“C’mon Daren.People aren’t born monsters.They’re created.”
“Exactly,” he says.
“We have yet to determinehowshe was created.There is good in everyone—you of all people should know that.”
“Do you honestly believe there is an ounce of good in her?”He looks around for loiterers.“The whispers say she’s the worst we’ve encountered since the days of Nyx.”
My scar burns beneath my sleeve.I say nothing, but my heart skips at the name.It hangs in the air like smoke.
He stands, smoothing the creases in his uniform.“The Light has tested her and found her wanting.You know what that means.There is no light in her to save, Kael.She isn’t like the others.You need to remember that before all of this—” he waves a hand at the garden, at me.“—gets you in trouble.”
I give him a tight smile, desperate to move on.“Perhaps you’re right.”
“Even the brightest minds burn out when they forget which side they serve.”He claps my back.“Don’t let the darkness consume you, brother.The Light won’t forgive it.”
He leaves, his boots ringing on the marble until the fountain’s hymn swallows the sound.
I sit until the light fades, the sky smearing with pastel pinks and purples.When the bells call the faithful to prayer, I don’t move.
The mark under my sleeve throbs—faint and warm, like something alive.
I whisper to the empty garden, “And what if it's the dark that’s keeping me sane?”
26
SEREN
Morning comes without mercy.
The air smells stagnant.The lack of a window is a luxury I never realised I had until it was stripped away.It’s frightening how quickly I became accustomed to comfort.Trapped in this new cell—no light, no breeze, no sound—I feel more isolated than ever.
This is the room I expected when I first arrived.I see now how easily I fell into their gilded trap.
The darkness makes me think of the Hollow—and of everything Sylas never got to see.He would have loved the pastel sky.Twenty-five years he lived without the sun warming his skin, and I was the one who took that chance away from him.
A crushing weight settles in my chest, a void expanding with every breath.I stretch my palms out in the dark, feeling the ghost of his blood dripping through my fingers.Perhaps this is exactly where I belong: a monster confined, unable to hurt anyone again.
Da would be so disappointed.He fought so hard to scrape a life for us, to teach us how to survive.Yet, in the end, it wasn’t the rot or the deprivation that ended Sylas.It was me.Me and my shadows.I did everything he told me not to do, and this is where it has led.
Kael’s words ring through my skull on an endless loop.I called for Nyx.For him.It makes no sense.
Very few worship her now, for fear of the Sun House.But I remember the hurried footsteps and the whispered Rites in the Hollow—the nights perched on the windowsill, staring into the dark.I remember the workers mumbling that the Veil doesn’t just pick anyone.
I had brushed all these whispers off as the desperate hopes of a broken people, but now I wonder.
The door opens softly.The scent of incense curls through the gap before he appears.Uri, the High Luminary of Mercy, steps inside as if entering a chapel.His robes are immaculate, his voice pitched low, a practiced comfort.
“Good morning, my child.Did you sleep?”
I sit up, pooling the covers to my lap.“I tried.”
“That’s all any of us can do.”He crosses the room and taps the bundle in his hands—a thick roll of parchment and a freshly cut stick of charcoal, all bound in a white ribbon.“I brought you something.”
My eyes flick from the guards to him, then to the bundle.“Oh.Th—thank you.”
He unties the ribbon, his fingers delicate as if caressing a lover.“I told you I would try.I thought that after what you’ve endured, you might like to put your dreams on paper.It might help shed some….unwanted tension before your next test.”
The way he saystestmakes a knot form in my stomach.I want to believe he’s here to help, but Kael’s warning lingers.I take the parchment, careful to avoid his touch.The paper is smooth, expensive—real parchment, the kind of luxury I’ve never touched in the Hollow.It’s the sort of gift you give to someone whose worth you’ve already measured.
