His wings flare once, restless.
“She’s already pulled most of me out.” His voice is Eryx’s but doubled, because Nightmare is eons old.
The air around him fractures. This place is brittle, like I’m standing on thin ice about to crack.
“If she finishes, he won’t survive the rupture. I can’t be pulled against my will. I need to go willingly.”
I frown, thinking. “His father?—”
“Lost me the same way.”
The truth lands like a blade.
Eryx accepted Nightmare. He chose him.
He cocks his head. “Eryx wanted me. He called, so I went into him.”
He wanted me.
“What can I do?”
His eyes go inky black. Nightmare reaches out, touches my cheek. It feels like pinpricks of fire dancing on my skin. “You know what to do.”
“Then I’ll take you.”
His inky eyes flare. Thunder cracks overhead and the purple sky fractures.
“This first,” he says.
His fingers brush my cheek, and fire dances beneath my skin. Then his mouth claims mine.
Power rips through me—sharp as lightning, intimate as a breath. It is agony and devotion braided together. Hunger and protection. Fury and love.
The darkness doesn’t invade.
It answers.
It is everything and nothing all at once. It doesn’t swallow me. It settles like a second heartbeat finding rhythm beside my own. For one suspended moment, there is no sky, no storm, no tearing—only pulse. Mine. His. Ours. Braided together.
Something roots beneath my ribs, and something remains elsewhere—Eryx, the real Eryx, not Nightmare. He’s steady, alive.
And he’s not severed from me.
We share.
The purple void fractures with a sound like glass splitting under pressure.
“Now,” Nightmare breathes, Eryx and not-Eryx all at once.
The world tilts violently. Gravity slams back into me. Stone cracks against my knees. Air burns in my lungs.
I’m back in the dream room.
Helena screams.
The jagged strand between them has changed. It’s no longer a single tearing filament. It has split—one line still anchored in Eryx’s chest, the other blazing toward me like a living shadow.
It snaps into my sternum. The power surges, and for one horrifying second, it pulls wrong.
