14
Malachi
I mademy way down the spiral staircase toward the lower wing of the castle—the part the nobles avoided. They preferred their marble halls and whispers. The lower keep belonged to those of us who remembered what Nyxarra had been before the crown and chains.
It was where the Keepers lived, the ones who kept the hearths burning and the castle standing while the rest played at power and politics.
I was searching for Lysara.
She’d been bound to Nyxarra nearly as long as I had—long before the other Keepers were chained by Talon’s decree. Lysara had been of the old faith once, spared only because her knowledge of Eryndis’s rites made her too valuable to destroy.
She was one of the few I trusted, perhaps the only one who knew what shadows I truly walked in. And though her station had long been confined to the servant tier of the keep, her knowledge—and loyalty—ran far deeper than that of a mere castle hand.
The common room beyond the corridor glimmered withfirelight, warm and inviting despite the worn stones and aging tapestries. Thick-woven rugs and soft cushions scattered in cozy disorder covered the cold floor. There was no grandeur here, no pretense—just comfort.
Lysara sat near the hearth, gently coaxing a gaggle of small children into a circle on the carpet. She moved with a ghostly grace that never quite felt real. Loose crimson waves cascaded down her back, and her pale skin glowed beneath the warm flicker of flame. But it was her eyes that always unsettled newcomers, almond-shaped and framed by lashes pale as frost, twin pools of opalescent white that caught the firelight. She had always been too beautiful for this realm.
“Just one story, please,” she said softly, a hint of a smile on her crimson lips.
I sank down among the children, several of whom immediately climbed into my lap with practiced familiarity. Little Nara, always with ink-stained fingers and a tendency to ask too many questions. Orin, with his shaggy curls and habit of clinging to my cloak. I ruffled his hair, and he giggled, nestling closer. For a moment, I let them. For a moment, I almost believed this realm could still offer innocence.
Lysara opened the worn leather-bound storybook in her lap. “Tonight,” she began, her voice lilting and low, “we speak of the girl who carried starlight in her veins, born from a bloodline touched by gods…”
I leaned back, half-listening, watching the firelight dance in the children’s eyes. The tale she told was an old one—a folktale passed through generations, wrapped in metaphor and myth.
“She was not born to unite,” Lysara whispered, voice softening to a hush. “She was born to fracture. And in that fracture, the realms would be stitched whole again.”
The words pressed against me like a blade. Aurelia’s scarburned in my memory.Born to fracture.Was that what she was? A curse? Or something worse?
The children sighed with delight, lulled by the rhythm of her voice, but my chest felt heavy. Every quiet moment like this was borrowed time. Kaelith would summon me soon, demand obedience, and I would have to deliver it. The thought soured even the comfort of Orin’s weight against my chest.
I kept my gaze on the fire, but in the flickering shadows at its edge, I swore I saw something stir—something that whispered her name.
A chill threaded down my spine.
Lysara’s voice softened, and the firelight danced across her pale features.
“Long ago, before the realms were split, before sun and moon chose their sides, there was only the Nightmother. Or so the stories say.
In truth, she walked beside another then. The Stillness that shaped the dark before light had a name. But history remembers what it can bear.
Some say she was born from the first breath of darkness, when the world exhaled its light. Others say she wove herself from stardust and sorrow, cloaking herself in the threads between dreams.
Her presence was gentle at first—cool breezes, the hush of lullabies, the safe dark that helped children rest.
But the people grew careless. They began to fear the night instead of honoring it. They lit fires too high, built walls too wide, and claimed that no shadows could touch them.
And so the Nightmother sent her daughters.
They came on silent wings. Figments cloaked in twilight. One carried fog, veiled in secrets and shifting thresholds. Another trailed flames in her wake, her breath warm with fury and rebirth. A third moved like wind through the trees, coaxing bloomand decay in equal measure. And the last rose from the tide, her waves as likely to cradle as they were to consume—forever reminding mortals that nothing they built was beyond the reach of the sea.
They did not harm. They simply reminded—of what must end so something new might begin. The Nightmother’s daughters were never destroyers. They were correction. Balance given form.
In those early days, their blessings were gifts freely given—healing for the sick, strength for the weary, a little more time for those whose lives flickered too soon. They marked mortals not to claim them, but to keep them alive in her stead.
Only later, when fear twisted faith into hunger, did those same blessings become leashes.”
I’d heard that story before. Before the goddesses, there had been two voices in the dark: Atrox, the Stillness that craved order, and the Nightmother, the pulse that made silence sing. Together theyspokethe world into being—each story they told shaping mountains, seas, and the first beating hearts. Their words became creation itself. But love made her mortal, and madness made him cruel.