“Oh, wonderful! See? She just needed a little encouraging,” she sang, pulling back with a grin that suggested she’d happily do it again.
“Seraphine,” the second voice came again, firmer now. A woman leaned into view beside her—dark crimson hair braidedneatly, eyes so pale and opulent they seemed to swallow the whites, leaving her gaze uncanny, almost unearthly. “She’s in no state to be badgered.”
“Badgered?” Seraphine gasped, mock-offended. “I’m reviving her—clearly.”
“Forgive her.” The red-haired woman’s tone softened as she turned fully toward me, the sharpness in her expression easing. “I’m Lysara. How are you feeling?”
Her hand brushed lightly across my arm, steadying me. But the touch ripped me back into memory.
Hayat.His hands on my skin. His mouth at my throat. The sting of teeth. Heat, hunger, and the terrifying way I had wanted it. My pulse spiked, nausea rising with the memory.
Seraphine cocked her head, expression sharpening as if she could taste the panic radiating off me. “Oh, look at her face. She remembers something.”
“Seraphine,” Lysara warned again, low and clipped this time.
But my mind was already reeling. A knife in my hand. The shadowed figure before me. The slide of steel through flesh. Warm blood spilling over my fingers. And then—my own face staring back at me.
Warmth pressed against me, suffocating and relentless, like a second skin. My eyes snapped open to a dim haze of gold. Firelight licked shadows across the walls, painting the deep green velvet drapes in a warm glow. I tried to sit up, but pain tore through my chest, white-hot and blinding. My hand flew to the bandage beneath soft linen. Linen. Not my leathers.
I lurched upright, ignoring the rip of pain in my ribs. “What the fuck…” My voice cracked. “…where am I?”
Neither answered. Seraphine’s pointed ear twitched. Lysara’s head snapped toward the door.
“Uh oh,” Seraphine murmured, “Boss man’s coming.”
On her way past, she plucked a loose thread from my blanket, twirling it around her finger with a wicked grin before vanishing. The two slipped behind a velvet drape into a hidden seam of darkness, gone before I could demand answers.
Silence roared in my ears.
That was when I saw him.
A man sat in the corner near the hearth, restrained to a chair bolted into the flagstones. Black coils of shadow wrapped his wrists and ankles, pulsing faintly. His head hung low, hair curtaining his face until he slowly lifted it to meet my gaze. His eyes were deep-set, unreadable, the color of old copper.
My breath stalled, caught sharp in my chest.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice roughened with exhaustion.
My throat was dry, the words cracking as they left me. “Who are you?”
He tilted his head, a crooked half-smile tugging at his mouth, though it never touched his eyes. “A healer.”
My gaze darted to his restraints. “Then why the hell are you tied up with—what are those—shadows?” I forced steel into my voice, though my eyes swept the room, hunting for anything—a candlestick, a shard of glass—anything I could wield. The blanket tightened in my fists, flimsy shield though it was. He wasn’t free, but I wasn’t sure I was either.
A dry huff escaped him. The restraints I recognized as shadow shifted as he adjusted himself. “Apparently, my skill is valuable. My freedom isn’t.”
I let myself look at him then. He had broad shoulders, built for strength, but weariness clung to him, softening the sharp set of his jaw. His shirt sagged loose at the collar, baring a stretch of tan skin over a sculpted collarbone. Warmth seemed to radiate from him, yet the look in his eyes was distant, unreadable. He mighthave been someone broken by captivity… or someone dangerous enough to deserve it.
My stomach knotted. A chill spread through me, sharper than pain. My pulse hammered as I scanned the shadows binding his wrists, imagining them around mine. I dragged my gaze back to his face, searching for some sign, some anchor to tell me whether he was threat or ally. But there was no answer there.
I narrowed my eyes as realization struck. “You’re from Synnex, aren’t you? One of the missing healers.”
He didn’t bristle; the corner of his mouth flattened, that easy half-smile snuffed. I knew I’d recognized the sound of those softened coastal vowels. And no one outside Synnex wore charms etched from tideglass at their collar; the shard glinted faintly beneath his shirt as he moved, proof enough. Strange that they’d let him keep it.
For years, the stories had haunted us. Healers crossing into Nyxarra, chasing remedies no one else could provide, only to vanish into its fog. Families praying until their throats bled. Offerings piled at Sylvara’s shrines—sprigs of harvest grain, pressed flowers, whispered pleas that the goddess of flora and lands might clear their paths home and keep them safe as they wandered. But the prayers went unanswered.
Some said Nyxarra devoured them whole. Others said its shadows wore their faces now.
Whatever the truth, no healer who left for this realm ever came back the same—if at all. But they hadn’t trained as I had. They didn’t have someone like Aeryn waiting on the other side.