Chapter 33 #2
I skimmed my hand along his shoulder, moving it absently toward the black hair that rested there.
What had turned it white? Had the Bringer’s castle leeched all color, all soul, from his body, rendering him bitter and bloodless?
Erebus shared many similarities with the Shadow Bringer, but he radiated life in ways the Shadow Bringer did not.
Erebus’s eyes were sharper, his skin darker, and his lips more precisely defined.
And there was a sense of self-assuredness in the way that Erebus carried himself.
He was less haunted and burdened. More certain of his path and his purpose.
Our eyes met again. This time, whatever he saw in my gaze gave him pause.
He dipped his head, bringing his mouth to graze the edge of my ear. “Listen carefully and respond as truthfully as you are able. What is happening outside the Dream Realm? You’re new here; you will be able to answer more clearly than the others. Has the sickness spread?”
“Sickness,” I echoed, a chill spreading over my skin. Corruption. Did he not have a word for it yet? “Do you mean Corruption?”
Erebus’s mouth tightened. “That is an accurate way to describe it. What have you seen?”
“It’s dreadful,” I whispered. The dreamers around us were switching partners, but we did not stray from each other’s arms. “It killed my parents and my sister. Eden,” I clarified, as if her name mattered to him.
“She was young.” My voice caught, tangled by emotions that twisted my heart into knots.
“She had her entire life to look forward to.”
But then I killed her.
I encouraged her to dream, and a demon found her.
I wrought the shadows underneath her eyes.
I caused the blood on her skin and the splinters on her coffin.
I ruined a life that was not my own. Then her death rattled an honorable mother and father into committing unspeakable acts, ripping apart the lives of countless others.
I wanted to say this and more, but the shadows in Erebus’s eyes made me pause. They swirled, pooled, darkened. I first guessed the emotion to be anger or horror, but it felt different. More depthless and aching.
Sorrow, I realized.
Was he trapped here, in Evernight? Why couldn’t he just wake up and investigate himself?
I spoke my questions aloud: “Why can’t you go see for yourself?”
He blinked, a flash of sadness breaking through his careful guard.
“It is not as simple as that.” He dipped me in perfect timing with the other dreamers, causing my feathers to brush the clouds underfoot.
Once upright again, he spun me back to his chest. “I intend to fix this world,” he murmured into my hair.
“There will be no more sickness or death. The dark must be destroyed.”
I realized something then.
Erebus was, indeed, more certain of his purpose, but that purpose wouldn’t lead him to glory or happiness. He was bound for five hundred years of torment at the hands of a thousand monsters, and a detestable new moniker: Shadow Bringer.
“Whatever you’re about to do… it doesn’t end how you wish it to.” The words stumbled out before I could stop them.
Five hundred years of darkness. Five hundred years of rotting away in the dark. Alone.
“Who are you?” he asked, silver eyes searching mine. “Have we met before?” His grip tightened. I wasn’t sure if he was aware of it. “You look…” He drifted off, analyzing my face. For a moment, it seemed as if he might rip off my mask.
Far below us, perhaps within the halls of Citadel Evernight, a bell clanged, and the skies darkened.
Erebus stopped, suspending us in the air.
“I’m afraid that’s all the time I have left,” he said, smiling sadly and releasing my hand. “I hope to see you again one day. I intend to revisit this conversation.”
“Wait, Erebus, you don’t—”
But he had already turned his back to me and dived between the pillars.
Gone.
My wings beat behind me, silently churning the air. What was I supposed to do now? What was my purpose here?
And just as I was about to dive after Erebus, I finally felt him.
The Shadow Bringer.
I spun around. Unsurprisingly, he was still in his black armor, sharp boots, and taloned gauntlets.
The metal gleamed wickedly under the starlight, so at odds with the soft hues of the other dreamers, and his matching mask, no longer a draconic helm, was lined in obsidian points.
But no one cared. Most of the dreamers who’d once looked upon me as prey had now moved toward a fresh offering of food and drink.
Which left the Shadow Bringer and me alone in the deep, endless night.
His wings were black and glossy, grander and more resplendent than I’d ever seen them.
They stretched behind him, shimmering like a midnight river set aglow by the stars, making him appear taller and more intimidating than he already was.
How silly that I’d ever thought wings looked impressive on the other dreamers.
The way they looked on dreamers was nothing compared with how they looked on the Shadow Bringer.
His were menacing and tempting. And I wanted to touch them more than ever.
Strange.
The Bringer took in my dress. I could have sworn his masked gaze lingered there—in the shape of it. In the folds, the fabric. On my wings, soft and gray. And last, he focused on my eyes. His mouth slackened. I wasn’t sure he even noticed.
“You appear to be in your element,” I managed, heat rising to my temples. I had meant to tell him about Erebus, but the thought had promptly drifted away. “Your wings suit you.”
“As do yours.” It seemed as though he wanted to say more, but he shut his mouth before he could. His skin betrayed him, though; a flush was definitely at his temples, too.
The music soared, light and free. A crescendo of stringed instruments so perfectly harmonious that it made my heart lift. We were the only two partygoers not dancing.
“Where did you go?” I finally asked without revealing my yearning. I was looking for you. I missed having you by my side.
“I didn’t intend to leave you for so long.” He swallowed hard, as if deliberating whether to tell me a truth or a lie. “I was visiting with old friends.” His voice broke a little, cracked and splintered at that single admission. “Or watching them, really. What can a man say to his ghosts?”
