There, scorched into the blackened rock, is the brand.The brand I’ve seen adorned on the white marble walls of Seren’s cell.A crescent swallowing an eye.
It isn’t just a shape; it’s a scream of black light.
To my left, the sound of shifting stone marks Seren’s movement as she embraces Yara.They fit together like a memory I was never allowed to taste.Their voices begin to drift, turning a muffled blur as a parade of unwelcome moments march across my vision.
A crushing weight settles on my shoulders.
“Kael?”Seren’s voice is a thin thread struggling against the unbroken drum of my heart.I clench my fist, the fabric of my tunic feeling coarse and foreign.
She touches me.Her hand is a prickle of ice down my back.“I didn’t know either.”
I shrug her off.I am a Lightborne shadow-scholar—I should be the master of this logic.But the hollow of my chest feels raw and scraped, a wound left by phantom fingers.
The ground beneath my feet shifts, the texture of the world turning slanted and strange.My internal compass spins, the needle snapped and sparking.
The person who entered this cavern is gone; the person who stands here holds a key that smells of the unknown.
47
YARA
Warmth envelops me at the sight of Seren, blurred through my failing eyes.
Her wet, grey tunic is torn in places, and hangs haphazardly from her thin frame.She’s even smaller than I remember, or perhaps her journey has been a heavier weight than I expected.Dirt smudges her cheeks and her hair hangs limp.She looks remarkably the same, except those eyes.Veiled be my sight—those are Nyx’s.
As if peering through frosted glass; the murky violet of her gaze shines bright against the black of her pupils, the veins on the sclera pulsing with a bruised light.I edge closer, desperate for a better view.My breath hitches.
The Lightborne’s thoughts churn nearby, a bitter tang as he learns his true purpose.I leave him to his unwinding and turn to speak with Seren.
My knobbly hands feel for the contours of her face; the cheekbones are sharper than they once were, the hollow of her eyes sinking deeper than before.I catalogue the damage as if it were weather, not a storm I helped summon.
“My girl,” I whisper, touching her forehead with my own.“I still can’t believe you found us.”
She pulls back.A flicker of cold uncertainty marks her features.She starts to speak, then stops, the silence between us like dense, unspun wool.
“It’s okay, child.Speak the words your heart can’t voice.”
“I—I don’t understand.Why haven’t you told me?”her voice quivers, a thin, breaking reed.“We’ve known each other for years.”
“My dear, sweet girl,” I say, cupping her cheek.Her skin feels of fading summer, the winter chill creeping in the closer to Nyx she becomes.“It was not your time to survive the truth.”
“What do you mean?”she breathes.
“Only through death, can we be reborn.”A muscle feathers in her jaw, ticking faster with every passing second the silence lingers.
“You mean…Sylas’ death?”Her voice climbs an octave, straining like a wire about to snap.
“Love is the sharpest knife the prophecy owns,” I remove my hand, tucking it into the stiff silence of my robe.
“So you mean—” she starts, her voice catching, the words unraveling with a pained urgency.“—his entire life was just…being a sacrificial lamb?”
I look toward the ceiling, absorbing the strength from the Divine Mother’s rune.“His story was written in an ink that fades to dust.The prophecy required a sacrifice that would be your undoing, just like it did with your making.But only when the time was right.”
My gaze returns to Seren.Her brows are deep, furrowed canyons of confusion, but her eyes are narrowed with a white-hot rage.
“You supplied me with the tonics to keep him alive—only to decide when he was allowed to die?”
“It is the bitter truth we must swallow, my child.”My hand reaches for her face once more, but she pulls away, her movement a piercing, discordant snap.“Sorrow is irrelevant when fate is precise.”
