Chapter 34
I thought I could fly.
I was wrong.
Outside the bounds of the Revel, my wings were worthless and limp.
Wind ripped into my face, swept through my hair, and tangled my dress’s delicate layers.
A slipper—then another—fell off my feet.
My mask slipped past my chin, catching at my neck, and I clawed at the silk ribbon and beadwork until it, too, fell away.
I cursed loudly. The roar of the wind carried that off, too.
But I was dreaming. Dreaming. I should have been able to fly.
Why can’t I fly?
I tried to summon my imagination, but my thoughts were jumbled. I couldn’t think beyond the roaring wind. Couldn’t see beyond the hair that whipped into my eyes. My wings twitched, slowly slumbering into life, but it was too late.
Without anything to steady me, I plummeted like a rock. And slammed face-first into the Shadow Bringer.
He spun around with a snarl, wings flaring, and twisted a hand in the front of my dress, pulling me close. With his other hand, he unsheathed his blade and thrust it under my jaw. It was all so instinctual—a cloak of violence worn a thousand times.
“You fool!” he shouted, stopping our plummet with a single push of his wings. “I nearly cut off your head. I thought you were a demon. Or a—”
“Do I look like a demon?” I snapped, clinging to his chest even as I pushed his blade away. “And since when do demons wear dresses, or silk slippers?”
His eyes were unusually sharp as he stared at me. “You can’t control your wings.”
“Clearly not.”
“Then why did you jump?” he asked, repositioning me in his arms. “It was pure foolishness to follow me.”
I thought I could fly. And I wanted to help you.
“Take me back to the Revel so I can keep dancing, then,” I said, but the words snagged. Felt dry and wrong.
“It’s too late for that,” he said, eyes hardening. “We have a future to mend—if we’re not already too late.” His chest heaved against mine, betraying every emotion that hid behind his wall of shadow. I had never heard him sound like this. So broken and frantic.
“Five hundred years. Five hundred years of rotting away in the dark. There has to be a way out,” he said.
The Nocturne stretched below us, still as glass, reflecting the sky’s remaining stars. Near the horizon, the barest hint of dawn trickled in. For a moment, it was just us, the clash of sky against sea, and our mingling breath.
“Your village and its Corrupt have confined you. Stifled you. Forced you to live a life you didn’t want for yourself.” His voice broke then. “Now consider what that miserable reality would do to you over more than five lifetimes. Five lifetimes alone.”
Visions—memories—flashed before me, demanding my attention and pulling me under. They made me into the Shadow Bringer. Made me see and feel the world as he did.
Erebus waded into the Nocturne, cloak dragging underneath its starlit waters.
Here was what he had waited for. His power; his purpose.
It was all for this.
But when he placed his bare hands upon the waters, ready to destroy the demons once and for all, the Nocturne changed.
To his horror, the water darkened, twisted, and boiled.
Cracked apart like hollow bones. Demons roared under its waves and broke free from its depths.
They screamed violently into the night, desperate for blood and dreamers’ souls.
The Nocturne’s shadows—its darkness—could not be cleansed. Erebus could not do it. He had failed.
He stumbled back.
Mithras was wrong. Their plan for Erebus to cleanse the Nocturne while Mithras gathered the hidden demons infesting the Revel—all to be crushed by the combined power of the seven Weavers, ending the demonic plague on the Dream Realm—was wrong.
Erebus was no hero. His powers held no noble purpose.
He was a blight, a curse, a disease. And for that, humanity would be destroyed.
Erebus looked to the sky, desperate to find his golden-eyed friend.
Mithras was flying above the Nocturne, ringed by all seven Weavers.
Erebus almost shouted for him, but the words died in his throat.
Mithras’s eyes were hateful as they beheld Erebus, and the Seven’s power rumbled around their immortal shoulders.
Mithras and the Weavers weren’t here to help him; they were here to fight him.
Mithras’s betrayal clawed down Erebus’s chest, callously ripping him apart.
Somehow Mithras had known this would happen. Erebus wouldn’t purge the Nocturne’s darkness like a hero. No, he’d be caught summoning demons from the Nocturne like an infernal villain. With a roar of rage and despair, Erebus tried to escape the Revel by forcing himself awake.
But he couldn’t. He was trapped.
And so he fled.
Erebus escaped to his castle, his haven, his palace of shadow that had been his personal training ground. The only place he knew where he might be able to defend himself.
