The Synnex healers were different: sun-warmed, their very blood carrying a trace of light that scorched their realm, often blessed by Kaerani, goddess of passion, fury, and renewal. It waswhy Prince Kaelith imprisoned them. Their light healed what our darkness could not.
The Nyxarran healers faltered, clinging to their oaths more than to survival. A woman with grey skin and black eyes stepped forward, her voice brittle. “Releasing the light without sanction is forbidden,” she whispered. “If Kaelith learns we brought a Synnex healer to the surface?—”
“Now,” I said. “Or you’ll find yourselves chained next to them.”
A tense pause. Then footsteps fled down the corridor.
Moments later, a healer was dragged in. He stood tall despite what remained of his shackles, chestnut curls wild from the dark below. Dirt smeared his tan skin, and the scent of iron and damp stone clung to him. Exhaustion hollowed his face, but warmth did not abandon it. His wrists bore fresh scars where iron had rubbed them raw.
He approached Aurelia with an almost reverent touch, peeling back her thick leathers and furs. She had been dressed well for someone stupid enough to travel during Darkfrost—I’d give her that. Layers upon layers, yet they hadn’t saved her from herself. Or from me. I’d guided the dream, but she’d twisted it. Kaelith would not care whose fault it was—only that I’d let his newest curiosity bleed before he could claim it.
“My name is Santiago,” he said quietly, kneeling beside her.
The healer’s breath hitched. He was staring at the fresh wound near her heart alongside the scar I’d noted earlier, but this new mark sat lower, fresh and red. Deep-purple veins spiderwebbed outward, a grotesque tapestry of suffering. A wound born of the dream, one that would scar beside the one she already carried.
I knew its kind—the Veil’s punishment for turning thought into violence. Among dreamwalkers, intent was a blade; what weharmed in the dream could bleed in the waking. Aurelia flinched. Her hand snapped up and closed on the healer’s wrist with surprising strength.
Her eyes opened, a startling, fevered blue flaring against the red, catching his for a heartbeat before she fell limp. The healer caught her head before it struck the stone, his jaw tightening in concentration.
He inspected the wound, lips pressed into a thin line, fingers tracing the corrupted veins with care. The injury pulsed—sickly, alive. The skin around it blackened, and a faint mist curled from the raw edges, whispering in the healer’s ears.
“How did this happen?” His voice was sharp, protective—almost accusing.
“She did it to herself,” I replied, my tone devoid of concern.
The healer’s eyes snapped to mine, burning with silent judgment. He lingered too long, longer than any in this realm should dare to, his gaze filled with an emotion I neither understood nor cared for.
“Problem?” I asked, my voice dripping with impatience.
He said nothing, but his hands moved with precision, pressing over the wound as he began a healing chant.
Light spilled from his hands, burning the dark back inch by inch. Her face contorted, caught between agony and surrender. The tendrils recoiled, hissing. He was competent. Effective.
“Will she live?” I asked, stepping back into the dark that stretched along the edges of the room. I needed her alive. Nothing more, nothing less.
The healer lifted his gaze once more, holding mine with a solemn weight. “Yes,” he said, his voice laced with quiet warning. “She’ll live. But whatever is inside her will fight whatever plans you and this realm have for her.”
I said nothing, offering only a slow nod.Let it fight. It changed nothing. I would deliver her to Kaelith. And she would serve her purpose.
As a boy, I had been taught the hymns—verses about threads unbroken, knots no blade could sever. We sang them in whispers before sleep, our voices small in the candlelight. Later, in the barracks, they told us those same songs were poison. Heresy. They put torches in our hands and made us burn the scraps we had once memorized. Melody was replaced with command. Myth with obedience. Even now, I heard both: the child’s song and the soldier’s silence, two truths grinding against each other.
Those hymns used to sound like hope. Now they sounded like warning.
10
Aurelia
“She’s beenasleep for five days—surely we need to wake her to, I don’t know, eat… drink… ask her why in all the realms she chose this cursed place to visit.”
Five days.
Too long.
“Seraphine, that’s enough. No—don’t poke?—”
A sharp jab to my eye snapped me into consciousness. I flinched, blinking against the blur until a face swam into focus.
Sharp violet eyes, wide with delight, blinked at me, framed by lashes so long they looked brushed with ink. Her skin was a deep, glistening onyx, and her wings—filmy and insect-like—beat so quickly they appeared frozen in place. They hummed softly in the air above me, hovering far too close.