Page 96 of She Who Holds My Wrath

What the fuck did you do, Aran?

I press my palms to the barrier, the surface rippling slightly, like I’m looking through smoked glass.

“You better have a godsdamn explanation,” I growl. “Or so help me, I will claw my way back just to put you in the ground myself, Aran.”

Of course, no one hears me. No one ever does. But the way Aran is looking at Daisy, the way I can see he’s genuine, he’s my brother in every way but blood. And I know he’s no traitor.

“Hear him out little flower,” I say, pushing the words down that tether with everything I have. I don’t just say it, I shove it, like I’m trying to ram my voice straight into her chest.

The void buckles around me, and for a heartbeat, the barrier hums. My fingertips tingle when they touch it, like some current is finally, finally, flowing both ways.

Daisy’s eyes are closed and she takes a deep breath. I swear her head tilts, the smallest movement, like she heard something just over her shoulder.

Her eyes peel open. “Korithax would want to hear you out,” she says quietly.

Everything inside me goes very, very still. For a moment, the dungeon vanishes as my head swims. There’s only that sentence, hanging in the air between us, vibrating down the bond like a plucked string. She said it in her own voice, her own cadence—but it’s the exact phrasing that just tore out of me.

“Again,” I breathe into the dark, moving closer to the barrier until my chest presses to nothing. “Say something else. Daisy, say anything. Please.”

She doesn’t though. She just stands there, staring at Aran, jaw clenched, eyes wet, like she’s not entirely sure why she said that either.

I don’t see everything. The mirror is fickle—sometimes it shows me fragments, sometimes entire days slip past and I feel only echoes through the bond: her terror, her numbness, her brief flickers of joy when she laughs with someone, her grief when she’s alone.

I don’t see the very beginning of Cinderspine’s destruction. I only feel the jolt when the screams start. The bond flares sharp and hot. There’s fire, smoke, panic. I claw at the barrier, and the mirror finally opens to show me.

My village. My home. It’s burning. I see Daisy on her knees by the bakery, brushing soot from…

“No.” The shock slams through me.

I know how much Marta meant to her. Gods, she meant everything to me. She was like the mother I always needed. Always there, always listening. Her tarts. Her warmth. Fuck.

The mirror stutters and the images jump by frantically. Until yet again, Daisy appears, strolling through the wreckage, strolling with a tiny body in her arms. I recognise the little horns… the little boy that ran into us the first time I showed her around Cinderspine.

I sink to my knees in The Void as she lowers to hers, passing the boy’s lifeless body to his mother. We are reflected, broken, separated by an inch and an eternity.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell her, voice shredded. “I should be there. I should’ve stopped all of this.”

The Void laps at my edges, tasting my regret. It likes that too.

Time becomes a series of blows. Daisy curled up in bed alone, knees to her chest, staring at nothing. Daisy in council meetings, jaw clenched, eyes ringed in shadows. Daisy waking up in a cold sweat, clutching at empty sheets whispering my name like a prayer.

Every time she breaks, rage floods me. Not at her. Never at her. It’s at the Six. At fate. At myself.

“I’m here,” I whisper into The Void around us. “I’m here, little flower. I never left. I just… I can’t get to you,” I murmur, my voice breaking with all the pain and sadness residing in my chest.

The Void just mocks me with silence.

Aurora’s Veil changes everything. I don’t see the drug in the drink. I just feel the sudden lurch in her magic, the way everything inside her stumbles and goes fuzzy.

Then the mirror sharpens, and I see her.

She’s half-conscious, staggering down a passageway in Kaelith’s palace, eyes glazed.

There’s chains around her wrists, yanking her arms high, her feet barely touching the stone flooring. Kaelith’s there, breaking her body and mind in all the cruel little ways gods favour when they’re too afraid to face you on the battlefield.

I can’t hear every word. Some are swallowed by The Void. But I see enough. I see her shaking, her tears, her fury. The nightmares he forces into her fucking head. Seeing her like that… it fractures something so deep inside me that I swear I feel The Void enter me somehow. Like it’s desperate to mix with my rage and make something so much worse.

I slam my fists into the mirror over and over and over. Watching as it ripples with the force of my fury. I watch as she sobs, her body hanging there, so broken, so defeated, and I do what I did before, forcing my words so violently down the bond, The Void has no choice but to bend.