The Weavers charged him at his castle. Mercilessly attacked him in a swell of grief and fury.
“Shadow Bringer,” they cried, damning him. “Demon lord. Devourer.”
Rock crushed his outstretched arms; his left dropped, useless. But even mangled and broken, trembling and bloody, Erebus’s right hand held, commanding the dark as it threaded together the final stitches of his domain.
“You will not take my soul!” he roared.
And the Realm roared back.
Years later, the shadows in his castle curled toward him, rolling around his shoulders in a hideous cloud. Perhaps a minute passed. Perhaps a century. How could he tell? His senses were cut off, his hands heavy and numb. But it did not matter.
Nothing mattered anymore.
He was no longer Erebus; he was the Shadow Bringer.
At first, the Shadow Bringer had counted the days.
Scraped them into his bedchamber walls. Etched them in the pages of a book.
But the living shadows—the monsters, the creatures, the demons—began to infest his castle.
He wasn’t sure how they appeared, only that they were trapped here as he was.
Some could haunt the surrounding forest, but most, like him, were bound to the castle’s walls.
They curled around his soul as if they owned it.
And perhaps they did.
Their unholy power was clearly his, too; they were sated by his shadows and desperate for their release. The Shadow Bringer shuddered as a demon outside his door screamed.
His eyes were heavy, and his heart was full of hatred.
Centuries later, the Shadow Bringer felt the knock before he heard it.
Felt her walk up the castle steps as if she crawled over his skin.
He snarled, charging through his castle’s broken innards. After all this time, they had finally sent someone to kill him. He scarcely remembered who “they” were, but he knew she did not belong in his domain. Did not deserve to see him like this.
Enemy. Enemy. Enemy.
The Shadow Bringer stood at his mirror and wiped blood from his throat, his chin, and his lips. It soaked into the cloth, staining it black. She had used his power—too much of it—to sate the demons in the water, and somehow caused him to bleed.
He had forgotten he even could. And it was all because of her.
How dare she enter his castle, his fortress, and try to manipulate his power?
He had sensed it when they had first met.
The shadows had bent to her will, loosening around her chest when he had meant to keep them taut.
A vision of her drifted to the front of his consciousness.
Her, standing in the middle of that cold pool, starlight pouring through the cracks and gleaming in the water, in the stone of the cavern walls, in her eyes. Her dark eyes, filled with—what was it?
He wasn’t certain, couldn’t recall what those emotions were named.
How dare she disturb his peaceful agony?
And he didn’t even know her name.
The Shadow Bringer blinked hard, clearing mire from his thoughts.
He did not feel the cold from the Tomb of the Devourer as it seeped into his bones, did not feel the hollows under his eyes growing tighter and deeper.
For days he had tried to escape the tomb, but it was useless.
The door wouldn’t open. He shook his hands through his hair, kicked the ground with the heel of his boot. Darkness, everywhere.
He avoided the bones at his feet as he descended farther into the dark. And he tried not to think about Esmer as the walls drew nearer around him. But it was impossible.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her.
The Shadow Bringer staggered to where he had left her. The chamber was undisturbed, a shadowed cathedral with a living sacrifice at its altar. Esmer’s hair, so dark it was nearly black, curled over the stone.
She was beautiful.
He had resisted thinking—or feeling—as much, but he couldn’t deny it. Hadn’t been able to since he’d first met her. In a different time, perhaps he would have told her.
Except—
Was that her brow tensing, her mouth twisting into a grimace?
He blinked again, struggling in vain to rip the image from his sight.
When Esmer had first closed her eyes, sinking into the oblivion he had so carefully prepared for her, he imagined he would feel hope.
Relief. Triumph. He had theorized that she’d be able to replace him in his castle, that the curse keeping him imprisoned would allow her to remain there in his place while he hunted Mithras down and shoved a blade through the traitor’s heart. Esmer had his magic, after all.
But the tomb door wouldn’t open, and a deep, roiling pit of regret and self-hatred was beginning to eat him alive. If he didn’t join her in the Dream Realm, it would consume him, body and soul.
He lowered himself next to her, folding his hands over his waist. Perhaps he’d regret this. He was returning to his prison, after all. But his will to see her again and the rage he felt for Mithras were stronger than his will to succumb to his circumstances.
And so he closed his eyes.
The Shadow Bringer stole the glass from her lips, placing it against his own.