the forest. The same forest from my death—I recognize the trees, the path, the way the light filters throughthe canopy in golden shafts. But this time, I’m not dying. I’m walking. And someone is with me.
Balroth. My brother. His hand on my elbow, guiding me deeper into the trees. His grip is light but insistent, steering me away from the main path, into shadows that grow thicker with every step.
“Just a little further,” he says. “I found something you need to see.”
His voice is warm. Reassuring. The voice of the brother I loved, the family I trusted, the only person left in the world who shared my blood.
But his face?—
His face is wrong. Twisted in ways I didn’t see at the time, couldn’t see because I trusted him so completely. The warmth in his voice doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s something else there. Something I recognize now that I couldn’t name before.
Jealousy. Resentment. The bitter satisfaction of someone about to even a score they’ve been keeping for years.
“You were always the special one,” he says, and suddenly his voice isn’t warm anymore. It’s cold. Hard. The mask slipping to reveal something ugly underneath. “Always the powerful one. Mother doted on you. Father praised you. Everyone looked at you and saw greatness, and they looked at me and saw nothing.”
I try to pull away, but his grip tightens. His fingers dig into my arm, bruising.
“I was nothing until I found people who valued what I could offer them,” he continues. “You. My special, powerful, precious sister. They wanted you so badly. And I was finally worth something because I could give you to them.”
The scene shifts. Fragments. The forest becomes a clearing. The clearing becomes an altar—stone carved with channels thatI know, somehow, are meant for blood. Figures in dark robes wait in the shadows. And Balroth?—
Balroth’s hand on my elbow becomes a grip I can’t break. He’s smiling. Still smiling, even as they strap me down. Even as the blade comes out. Even as I scream his name, beg him to stop, plead for an explanation that never comes.
He watches them cut me. Watches my blood flow into the channels. Watches me die.
And he never stops smiling.
I wake gasping, clawing at my chest, shadow-flame erupting from my hands before I can stop it.
The room is dark. Empty. My new quarters, since I burned the old one. The walls are intact. The door is closed. Safe. I’m safe.
But the dream clings to me. The memory—because it was a memory, I’m certain of it now. It felt different from Lakhu’s implanted lies. Tasted different. Real in a way his manipulations never were.
You were always the special one.
Lakhu told me Balroth loved me. Told me Zyphon killed the only family I had left. Made me believe my brother died protecting me, murdered by a monster who couldn’t accept that I’d never be his.
But that face. That smile. Those words.
They don’t match the story Lakhu told. They don’t match anything he made me believe.
What if Balroth wasn’t protecting me? What if he wasn’t the victim Lakhu painted him to be?
What if my brother—the only family I had left, the person I trusted most in the world?—
I can’t finish the thought. Can’t bring myself to consider what it would mean if everything I believed about that night was wrong. If Zyphon wasn’t the villain. If Balroth wasn’t the victim.
If the brother I loved had led me to my death with a smile on his face.
I sit in the darkness until dawn, holding the fragments of a memory I don’t want to believe, watching the shadow-flame flicker in my palms like a heartbeat.
One true thing at a time, Aisling said.
But what if the truth is worse than the lies?
What if the truth is something I can’t survive?
SEVENTEEN
