Chapter 52
Reyla
The world felt askew, and I needed to fix it.
It wasn't about how quiet it was here or the way moss curled along the water’s edge.
The pool was too smooth. Too still. Light danced across the surface, reflecting the glowing insects above, but what I saw in the surface didn’t match.
In the water, the cavern looked different.
The dragon scales on the walls shimmered with their original luster, the altar stood uncracked and gleaming white, and soft light filled every corner without the need for luminescent insects.
The closer I got to the pool, the louder it hummed. The sound lived under my skin, wrapping itself around my heart until it beat in time.
Thump. Thump. Thump. A rhythm older than language.
And it needed something from me.
Lips parted, I crouched by the edge. Cold sank into my palms, and the smell of wet earth hung in the air. I didn’t touch the water's surface. I didn’t dare.
“In shadows reach where secrets lie,” I said softly. “A golden ring the true heart must spy. With the cusp of shifting night…” I peered up, spying a circular hole in the ceiling. As I stared, the crescent moon drifted over to cover the circle, sending light down to arc across the rings.
“Seek the path where the dark meets light,” Lore whispered. “Ancient doors with puzzles guard. Within Evergorne’s walls, echoes marred.”
“With trust and flame, the way reveal,” I said, laying the key inside the first golden circle and lifting the golden pendant aloft.
“Through hidden truths, the hearts you'll steal.” I placed the talisman inside the second circle.
Sliding the featherdorn pendant from the pouch, I finished the riddle as I laid the tiny bird-like creature within the final circle.
“Unite the strengths of earth and air to reveal the prize that's hidden there.”
My eyes blurred with tears as I stared around.
But nothing happened.
“Work, damn you,” I hissed. “Fuse.” I snapped my hand toward the pool, bringing it to a stop before I touched.
“Be careful,” Lore said from right behind me, though his voice sounded far away.
The hum pulled harder now, throbbing through my mind.
Fear caught my breath and held it, but I realized I wasn't afraid of this cave but of what I might be forced to see. Part of me already knew this place wouldn’t ask questions.
It would dig up things I’d buried deep inside, things I was afraid to talk about out loud.
It would expose them. Make me face them.
“Seek within to find the parts of yourself that are missing,” I said. “Fuse them to heal the wound that has long gaped wide.”
The pool’s surface rippled.
My reflection flickered, and I found myself alone. Lore did not stand behind me. Dorion wasn't puttering around, mumbling about how creepy this place was. Laphira didn't follow him with a solemn expression on her face.
Farris didn’t sit nearby either.
They were there, but distant, as if a membrane surrounded me, blocking them out, leaving just me, kneeling in silence, the weight of my entire life pressing down on my shoulders.
Kinart’s image appeared in the pool, and my lungs stuttered.
He stood behind me in the reflection, tall and lean, the way I remembered him before the raid, before he took a mortal wound and bled out in my arms. Blond hair brushing his ears, a soft smile tipped sideways like always. By the fates, that smile. I missed him very much.
I waited and now you’re here, he whispered, his words echoing in my mind. Watch. See, Reyla.
A dreg ripped its claws through him. As Kinart gaped down at his insides hanging out of his body, his gaze met mine one last time. Tortured. In agony.
You did this… His voice drifted away to nothing, and he was falling, falling, smacking against the dirt cave floor while my friends battled around me.
“No,” I cried.
The scene repeated, each replay carving deeper into my mind until nothing existed except the agony of losing him.
“No. Stop,” I said, but it wouldn’t.
I fell forward, catching myself with my palms on rough stone. The cavern tilted. My breath rasped in and out of me. And the pain…
It drowned me.
Somewhere beyond the grief, I sensed movement, Lore trying to reach me through whatever barrier the pool had created.
He gripped my shoulder, breaking through the penance I’d been dragged into. “Come back to me, Wildfire. Please.”
“I can't.” The agony would kill me. “I don't deserve to be in this world.”
“It’s trying to break you. Please don’t let it,” he said. “You’re stronger than it knows. Show it the Wildfire I see every day, the one I love. The one I'll follow into death and beyond.”
Looking up into his face shattered me all over again. The fear I saw in his eyes matched mine.
“What if it’s not breaking me?” I asked quietly. “What if it’s right?” Everyone I loved died.
No, I destroyed everyone I loved.
“It’s a memory, Reyla. Not prophecy. What you saw isn't the truth unless you give it permission to be.”
My throat burned. “What if loving only brings loss?”
“Then let me be the one to rewrite our future with you.”
I cracked wide open.
Before I could say anything else, Farris padded past us, his claws clicking on the stone.
I wiped my face, still shaking from the visions, and tried to center myself. The pool wasn't close to finished with us. Its surface rippled again, seeking its next target.
Farris stopped in front of the pool. When his reflection shimmered across the surface, I jerked backward, because this wasn't the nyxin I knew well and loved.
This nyxin's face had stretched into something monstrous, with a mouth packed with fangs, eyes burning like coals, and shadows creeping across his back like living smoke. Worse, those shadows seemed to writhe with captured faces, twisted in silent screams.
Every instinct in me sparked, and I reached for him. “Farris—”
A soft whine lifted up his throat. He pressed against my thigh, trembling violently.
“It's not real,” Lore said. “Look at him. Look.”
I stroked Farris's chest and scratched behind his ears. I could feel the panic throbbing inside him, the way he pulled tight. He was trying to hide inside his bones.
