Chapter 22 Esme #3
I join them without hesitation, settling between my two loves with my son in my arms. Locke immediately leans over to press a soft kiss to my temple, the gesture so natural and easy it’s like he’s done it a thousand times before.
Then he’s jumping back into some ridiculous argument with Rue about who can make the fastest kill, their voices carrying that masculine competitiveness that somehow manages to be endearing rather than annoying.
I cradle Auren against my chest and for a moment, just one perfect, shining moment, everything feels right with the world.
This is what happiness looks like. This is what love feels like when it’s allowed to grow and flourish without fear, without loss, without the constant shadow of death hanging over everything beautiful.
“Some things can’t be unbroken,” a haunting voice whispers through the warmth and laughter, cold as winter wind through the perfect scene.
Then Auren screams.
I look down in absolute horror as his perfect little body begins to crumble in my arms like ash from a burned log.
His smooth skin grays and flakes away, his bright eyes dim and fade to nothing, and I can only watch helplessly as everything I’ve ever wanted disintegrates between my fingers.
He falls apart piece by piece, his tiny hands first, then his arms, his torso, until all that remains are those perfect white curls, and then even they’re gone, carried away on a wind that smells of death and endings.
I scream until my throat tears open, raw and bleeding, but the beautiful house vanishes around me like morning mist. The warmth dies, the laughter stops, and I’m left clutching nothing but empty air as I sob for the child I never got the chance to hold, the life I never got the chance to live, the happiness that was always just a heartbeat out of reach.
The world shifts again with nauseating suddenness, and I find myself curled in the fetal position in the middle of a dark forest, cold earth against my cheek and the taste of despair thick on my tongue.
Somewhere in the darkness, I can hear my mother screaming my name, calling out for me with a desperation that cuts through my grief like a blade. I rise in a panic, stumbling over roots and rocks as I run toward the sound, my heart hammering against my ribs with terror at what I might find.
I reach her cottage in Kasamere Forest to find it surrounded by soldiers in the distinctive armor of the Night Court.
They’re dragging her from her home in heavy iron chains that scrape against the ground and leave deep gouges in the earth.
Her usually immaculate appearance is destroyed—her dress is torn and bloody, there’s blood streaming from a gash on her temple, and her wild silver curls are matted with dirt.
She continues to scream for me and for the king, begging for help that isn’t coming, her voice hoarse and desperate in a way that makes something break inside my chest. “I demand to speak to the king!” she cries, struggling against the chains even as they cut into her wrists.
“My daughter is alive! I would never betray him! I speak the truth! You can’t do this to me! ”
A soldier behind her slams his gauntleted fist into her spine with enough force to send her crashing to her knees. She cries out in pain, and I feel that sound like a physical blow to my own body.
“Cashira,” the soldier growls, his voice carrying the authority of someone used to being obeyed without question, “you are under arrest for treason against the Night Court. Your lies and manipulations end here.”
“No!” I step forward, trying to run to her aid, but my legs move like I’m walking through honey, each step taking forever while getting me nowhere closer. “Stop this! STOP—”
“Some things can’t be prevented,” that same haunting voice taunts, and I can hear the cruel satisfaction in it, the way it feeds on my helplessness.
I try to run after them as they tether her to a horse and force her away through the trees, but the scene is already shifting around me, the forest fading into something else, something worse.
Snow. Endless white snow stretching as far as the eye can see.
I know this place. I’ve been here before. My eyes find Sam’s body lying motionless in a drift that’s stained crimson with his blood, his beautiful brown wolf form twisted and broken in ways that make my stomach lurch.
“No. No. No.” The words tear from my throat like prayers to a God who isn’t listening.
I collapse beside him, my hands fluttering over his still form, afraid to touch but unable to stay away.
His breaths are so shallow they’re barely there, and his warm eyes, lock onto mine with an intensity that breaks what’s left of my heart.
He tries to shift back to human form, his body morphing grotesquely as his magic fails, but it’s too late.
I can see death creeping in at the edges, stealing the light from his eyes one heartbeat at a time.
“I won’t let this happen,” I whisper, pressing my forehead against his, my tears falling hot against his cooling fur. “I swear to you, I won’t let this be real. I’ll find a way, I’ll fix this, I’ll—”
“You have the power to mend, to heal, to make him whole,” the voice whispers seductively in my ear. “Remember what you are, daughter of water and earth. Remember what you can do. . .”
His chest rises one last time, falls, and then stops forever.
