Chapter 34 #3
When it sensed I was no longer a threat, the thing sank to its belly, crawling into a nearby hole, and gave a small warbling cry before falling silent. My sword hung limply from my fingers, scraping against the rocks.
What was I doing?
Tears sprang to my eyes, unbidden and unwanted.
I stumbled back to the Nocturne. I could feel the Shadow Bringer’s darkness—the shadows that lingered, even now.
Shadows that trailed behind him as he sank deeper, deeper, deeper into the water until I couldn’t see him anymore.
And through that swell of darkness, I could feel his pain.
The deep, aching sorrow at seeing his tragic past lived out again.
The indignation—the anger—at fighting himself.
The pain of drowning. The fear of being lost to the Nocturne’s dreams.
And there was something else, too. A longing for someone.
A longing for me.
I fell to my knees, numb to the demons dropping from the sky and crawling from the water. The Shadow Bringer was lost to the Nocturne. And if he was ever to come back, I had to save him. I had to fight for him—now—before he fell deeper. This felt real. This was real.
I sank my hands into the water, reaching for his threads of shadow.
For the trail of darkness that lingered behind him like unraveling strings.
I wrapped them around my arms. Willed them toward me with everything I had.
And then I pulled. Mentally and physically.
I pulled hard. Even as the demons screamed.
Even as they rushed toward Evernight. I ignored them all, shut out what I couldn’t understand, and focused on the Shadow Bringer.
Erebus was there, too. I could feel him as I called to the Shadow Bringer.
Erebus was falling fast, lost between the Nocturne’s dreams and the demons breaking free from it.
Again I saw that boy back in the woods, fearing for his life.
Despite his rank, despite his power, he was just a boy.
A boy doubting his purpose and his worth as they crumbled between his fingers.
So I called for them both. Summoned the shadows that spun from each of them.
And when I saw a body emerging from the deep, I lunged for it.
“Hang on!” I screamed, grabbing for his arms, his shoulders, anything. Miraculously, I found his hands. And he held on.
But just as I pulled him up, I slipped on the rocks, falling sideways.
Something grabbed for my foot, dragging me down.
Pain lanced up my leg, red-hot and searing.
Whatever tore at my foot was moving up my skin, climbing its claw up my leg as I fought to swim back to the surface.
But the thing on my leg was stronger. It viciously pulled me down, down, down.
Faintly, I began to hear a song. A whisper of a memory, calling me deeper.
Elliot’s arms, wrapping me in a hug.
Mother’s hands, tying a ribbon through my hair.
Father’s eyes, bright with approval—with joy. At me.
Eden’s voice, begging me to play.
Esmer! Esmer, come here. Come see.
Eden, begging me to stay.
Esmer, please. I miss you.
I wanted to follow the Nocturne’s call. Ached to follow those voices—those memories—down, down, down. But before I could, the Bringer heaved me out of the sea and into his arms. A curtain of shadow followed behind, twisting around us like a blanket.
“They were just dreams,” he spoke into my hair, easing me to the ground and into his lap. “Just dreams.”
The Shadow Bringer was cold and wet, but I didn’t care.
I clung to him with all the strength I had left, almost shattering at the contact.
I wanted more than anything to bury my face in his chest and cry.
But when I tilted my head up, expecting to see the man I had grown to cherish, my mouth fell open.
He was the Shadow Bringer—but he was also Erebus.
His eyes were the same, a brilliant silver with shadows melting from their edges.
But his moon-white hair was black as night.
His skin was darker, too. It spoke of a life lived away from dreams. A life lived in the sun.
Most shocking of all, though, was that his face was bare.
His mask was gone, lost to the Nocturne.
He was so beautiful, so utterly alive, that it made me ache at every pulse point.
“What have I become?” he asked, noticing the shift in my expression and the black, tousled strands that fell to his shoulders. “Who am I, Esmer?”
I cupped his face, marveling at every perfect feature. Who was he? I considered the question seriously.
“You’re a prince of darkness,” I began, tracing his cheek with my right hand as he leaned into my left.
“A fearless warrior, a talented dreamer, a brilliant mind,” I continued, moving from his temple to his hair.
He listened wordlessly, completely enraptured by my voice and my touch.
“A beautiful soul whose shadows mingle with my own. A man who is, despite everything he’s endured, good. A man my soul had been yearning for.”
I pressed a quick, impulsive kiss to his lips, and he shuddered.
“Just as I’ve been yearning for you,” he said roughly, his large hands circling my waist as he kissed me back.