It wasn't showing him what he was now. It was showing what he had almost become. This was what Prager had tried to turn him into—her shadow enforcer, stealing hope from others to feed her endless hunger. She'd nearly succeeded.
And he not only remembered every moment of agony she'd put him through, but he must also feel he'd allowed it to happen.
My throat tightened as understanding crashed over me.
That moment back in the labyrinth, when his shadow begged for forgiveness.
It hadn't begged because it had made a choice.
It begged because Prager had tortured him, twisted his mind until he'd nearly broken, nearly agreed to become her hunter of shadows and stolen hope.
He'd escaped with his soul intact, but barely.
The shame he carried wasn't for what he'd done—it was for how close he'd come to surrendering.
I tugged him onto my lap and held him while he trembled, while he stared into the pool, facing his own darkest moment.
“You didn't become what you see.” I stroked the silky fur. His tail thumped against my thigh, and he whined again. “I know you fought. Even when she hurt you, even when the pain was unbearable, you fought.”
Dorion had sent him to find someone who could help. What if Farris had sought me because he instinctually knew I could not only help Dorion, but heal the wounds Prager had left on his soul?
And now I would.
“You're not what she tried to force you to become,” I whispered in his ear. “You're not the monster she wanted to create. You're what you chose to be when you escaped her.”
The pool quieted.
“She tortured you, and you still shouted no,” I said, my voice fierce with pride. “You're what I hold onto when I'm afraid because you know what real strength looks like.”
He let out a slow, shaky breath and curled tighter in my arms.
“You're the brave nyxin who flung himself into a damaged Sentinel Veil to try to fix it. You're the one who chose love over fear, even after experiencing her cruelty.”
He licked my chin and pressed his face into my neck.
Tears smarted in my eyes, and I kissed the top of his head.
“You survived her, Farris. You survived, and you chose to keep your heart open. You're the best. The absolute best.”
I was the one who'd forced myself to lead, to charge into the fray when others hesitated. I'd always felt I had something to prove, when only now did I realize that they hadn't expected anything but what I was willing to give.
The only person I had to prove my worth to was myself.
Farris and I carried the same wounds, just in different ways. Both of us were afraid to become something broken. Both of us were trying to outrun ghosts—his of the monster he'd nearly been forced to become, mine of the failure I feared I already was.
“What we are is good enough,” I told him softly. “We don't have to be perfect. We just have to be brave enough to keep choosing love. It always was enough. It always will be.”
He licked my chin again, then slipped off my lap and scampered around me, yipping with joy.
My sweet, fuzzy friend. My fellow survivor.
We eased away from the pool.
Dorion and Laphira came closer, both of them quiet, their eyes focused on the pool a short distance away.
“I don’t believe it shows truth,” he said. “Not really.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Farris paused as if he was listening too.
“It doesn’t care about memories or the now or the future,” he said, frowning. “It reflects where you feel the weakest.”
“I think it wants something from us but not our magic or our blood.” Laphira paused, thinking. “A reckoning.”
“You’re right. It's testing us,” I realized. “Not just showing us our fears, but forcing us to acknowledge and accept them. Only then will it tell us how to break the curse.”
Had I finally accepted my fear? I hoped so.
Laphira stared at the pool, watching something I couldn’t see. “What if it sees through our masks? The parts we hide from everyone, even ourselves?”
Dorion’s jaw shifted. “That could be the key forward. Maybe it’s waiting for honesty before it tells us what we need to do.” His gaze sought Lore’s. “Aricor broke something that was much bigger than we knew. Whatever’s bleeding away will continue to leach until there isn’t enough left to repair.”
“The curse fed on our individual wounds,” Lore said. “Prager’s magic found the cracks in each of us and widened them. To break her hold, we have to heal those fractures first.”
I studied the pool, still and quiet now, but buzzing all the same. Heat crawled under my skin.
Lore stepped closer, his throat working with his swallow. “It’s Evergorne’s scar, and I suspect an Evergorne king needs to heal this gaping wound left by my ancestor.”
“All of us do.” Dorion glanced toward the scales on the wall. “Aricor didn’t only break the magical object, he broke the bond between our courts. Yet we’re all here now, and we can mend it.”
“We can.” Laphira stretched her hand out to Dorion, and he linked their fingers.
“I’ll go next.” Lore stepped up to the edge, and his reflection stretched across the pool. For an instant, he looked the same, my gorgeous, strong, ruthless husband. Beautiful in a way he’d never believed.
The image trembled. Two versions of him began to peel apart, and I could not breathe. No. I couldn’t let it split him again. I reached for him but…
One image flickered tall and noble and crowned with firelight. Pride and pain shone in his eyes. The other bled shadows. They clung to his back in rotted, blackened wings. His blade hung low at his side, but it dripped with something darker than blood.
Lore stared, his face tight. The tic in his temple told me he wanted to look away but knew he couldn’t.
Rising, I went to stand by his side. I was here if he needed me.
Lore's breath hitched.
“Show me,” he whispered to the pool. “Show me what I need to see.”
The shadowed version of Lore in the pool turned its head, looking directly at me rather than its reflection. Its mouth moved, speaking words I couldn't hear but somehow understood. He belongs to me.
“It's not just showing me the past,” he said, his voice tight. “It's showing me what I'll become if we fail tonight.”