“I see you,” I whispered, though I didn’t know who or what I was speaking to.
A gust of wind answered me, carrying with it a soft chime, like distant bells echoing across time. The light in the realm glowed unsteady. A stubborn flame refusing to be extinguished.
I felt a pull. Like the tide answering the moon. And then I fell.
The sky beneath me shattered, and I plummeted through stars and fog and memory, my heartbeat a war drum in my ears. The constellations blurred, the realms spinning past in streaks of color and light.
Just before I hit the ground, I saw her—eyes cloaked in shadow, lips curled in the faintest smile.
Eryndis.
My scar seared, the ache flaring into fire, and pain lanced through my chest, dragging me back into my body and out of the dream.
I jolted upright with a gasp, breath ragged as the remnants of the dream slipped from my grasp. Disoriented, I blinked against the dimness, trying to make sense of the heavy stone walls and the towering canopy above me.
Right. I wasn’t home. Not anymore. The truth scraped raw as I swallowed it. No salt-kissed breeze, no Aeryn within reach, just stone walls that felt more like a tomb than a room.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, the tall frame making the motion clumsy. My bare toes met the cool marble floor, and I braced myself against the edge of the mattress as I tested my strength, not eager to collapse again.
I had to move. I had to find the Etherblooms. I had to get back to Aeryn.
A voice cut through the silence. “What are you doing?”
I flinched, heart lurching. “Goddess—don’t scare me like that,” I snapped, turning toward the sound.
Santiago lounged in an oversized chaise near the hearth, a book resting in his lap and a half-empty glass of amber liquid beside him. He looked far too at ease for someone who’d recently been shackled in a cell.
“Apologies,” he said, mildly amused. “Do you need something? Are you feeling alright?”
A fragmented memory surfaced—blurred voices, fever heat. A woman bending over me, eyes too pale, a strange creature buzzing at her shoulder. And him, this healer, his hand pressedfirm against my chest, warmth flooding through me until the darkness receded.
My throat tightened, suspicion prickling beneath my skin. He’d kept me alive, maybe. But I didn’t know him.
“I’m fine,” I muttered. “I need to get out of here.”
He shifted to rise, looking slightly ridiculous in comparison to the massive chair made for at least three men his size. The scale of everything here unsettled me—built to make people feel small, maybe on purpose. “I think we’re allowed to walk around, so long as we stay on this floor,” he offered, already setting his book aside.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want his company. I didn’t trust him. He might have kept me alive, but in my experience, no one did anything without a price. And the way his eyes lingered on me… as though he were piecing together a memory and deciding what to do with it.
Still, I pushed to my feet. My gaze snagged on the iron poker leaning by the hearth, and before he could comment, I took it. Santiago’s brow arched, but he didn’t argue. If this place was a cage, then I wasn’t walking it unarmed.
Every step felt like walking deeper into a trap, but standing still wasn’t an option. Every moment wasted here was another piece of Aeryn slipping further from me.
So I followed him into the corridor, the iron cool and solid in my grip.
Vaulted ceilings loomed overhead, etched with runes long forgotten. The walls were lined with faded velvet tapestries—depictions of the three goddesses in triumphant poses, their faces serene and divine while mortals knelt at their feet.
Shadows pooled in every corner, flickering gently under the glow of enchanted sconces. The flames burned gold but emitted no warmth. An eerie mimicry of light, cold and beautiful.
“This place feels like it’s holding its breath,” I said, more to myself than him.
“It is,” Santiago replied quietly. “It always is. Kaelith’s castle is more of a tomb than a home. Nothing here is alive unless he wills it to be.”
I glanced toward one of the high-arched windows. Beyond the thick glass, the fog circled the city. The sky remained in that strange in-between—neither day nor night, just endless twilight pressing down on the world.
“Why are you even here?” I asked suddenly, not bothering to mask my irritation. “You’re free of the chains. No one’s forcing you to follow me.”
He hesitated, then sighed. “Malachi’s shadows don’t just bind,” he said quietly. “They tether. To the mind. To the body. To whatever he chooses.”