A sudden, searing pain erupted through my own body, radiating outward in tendrils of fire. My grip faltered, and a choked cry slipped past my lips as my chest tightened, the agony rippling beneath my skin. The figure before me wavered, the shadows curling away to reveal features that sent ice through my veins.
Dark, inky curls—wild and untamed—framed a face of ivory skin and frost-pale eyes. Eyes that held an unsettling familiarity.
Horror crept into my veins, chilling me more than the pain ever could. A faint scar traced the path from the woman’s brow, down her full lips, over her throat, and to the base of her neck. My mind reeled as recognition struck like lightning.
I was staring at myself.
My hands trembled violently as I glanced down. There it was—the dagger buried deep in my own chest. Thick, dark warmth seeped out in sluggish streams, pooling beneath me and soaking into the cracks of stone at my feet.
The sound echoed unnaturally, a twisted lullaby of my own making.
The other me—silent, still—watched with an eerie fascination, head tilting ever so slightly. Cold curiosity gleamed in her gaze, and something deeper... something ancient. A creeping horror coiled within me, strangling my breath.
My vision blurred, but through the haze, I could see thefaintest flicker of amusement tug at the corner of her lips—my lips.
My knees buckled, and the weight of reality crushed down upon me. The air thickened, pressing in. The stone beneath my feet felt distant, the world around me warping into something unreal. Something wrong.
Somewhere in the distance, a voice called my name, but it was drowned beneath the heavy, suffocating silence.
9
Malachi
The potential lastliving Moirae had stumbled into my presence, and somehow, I had managed to let her kill herself.
I had guided the dream, yes. But the moment her mind realized it was hers to bend, my hold broke. The shift hit like a blade slipped between my ribs—control bleeding out before I could grasp it. What followed was not my hand but hers, and for the first time in centuries, something close to fear crawled under my skin. My thumb dragged over the scar in my palm, a habit I thought long buried. She had turned the dream upon itself, and that truth cut deeper than I expected.
Dreamwalking was one of my blessings—an inheritance from Eryndis passed down through her chosen few. Once, the Moirae had shared in that gift, Eryndis’s favor woven into their bloodline by the Nightmother herself. Eryndis had once woven the Moirae bloodline with the threads of all the goddesses, binding them in ways the ruling houses could not control. But balance seldom favors the powerful.
The three remaining goddesses sowed fear into the rulingmortal houses, whispering that Eryndis’s reach had grown too vast, her truths too dangerous. The houses called it blasphemy and named it law, committing to cutting the Moirae line from the world.
A wet, gurgling cough tore from her throat, raw and ragged. Blood pooled beneath her, staining the snow in dark rivulets and seeping into the cracks of the cobblestones. Shadow-fingers licked the snow at her heels.
I crouched and gathered her. She felt fragile in my arms, chilled and trembling beneath a fever already consuming her.
The shadowed mist crept toward the blood seeping from her chest, drawn to it like hunger given form. Her skin was pale and clammy, her breath a set of shallow scrapes. I hesitated for a moment, my gaze drifting to the inky black curls tangled across her face. Lifting her gently, I brushed the hair aside and tilted her head just enough to expose the back of her neck.
Nothing. No divine mark of longevity seared into her skin. Just the smooth, vulnerable curve of her neck—unmarked. Mortal.
A low curse escaped my lips as I cradled her closer. I felt the unfamiliar weight of her mortality pressing against me. Death could still take her if I wasn’t careful.
I rose, tightening my grip, her head settling against my chest. A ribbon of shadow writhed around us, leeching from the rawness of her wound, from the soft pull of spilled blood.
Shadows were fragments of the Veil, drawn to pain like moths to flame. Their touch could damn the dying faster than death itself. They pressed closer, testing me, tasting her.
“Enough.” My voice cracked like frost. Power slipped from me on instinct. The nearest tendrils recoiled, hissing as they sank back into the dark.
Not yet.
With a final glance at the blood-stained snow, I steppedinto the waiting arms of the Veil. For those who could dreamwalk, the Veil remembered—places where blood had fallen became doorways, marked and waiting. I had carved enough of them into Nyxarra to walk its underbelly blindfolded. The mist snapped shut like a jaw and wrapped us in cold.
The Veil was both border and body. It had been built that way—half wall, half world—woven by Eryndis when she stitched the realms into balance. To mortals, it was only the threshold they could see—fog marking where one realm ended and the next began. But beneath that surface lay its true form: a fold of living shadow threaded through every threshold, a corridor between worlds that only the gifted could walk. It writhed and shifted, infinite in every direction, its whispers not always meant for the living. My vision blurred as we passed through; the black mist clung to my skin, cold and slick. It wrapped tighter around Aurelia, probing her wound as if testing whether she belonged to it already.
Not yet, I told it again, wordless.
We tumbled from the dark before the castle’s medical wing, the stale tang of incense and drying herbs climbing into my lungs. The heavy doors groaned and gave beneath my shoulder. Inside, the chamber was long and cold—walls lined with shelves of tinctures and relics, the air heavy with old prayers. A single stone slab stood at its center, scarred from centuries of healing and sacrifice. I laid Aurelia upon it.
“Bring a Synnex healer up from the cells,” I said, my voice cutting through the murmurs of Nyxarran attendants—pale forms with shadow-veined eyes, all a little too hollow.