It was passionate and all-consuming, an explosion of desire that had been suppressed for far too long.
I gasped as he held me tighter, enjoying the pleasant flutter in my stomach that his eagerness coaxed out.
But the kiss was over as quickly as it began.
When he pulled back, his eyes were shining.
“A light in the bitter dark. A clever, bewitching girl who rose above the darkness that sought to consume her whole.”
The shadows around us tightened, cocooning us, shielding us from the Nocturne’s incessant pull. It made me remember the shadows that had called to me during all those bleak, lonely nights in Norhavellis. The shadows I’d tried desperately to ignore.
“I was just a shadow of myself before—” He stopped abruptly, understanding flashing across his face. “I was a shadow of myself; a shadow missing its whole. You merged us. Now I have everything. My memories, my power, my life—I have it all.”
“And that… upsets you?” I asked, not grasping why he suddenly looked so pained.
“No,” he answered, holding my chin as he searched my eyes. “But what you just did defies simple dream logic.” He turned away, warring with something within himself. “Something isn’t right, Esmer. It shouldn’t be possible—”
A warbling, desperate cry made us both jump up; the demon I had spared earlier was crawling toward us on the rocks.
Before we could understand what was happening, it shuddered violently as its wings fell off, its fur melted into skin, its wrinkled scalp grew hair, and its limbs arranged themselves into shorter, more precise variations.
Variations that were indisputably human.
“You saved me,” the woman sobbed, grasping at the stone as she tried to stand. “I was trapped in that monster’s body, but together you pulled my soul free.”
Together you pulled my soul free.
Together.
That admission rocked something deep inside my heart, a part of myself that had been aching to find its purpose for far too long.
The woman looked down at her hands, which were smooth and no longer clawed, then closed her eyes, smiling widely as her body began to disappear. “I’m being called home,” she cried. “I’m home.”
And then, in a burst of star-flecked shadow, she was gone.
“Her soul was trapped in a demon’s body?” I said, my mind racing to make sense of the preternatural transformation.
“She looked just like the demons in my castle,” the Shadow Bringer sputtered. “Maker, even her cries sounded like them.”
That’s it.
It was the answer to a question that had disturbed me since I had first set foot in the Shadow Bringer’s castle.
His demons wanted out—but perhaps what they wanted was more than just freedom from the castle?
They didn’t listen to the Shadow Bringer as though he was their lord; rather, they were bound to him as though his darkness called to some hopeful, desperate part of themselves.
Except the Shadow Bringer hadn’t realized this—hadn’t known how to use it in a way that could free them.
But somehow, together, we could.
Together we just did.
“What if that’s where souls go after they’re fully Corrupt?
” I began, starting to formulate a theory that left me nauseated.
“A demon can fully take over a dreamer’s physical body, but where does the human’s soul go in the meantime?
The tales say you devour the dreamer’s soul if the Light Bringer doesn’t reach them in time. ”
The Shadow Bringer shook his head. “And we both know that isn’t true.”
I thumbed my chin. “Corruption can be a slow process. A progressive descent into a full demonic takeover.” I shivered in disgust, remembering Eden as she lost her battle to Corruption.
Sometimes she was lucid. Herself. But in a matter of days, she was more demon than girl.
“When Eden was herself during her Corruption, she’d tell me about her visions.
They were scary and very… dark. I always thought her Corruptive demon was tormenting her during these dreams, but maybe she was actually inhabiting her demon. ”
“And when Corruption fully occurs, the process is permanent,” the Bringer supplied.
I stumbled on, growing more and more certain that I was right. “It would make sense for the dreamer’s soul to anchor itself to the closest thing resembling a body. And that that body would be the demon’s. A soul for a soul, a body for a body.”
The Bringer looked utterly horrified. “If this is true, it will change everything.”
“Those demons in your castle—what if those were people? The souls of those lost to Corruption and left uncleansed by the Light Bringer.”
He shook his head. “Impossible. They have never displayed any semblance of humanity.”
“But neither did that woman,” I insisted. “While trapped, the souls might forget they were ever human in the first place. And our shadows are the key. Our shadows can free them, Bringer.”
Overhead, in the clouds, Mithras jumped down from the Revel.
He was coming to betray Erebus—coming to show the Weavers that his friend had summoned demons from the Nocturne. And once the Weavers knew, it would be chaos. We would be hunted, just as Erebus was all those years ago.
For a moment, I thought Mithras’s eyes flashed red.
But before I could tell, the Shadow Bringer sent us away in a flash of roiling darkness.