A truth. A haunted, heartbreaking truth.
“Mithras was my friend, once,” the Bringer continued, looking out at the sky. “But he betrayed me—and it happens tonight, at this Revel.” He ran a gauntleted hand through his hair. “My memories come in pieces. There will be some cue. I should recognize it and know.”
“So we have more time, then?” I asked. I then tried for something more playful, wanting to ease the sorrow in his eyes that so clearly mirrored Erebus’s. “We could dance.”
“I am not dancing.” He added quickly, “I don’t dance.”
“Your past self would disagree. I was just dancing with him, actually.”
The Shadow Bringer tilted his head, considering. “Were you, now? You should know I only learned to dance so I could appease the Weavers who held these cursed parties.”
“What I’m hearing is that you are, indeed, very capable of dancing.”
He grabbed my hands and pulled me to him.
“Only this once,” he warned. “Just to stop your pestering.”
Despite his initial hesitation, he guided me through the music, keeping up even as the pace frenzied.
Our wings beat in unison. We twirled across the clouds, lost in the soaring violins, the complicated spins, and the beauty and wonder of it all.
Before the first song ended, he was already flushed and smirking.
And so was I.
“How can you do that without flinching?” he asked, guiding us to a more secluded part of the clouds. Toward the pillars and the stars.
“Do what?”
“Touch me,” he answered, bringing his gauntleted hand to the back of my neck. “Like this.”
Like—oh. My left hand was perched on his shoulder, absently threading through his hair.
“I must be hypnotized by your impressive dancing skills,” I said to save face.
“Hmm,” he murmured, bringing his hand back to my waist.
“It’s nothing, really,” I insisted. “Your hair looked soft, is all.”
The fingers around my waist tightened, metal talons digging into the silk.
Oh? So this isn’t anything, either, then? his hungry grip seemed to suggest. But he pushed too hard, talons pinching my side, and I flinched.
He began to pull away from me, removing his hand from my waist.
“I have nothing against your hands,” I said, making a point to squeeze the hand that held my right. “But they are encased in knives.”
He cast a fleeting glance downward, apparently startled by the realization that his hands were, indeed, encased in metal.
“I’ve worn these for so long,” he noted quietly, flexing his fingers.
“Dreamers wear gauntlets or gloves to remind themselves they aren’t in reality.
A kind of protection, really—dulling the senses so we never forget what the Realm truly is.
If we forget, then we might never choose to wake.
We might forget where we are, who we are, and why we are.
” He added, eyes darkening, “The sensation of touch is a powerful thing to get lost in. I’ve rarely allowed myself to enjoy it. ”
He looked at his hands again, weighing, considering.
Finally, with a slight shift in his eyes, the gloves drew back, melting into the spires that lined his forearms. His right hand, now unbound, stretched against my back; his left hand roved the curves of my fingers.
The shadows in his eyes were on the brink of shattering.
He clenched the fabric at my back, as if that would anchor him.
I couldn’t help wondering again how long it had been since he’d felt the touch of another.
There was solace in the warmth of skin on skin.
To have that feeling dulled or removed entirely was unthinkable.
The Bringer’s expression changed; the cold mask of indifference was coming back.
Without thinking, I pulled his hand to my face.
“Bringer. Look at me.”
For a breath, his hand stilled on my skin.
His expression was guarded, unreadable. But then his thumb brushed my jawline.
Long fingers stretched across the curve of my neck, winding into my hair.
The braid the dreamer had given me gave him pause, so he unbound it—whether by his magic or his hands, I couldn’t tell—then snagged my lower lip with his thumb.
The shadows in his eyes darkened, beckoning, then eddied away.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, skimming his thumb across my mouth. “I’ve always thought so. Did you know that?”
Maker, my skin was warm. Of course I didn’t know that.
His touch lingered, then drifted, and before doubt could take hold, I leaned in, pressing a soft, tentative kiss along the line of his jaw, just below his ear.
With his helm cast aside in favor of a mask, the air between us shivered with intoxicating tension.
I lingered there, close enough to feel his breath, frozen between the urge to kiss him again and the desire to savor this moment a little longer.
“As are you, Shadow Bringer. You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever known.”
His breath hitched as he pulled me close, tilting his face so that his mouth hovered over mine.
In that suspended moment, uncertainty flickered in his eyes, as if questioning whether I truly wanted this.
Desperate to erase his doubts, I cradled his face in my hands, fingertips tracing the features left exposed by his mask.
I could feel the tremor in his touch, but I also felt his longing—the yearning to lose himself, if even for a moment.
To kiss me. Hard. But instead of my mouth, his lips unexpectedly found my neck.
I gasped, arching into him and giving more access to that skin. Skin that was now absolutely and unequivocally burning.
He made a soft growl against my neck, dragging his teeth down the column of my throat. My eyes fluttered shut when I felt him there—brief brushes of his lips and tongue punctuated by the graze of his teeth. Teeth that I had once imagined would tear through my bones and devour my soul.
A slow, deliberate kiss near my ear had me writhing, pulling him closer.
Time stopped. The stars were slowly twinkling out—and something was terribly wrong.
“Esmer,” the Shadow Bringer said, his voice suddenly cracking in horror. “I remember now.”
Something snapped in his eyes. Something wild, fierce, unbound. He stumbled back, wings shuttering. Hesitating. He flew to the pillars, just as Erebus had. It was all so similar—his expression. The urgency.
The look of death in his eyes.
Only this time, when he jumped, I followed.