27
The dream came upon me like a volley of arrows, pinning me beneath a tidal wave of darkness. Pitch-black night pressed into me from all sides, urging a scream from my lungs that I refused to indulge.
Be not afraid.
I stalked forward, shadows clinging to my face and neck as I fought to clear my vision.
“Where are you?” I demanded, barely recognizing the venom in my words.
“I’m here,” the voice answered. It was barely a whisper, a crackle of dry grass upon stone.
I spun around, trying to spot the speaker, but the darkness would not relent. A few steps more and I had summoned my sword, gripping it tightly in my hands. I held it steadily in front of me, prepared to fight whatever it was that might reveal itself.
Slowly, ever so slowly, hands, a chest, and a face emerged from the darkness.
I gasped, unable to stop myself.
Mithras was chained to the bottom of a pit, his body a husk of what it had once been. His dirty hair was the color of pallid wheat, his face grayish and bruised. He was in the rags of what used to be his glorious armor, his crimson cape reduced to mere strings behind his back.
“Release your hold on the Dream Realm,” I snarled. I held the blade over his exposed throat, ready to strike. He was kneeling, completely at my mercy. I could do it. I would do it. “And stop whatever madness you have planned in Noctis.”
“Is it that simple, now?” Mithras laughed; the sound was hoarse and rattling. Like beetles across a stone floor. “It’s too late, Esmer. It’s over.”
“Liar,” I snapped, pressing the blade into his throat.
He didn’t flinch. Instead, he moved closer, another laugh escaping his lungs as his golden blood pooled across the metal. “I only called you here to warn you and to say goodbye,” he wheezed, eyes glistening. “I only wish Erebus were here, too. I tried summoning him, but he didn’t heed my call.”
“You have no right to speak with him,” I snarled.
“I don’t?” he choked out. “Perhaps that’s true.”
“Your actions have said everything he needs to know. If you truly wish to be redeemed, tell me everything. Tell me how we can save Noctis and the Dream Realm.”
Mithras rattled his chains, showing me his hands.
“Raelion—he’s—it’s already done. Five years ago, I made plans for you to take my life in Istralla.
You’d have been escorted to the capital and treated like royalty before I offered my head to you on a Maker-forsaken platter.
” Tears spilled down his sunken face. He looked up at me, eyes dull.
“For five years, I thought you had died, Esmer. You and Erebus weren’t in the Dream Realm, and you weren’t in Noctis, either.
” He made a strangled sound. As if he was choking on his own blood.
“I haven’t been strong enough to resist him these last five years.
I’d withstood him for centuries, bolstered by hope, but this was too much. ”
He reached toward me, chains clinking.
I recoiled.
Mithras dropped his arms. “To kill Raelion for good, you will need to destroy his physical and incorporeal bodies. His physical body is mine. Find me at the Revel of Dawn and aim for my head or my heart. Perhaps both.” He gave a short, miserable laugh.
“And then, when I’m dead, descend into the Dream Realm and fight Raelion again.
He’ll be weak,” he gritted out, drawing his hand back to his chest. “When I say it’s too late, I mean for me. I never said it was too late for you.”
And then I was shoved backward by an unseen power, spiraling away from the dream with the force of a gale.
I woke up clutching my chest, hair tangled and chest heaving. The first threads of light trickled in through the bedchamber’s windows, soft and steady despite the frantic animal in my ribs. It was today. Everything would happen today.
The rise of a new dawn for Noctis, or its brutal, bloody fall.
“You dreamed of him?” Erebus asked, simmering with anger even as he held me close, examining me for any signs of the demon lurking within.
Demon. Demon. Demon.
I could feel him wondering—searching—as I recounted my dream with Mithras. I was the only one who had managed to dream; Erebus had encountered nothing but darkness. The other Weavers joined us around the canopied bed, faces hardened with both concern and resolve.
“To think he had the right to say goodbye,” Erebus snarled. Twin crescents, indicative of the exhaustion that plagued us both, marked the hollows of his eyes. “He will never speak to you again after this day. First I will take his heart, then I will sever the tongue from his throat.”
A chorus of bright, cheerful bells interrupted us, echoing out from somewhere beyond the citadel.
The Revel of Dawn was here.
The nine of us dressed quickly in what Silas had prepared for us: lavish white outfits with gold embroidery, ruby jewelry and adornments, and matching gold masks with extravagant beadwork.
We looked so unlike ourselves that I wanted to laugh, but if we deviated at all from this attire, we’d be sorely out of place.
Before we left, we hid our weapons on our bodies, as none would be permitted at the Revel.
Erebus strapped two long daggers, deftly concealed by a short cape, to his back, and I positioned mine within my voluminous sleeves.
They were nothing compared to the strength of our shadows, but they were all we had.
In Noctis, our shadows were fickle, only appearing in areas of great power—like the Weaver tombs—or when faced with great disease—like Corruption.
Erebus and I were the last to leave the room. His towering body stilled as he drank me in, from the rubies in my ears to the slippers beaded with golden suns at my feet. Raelion’s marking was hidden, perfectly concealed by a high neckline.
“You belong with me in shadow, but there’s something radiant about you in gold.”
A strangled sound escaped my lips, a cross between a confident laugh and a hysterical sob. I placed a hand upon his cheek, brushing the edge of his gilded mask. “No matter what happens today, I want you to know that I regret nothing. You changed my life for the better.”
“Our story isn’t over yet,” he said, jaw tensing as he regarded me seriously. “I won’t allow it to be.”
And then he quieted my answer with a fierce kiss that was nothing but love.