Eryx gasps. His knees buckle again. The tether flares white-hot, not balanced—tearing.
“Chelsea—”
Pain detonates beneath my ribs. Not steady. Not shared. Too much.
I shift my grip—not taking from him, not forcing—anchoring.
The tether breathes, pulses for a beat and then—locks into place.
It doesn’t sever—it branches. One root in him, one root in me, both drawing from the same source.
Not violently.
More like inevitable.
Power surges outward from my chest in a low, thunderous wave. The mirrors lining the walls rattle. The glass ceiling fractures with spiderweb cracks.
Helena staggers backward. “That’s impossible,” she hisses.
Eryx collapses forward.
“No.”
I lunge and catch him before his body strikes the stone. His weight crashes into me, heavy and terrifyingly limp.
“Eryx.”
His skin is pale. Too pale.
The shadows in the room flicker, uncertain.
Breathe.
I press my palm to his chest. His pulse is there. Faint, but there.
A heartbeat answers mine.
I look down and just above my heart is the same dark mark that Eryx has, the sign that I accepted all of Nightmare.
Magic beneath my ribs hums—not hungry, not frantic. Balanced. A living current flowing between us instead of through him alone.
Helena stares at me, horror dawning across her face.
“You split it,” she whispers.
“No,” I say, lifting my head slowly. “I anchored it.”
It's not half in each of us. It's whole—in both of us. Connected. Shared. The way it was always meant to be.
Magic stretches outward at my smallest breath, and the shadows in the room rise in answer, not frenzied, not feral.
Listening.
Helena staggers back another step. “No.”
She reaches out—sharp, desperate—and tries to pull again.
Nothing moves. The darkness doesn’t twitch toward her. It doesn’t recognize her. It doesn’t even acknowledge her.
