Esme.
She stood at the edge of the dim light, her small figure fragile and still. Her clothes—the Vangar leathers that had been too big for her the first night of her training—were torn, the fabric stained dark with dirt and … blood. Her hair hung in tangled clumps around her face, and her eyes—gods, her eyes—were too wide, too empty.
My breath hitched. My legs moved without permission, carrying me forward as my heart clawed against my ribs.
“Esme?” I whispered, the word tasting like ash in my mouth.
She didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stood there, staring at me with that hollow, soulless gaze.
“Why didn’t you save me?”
Her voice filled the air around me, seeped into my skin like poison.
“I—I tried,” I gasped, my voice shaking. “I tried, Esme.”
“But you failed.”
The corridor trembled with the words. The shadows stretched, lengthened, and bled into the space around her. I stumbled forward, reaching like I could pull her from this nightmare, from my failure. My heart screamed at me to move faster, to do something, but my legs felt like stone.
“No, listen to me, Esme. I wanted to save you. I wanted to go with Father.”
“I’ve been in Emberstone this whole time, Seren. I was in the keep, watching when you came in with your lover. But you were too distracted to see me. Too worried about him. Too busy fucking to look for me.”
I was only inches from her now and the impact of her words seared me. Was it true? Had she been there? I swallowed back thick saliva. Is that what she really believed? That I’d been thinking of Rykr—of myself—more than her?
With a struggled breath, I set my hands on her frail shoulders as tears left her eyes. “No, Esme. No. I just didn’t know—I-I had no idea that Haldron had taken you.”
I lifted my hand to her cheek and swiped the tear from her skin.
Ice-cold skin. Scaly.
A smile on her face spread, too wide, too horrifying to be human.
My heart froze with terror. This wasn’t Esme.
The Nyxwraiths.
The hands wrapped around my wrists, sharp, long claws biting into my skin. I’d made the creature more real by believing its poisoned lies and now it had grabbed hold of me.
“Let me go,” I screamed, trying desperately to pull my hands away.
The grip tightened. “I am you. I am a part of you. You share your soul with mine.”
In the blink of an eye, Esme’s small form morphed, her body elongating, her skin rippling as if something inside her struggled to break free. My breath came in ragged gasps as her human teeth sharpened to jagged points.
No, no, no.
My feet sank into the floor like it had turned to tar.
“You could have saved her,” she whispered, her voice warping, splitting into two voices—one Esme’s, one Rykr’s.
The walls pulled away, stretching infinitely in all directions—no ceiling, no floor, just endless dark. Rykr stood where she had been. His face was carved in cold stone, his blue-green eyes void of the warmth I’d come to rely on.
“You chose wrong,” he said. “You should have let me die.”
The veins of my arms had turned a horrifying blue, from where the Nyxwraith clung to me, as though feeding off my body as it became more corporeal.
“You’re nothing to me. I’ll choose my kingdom over you.”
