“I swear I didn’t know Girly; I swear on the souls of my kin that I honestly thought the mirror would show you the truth, and I didn’t know that you had to be the one touching it… But there is no denying it now…You are his Siren.”I couldn’t help but close my eyes as I heard this, every fiber of my being shuddering as a deep sense of completeness washed over me.
Every single time Oblivion had made the claim with such certainty came back to me now. Because he had known and had never once faltered in that knowledge.
I should have trusted him.
But self-doubt had taken root and begun to grow before he had any chance to stop it. And now look where it had gotten us. I was so damn foolish. Foolish for running, foolish for fighting him… foolish for reaching out and touching that damn spell that caused this.
And now I was forced to face the inevitable.
Oblivion would be walking into a trap, andit was all my fault.
In the end, I didn’t know how long it had been since I started beating myself up about everything. Bo had pretty much given up trying to talk me out of my self-loathing.
Because time seemed to move differently in this place, even the dust settling on the floor drifted more slowly, as though gravity and time had merged into something entirely its own. It was as though time had warped, slipping through my grasp in a way that made it impossible to tell whether seconds or hours had passed. The silence pressed in around us until it felt like something alive, something waiting. I found myself watching the horizon more than I realized. My body tense, my thoughts circling the same question over and over again. Wondering howlong it would take before he came, because deep down I knew he would.
He always would.
And when it happened, it wasn’t subtle.
No, it tore through the stillness like a blade.
My heart practically leapt from my throat when I heard him call my name in a desperate call.
“Eliza!” It snapped through me so violently that I felt it before I even turned. My heart lurched as relief and dread collided in equal measure.
“Wye!”
He stood at the edge of the cage, his presence alone enough to shift the very air around him. Shadows were already spilling from his body in thick, violent tendrils as his wings burst free behind him in a single, powerful motion. They stretched wide enough to make the jagged prison around us feel suddenly smaller.
Everything about him felt darker. More dangerous…Unleashed.
And for the briefest moment, despite everything, despite where we were, despite the danger, all I felt was relief.
He had found me. But unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last. Because the ground beneath me moved. It was subtle at first, just a shift, a slow, unnatural give beneath my feet. But it was enough to send a jolt of panic through me as I tried to walk closer to him, only to realize with breathless horror that I wasn’t rising at all.
I was sinking.
“Wye?” My voice broke as the earth gave way beneath me, swallowing me inch by inch, my feet trying in vain to lift as I tried to step out of the sinkhole beneath me.
“Eliza!”
“Girly!” they both shouted as one, as Bo was already moving, scrambling up the jagged stone beside me. His fingers gripped the uneven surface as he hauled himself higher so that he could try to reach for me with everything he had.
“Grab my hand!” he shouted, stretching toward me, his arm straining as he tried to close the distance between us.
I reached for him.
Goddess, I tried.
But the ground dragged me down faster than I could fight it, the pull relentless as my body slipped further and further beneath the surface as panic clawed its way up my throat. As for Oblivion, he was going fucking crazy at the stone cage, throwing everything he had at it in an attempt to tear it down. But it quickly became clear that the structure was magically reinforced. His shadows snapped back the moment they struck it, as though repelled by violent arcs of electricity.
“STOP THIS!”
Wye’s voice tore through the space the second he saw me sinking further, Bo’s hand too far out of reach. His command was layered with something far more powerful as his shadows lashed outward in a violent surge. Striking once more against the cage with enough force this time to shatter stone.
Only…
It didn’t.
