And she’s hunting me because she thinks I deserve it.
“Nasyra,” I say again, softer this time. “Whatever you think happened?—”
“I know what happened.” Her voice shakes with fury. “I remember watching you tear him apart. My brother. The only family I had left.” The shadow-flame grows, spreading up her arms, casting harsh light across features twisted with grief. “He was trying to protect me from you, and you killed him for it.”
The lie is so complete, so perfectly inverted from the truth, that I almost admire whoever constructed it. They took the worst moment of my existence and flipped it. Made me the monster instead of the man who arrived too late to save her.
I could tell her the truth. Could explain that Balroth led her to that altar. That he held her down while they drained her. That his last words were about how she’d always been the special one, the powerful one, and he’d found people who valued what he could offer them. Her.
But she won’t believe me. Not now, not when she’s standing there with centuries of manipulated rage burning in her veins. If I tell her the truth, she’ll think it’s another lie. Another manipulation designed to hurt her.
She has to remember on her own. Has to find the truth herself, or it won’t be real to her.
“I’m not going to fight you.” The words come out steady, despite everything. “I won’t raise a hand against you.”
“Then you’re going to die standing still.”
Her shadow-flame arcs toward me in a wave of dark fire.
I don’t move.
The flame hits me full in the chest, and my shadows surge to meet it. Not to attack—I won’t let them attack her—but to absorb. The impact staggers me back, pain lancing throughevery nerve, the dark fire eating at my flesh even as my own darkness works to contain the damage.
I stay on my feet. Barely.
“Fight back.” She sounds confused now, the certainty in her voice wavering. “Why won’t you fight me?”
“I told you.” I meet her gaze—those impossible, beloved eyes—and let her see everything I’m feeling. The grief. The guilt. The desperate, devastating hope that’s been clawing at my chest since I first read that message. “I won’t hurt you. Not ever.”
Her face twists. Another blast of shadow-flame hits my shoulder, spinning me half around. The pain is exquisite, burning and freezing at once, and I smell scorched leather, scorched skin. But I don’t cry out. Don’t defend myself. Just turn back to face her and wait for the next strike.
“You killed him.” Her voice breaks on the words. “You killed Balroth, and I can’t—I can’t?—”
“I understand what you remember.” I take a step toward her. Every instinct screams at me to stop, to flee, to shift and put distance between us. I ignore them all. “I know what you think happened. And I know nothing I say will change that.”
“Then die.” She raises both hands, shadow-flame building between her palms into something that will definitely kill me if it hits. “Die knowing what you did.”
“If that’s what you need.” I spread my arms, offering myself to her fury. “If my death will give you peace, then take it. I’ve been dying since I lost you. At least this way, it’ll mean something.”
She hesitates.
Just a moment. Just a flicker of something in her expression that doesn’t match the rage she’s been wearing. Confusion. Doubt. The faintest crack in her certainty.
And then shouts echo through the forest. Dragon roars splitting the air. The sound of wings and branches breaking—forces approaching fast. Too fast to be coincidence.
Her head snaps toward the noise, and I see recognition flash across her features. Fear, quickly hidden. The shadow-flame in her hands flickers and dies as her attention splits.
“They’re coming for you.” I don’t know who “they” are, but I can guess. Someone resurrected her. Someone manipulated her memories. Someone sent her hunting me. And now someone is coming to collect their weapon.
Her jaw tightens. “This isn’t over.”
“No.” I watch her back away, moving toward the sound of pursuit rather than away from it. “It’s not.”
She gives me one last look—confusion and hatred and something else, something I can’t name—and then she’s gone. Vanishing into the mist that swallows everything in this forsaken place.
I stand alone in the darkness, bleeding from wounds that will heal and scars that won’t.
She’s alive.
