Chapter 13 #3
Her dark hair fanned across the bed like a crown of ink. Her neck gouged with a cut no living body should bear. Her lips were blue. The red pooled thick beneath her.
Beside her lay the two men she’d brought into her home. Into her bed.
Their blood mixed with hers.
One gurgled as death took him, eyes wide and glassy. The other twitched—limbs jerking, gasping, failing.
I watched.
I waited.
I let them suffer.
“She was a whore,” I rasped, staring down at the ruin of what had once been my world. “She let them inside her while I was across the plain, fighting a war soaked in blood. She betrayed me. She deserved the death I gave her.”
The dagger slipped from my hand in the vision, clattering against the stone. The sound echoed like a confession I could never take back.
Severen’s shadow stretched across the floor, swallowing hers, swallowing mine.
“You didn’t kill them because they betrayed you. You killed them because she chose them over you. Because you couldn’t bear to be second. Because you saw them touching what you believed was yours.”
My pulse roared in my ears. “She was fucking mine,” I hissed. “And I don’t regret one bit of what I did.”
“Do you see now?” Severen whispered, almost tenderly. “You will never be loved without violence. Never be seen without blood.”
He took a slow step closer, torchlight catching on the folds of his black cloak. “And Lazarus—your best friend, your brother? He will cast you aside the moment he learns the truth of what you did to him. The moment he sees what you really are.”
Panic ignited in my chest, sharp and burning. I shook my head, teeth clenched. “You know nothing.”
“I know everything,” Severen murmured, his voice thick with delight. “All the secrets you’ve kept from your precious brother. You blamed me for breaking your bond, but it isn’t I who will ruin it. It will be you.”
He straightened to his full height, a silhouette of decay and smoke. The air trembled around him. Then, with a flick of his hand, the mirrors answered.
Their bronze faces rippled and came alive once more.
In their depths, Lazarus appeared—as clear as daylight. The illusion was perfect, cruelly perfect. His face, his stance, his eyes filled with the kind of disappointment that cut deeper than rage.
Severen’s voice sank to a whisper. “Look.”
In the mirror, Lazarus took a step forward, his expression changing—pity hardening into disgust. The air thickened with the weight of his silence.
“You’re a monster,” Lazarus said, voice hollow, stripped of everything human. “You’ve always been a monster.”
The words pierced through me like a blade driven to the hilt.
My scream tore out of me before I could stop it—ragged, raw, alive like something caged too long, finally breaking free.
“NO! I DID IT FOR US!”
“How noble of you,” Severen murmured. “But the moment he finds out what you did… You will lose him forever. No repair will help you. Unless”—his voice dropped, smooth and venomous—“you kill him in the trials. Before he ever finds out.”
The words slid into my ear like a dagger into raw flesh.
“Before he kills you first,” Severen added softly. “Before he turns on you like they all did.”
My breath hitched. The chamber seemed to shrink around me, the torches guttering low.
“I can make you powerful, Salvatore,” he whispered. “A god in shadow. Kill him—and rise.”
He stepped closer. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. The air around him reeked of sulfur, old blood, and something worse—something rancid, like milk left to rot under a burning sun. Yet still… I wanted more. His presence pulled at me—poison wrapped in silk.
“If you don’t kill Lazarus,” Severen whispered, the name rolling off his tongue like a curse, “he will kill you when he learns the truth.”
My chest tightened. My lungs scraped against my ribs, each breath tearing out in ragged gasps. I wanted to scream—to swear Lazarus would never, that he couldn’t.
But then the shadows pulsed. Once. Twice.
In time with my heartbeat.
And I felt it.
Doubt.
Clawing up my spine like something alive.
Because he was right.
When Lazarus found out what I did… that would be the end of us.
Severen leaned close again, his teeth flashing like bone in the dark.
“But if you act first,” he whispered. “If you strike first…”
The chamber fell silent. Even the shadows stilled, listening.
“I will make you more than a Shadow Lord,” he offered. “I will make you eternal.”
The mirrors dimmed to black glass. Severen watched me like he was weighing the last scrap of a man.
“Tell me what you are,” he said.
The answer ripped from my throat. “I am a monster.”
He leaned in, as patient as a trap. “Say you regret nothing.”
My voice didn’t shake. “I would do it all again. I would kill Helena again. I would kill her lovers. If I had the chance, I would kill my father. I would betray Lazarus. I would do it again.”
Severen smiled like a man who found treasure. “Then you have passed this trial,” he said. “You pass because you can face your sins and know you would choose them again. Regret is a chain—broken, it falls away from you. You do not beg for pity. You choose power.”
He stepped back. The bronze door at the end of the hall sighed open, and torchlight spilled across the floor.
“Do not forget what I told you, Salvatore,” Severen said, low and sure. “To rise, you must be stronger than Lazarus. Break what binds you. Destroy him in the trials. Leave him nothing to stand on. Kill him before the truth breaks your bond—and you will take your place as a Shadow Lord.”
My chest tightened, but my voice did not. “I promise,” I said. “I will destroy him. I will rise. Make me like you—make me a god of shadow.”
Severen’s grin was all victory. “Go then. Walk out and learn how to feed your hunger.”
The guards opened the door for me. I stepped into the corridor; the world narrowed to a strip of torchlight and rough stone.
Men leaned against the wall—prisoners with hollowed eyes.
Lazarus stood among them, shoulders slumped, a small shadow in the light.
He looked at me like a brother. The sight tore at something inside me.
If Lazarus ever learned what I had done, I would not survive it. The truth sat in my gut like cold iron. I had told Severen what he wanted to hear. I had sworn to be his monster. But the truth was simpler—I would rise with Lazarus if I could.
And if I couldn’t, then the secret between us would be the blade that cut us both apart.