Page 141 of Keldori By Daybreak

Rage and desperation boiled over. “Dammit, won’t you at least look at me? This me?”

Ciarán tore his face away from the real Wren to finally meet my eye. His chin wavered, but a jumping muscle in his jaw betrayed just how hard he was working to keep it still.

“Save her,” he hissed again.

“I can’t fix that.” I pointed at my body. “I’m not powerful enough. No one is. I’m going to die. Tonight. I won’t waste magick trying to stop the inevitable when you can use that magick to bring me my mother.”

“But if I summon her, I won’t have enough magick left for you to even try! You have to at least try!”

“I won’t! And you won’t call my mom. So what? We both stand here too stubborn to give in to each other until I’m dead and it’s too late for either of us to get what we want?”

“Except we both want you to live, don’t we?” he snarled. “So why aren’t you trying?”

I crouched so we were eye-to-eye. “It’s okay, Ciarán. I’m okay. Just let me say goodbye.”

His eyes wavered, jumping between mine, and his mouth opened and closed as he searched for the right words.

When they finally came, they were hoarse and broken. “You’re dying because of me. I was too late to save you. Liam, he—he made it in time when Ferrin attacked you at the school. He died so you wouldn’t. But I—”

I shook my head and took his face in my hands to wipe at his tears with my thumbs.

“No. No, Ciarán. You were perfect. From the moment you threatened my life on the parapet my first night in Skalterra,” I laughed through my streaming tears, “to the day you stopped me from turning into a rotsbane, and all the way to right now. Perfect. In every aggravating way. In Skalterra and in Keldori. As Liam and as Ciarán. My Grimguard. My friend.”

His face broke, and he turned away to look at my real self. His brow softened at the sight of me, and he took my limp hand in his.

“You,” he whispered. “You are the perfect one. But we are tethered, and I don’t remember how to be whole without you. So I need you to try to fix this.”

A cold weight settled in my stomach, and an unseen something nudged at the edge of my mind, guiding me towards a darkness that was just out of reach.

“Please, Ciarán. I don’t have long. I can feel it. My mom—”

Ciarán lifted my body’s hand to his face and he pressed his lips against my knuckles. I felt the ghost of the kiss against my Nightmare hand, but suddenly felt like I was watching something not meant for me.

Something private. Something sacred.

I looked away, blush rising in my cheeks, and instead pretended to be focused on the discarded bone blade on the floor.

It must’ve snapped off from my arm in the fight while the others had retracted, just as they had at the canyon. I shouldn’t have been able to make them at all in my real body. It defied everything I’d been told about Skalmagick.

I picked the blade up, turning it in my hands to inspect the trabecular grain of its surface.

“Bone is alive,” I murmured.

As a Nightmare, I had total control over my anatomy. Bone blades were a party trick for a Nightmare. They should’ve been impossible to create with my real body, but I’d done it twice now.

Bone blades made of living bone cells.

And I’d infected Kamryn with a living fungus of my own creation.

And if I could create those things, if I could create living cells—

“Step back.” I took Ciarán's place at my body’s side and pressed my palms against my ribs.

“Wren—”

“You’re right. I can do it.” I took a steadying breath. “But if it doesn’t work, you have to go to Keldori and find my mother and tell her to her face that you are the reason she didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“Tell her I did everything in my power to save you?” Ciarán said. “I will proudly tell her so.”