I scream again, shaking him, sobbing until I can’t breathe, begging whatever cruel deity that might be listening to let me die right alongside him. My mother, my son, my mate, everyone I love, everyone who gives my life meaning, torn away from me one by one while I watch helplessly.
“I can’t lose anymore,” I whisper into Sam’s lifeless body, my voice breaking on every word. “Please, I can’t do this anymore. Let me go with him. Let me go. . .”
My body collapses to the frozen ground and I’m swallowed by darkness so complete it feels like being buried alive. The scene around me dissolves, leaving me floating in nothingness while pain cracks my chest wide open like an egg.
Then, without warning, a new vision slams into me with enough force to make me cry out, and suddenly I’m hovering above a scene that makes my blood turn to ice in my veins.
Micah stands in front of a cave, Lyrik beside her, facing a man whose very presence radiates power and barely contained menace. He’s handsome in the way that predators are beautiful, sharp features and knowing eyes and a smile that promises things you’ll regret wanting.
“You’ve made your choice then,” he murmurs, his voice soft and almost gentle, like a lover’s caress that hides a blade. “Now, all you have to do is reach inside your pocket and hand me her letter. It’s as easy as that.”
Lyrik stands beside Micah, and I can see the desperation in every line of his body, the way his hands shake as he reaches for her. “You don’t have to do this, Meus Amor. Miss Blu, she wouldn’t want this. You know she wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself for—”
“I do have to, Lyrik,” Micah interrupts, her voice carrying a conviction that sounds like death itself. “I do. I can’t let you go. She will understand. She may not feel me anymore through the bond, but she’ll understand what I had to do. I know she will.”
Micah extends her hand with obvious reluctance, and in it is my letter, the one I’d given Miss Margaret to deliver to her, the one that was supposed to explain everything, to let her know I was alive and safe and thinking of her always.
I want to scream at her, to ask what she’s doing and why, but I’m just a passenger here, helpless to do anything but watch as she makes whatever terrible bargain this is.
The man’s fingers brush against the parchment, and the moment he touches it, my entire body ignites with agony.
A raw, searing pain erupts in my chest like someone has reached inside and torn out something vital.
I double over, mirroring Micah’s movement as she cries out and falls to her knees, and I feel something inside me snap like a rope pulled too tight.
The Tether. Our bond, the magical connection that has linked us since the moment we met, the thing that let has connected us across any distance, it’s gone. Severed. Cut away so cleanly it leaves nothing behind but emptiness and the phantom pain of something that used to be there.
“Oh God, no.” I can barely form the words through the agony. “Micah!”
But I can’t feel her anymore. The space in my mind where she used to live is empty, silent, cold as the grave.
“Some things will change, but will remain,” the voice says with solemn finality, like a judge pronouncing sentence.
“Fuck this!” I shout into the darkness that surrounds me, my voice raw with rage and grief and a pain so deep it has no name. “FUCK ALL OF THIS!”
I let myself fall to the cold, unforgiving ground, wanting nothing more than to let go completely, to give up and surrender to whatever death wants to claim me.
What is there left for me now? What reason do I have to keep fighting when everyone I love is gone, when everything I’ve ever wanted has been stripped away piece by bloody piece?
“Loss is only the beginning,” the voice says, and now there’s something almost encouraging in its tone, like a teacher guiding a difficult student toward understanding.
“You can either lay here and die like all the others who came before you, let yourself become just another set of bones scattered across this cursed ground or you can mend what is broken, fix what can be fixed, overcome the insurmountable odds that stand before you. You have that power, daughter of witch and fae. Claim it all or die forgotten.”
I don’t know how long I lay there in darkness, wrestling with despair and rage and the terrible temptation to simply let it all end. It would be so easy to give up, to close my eyes and let the cold take me, to become just another cautionary tale about those who tried to defy fate and failed.
Slowly, gradually, the fog around me begins to shift and change.
The acrid smell of decay fills my nostrils, and I can feel bones poking up from the soil beneath me like accusatory fingers.
I’m back in the Plains of the Dead, surrounded by the remnants of warriors who once thought they could change the world and died for their hubris.
I could join them. I could lie here forever among the forgotten dead and let time bury me alongside all the other dreams that never came to fruition. It would be peaceful, in its own way. Final.
“Get up,” I tell myself, and somehow, impossibly, I do.
Even hollowed out by loss, even aching from wounds that may never heal, I force myself to stand.
I think of my father, wherever he is, and how he needs me.
I think of my mother being dragged away in chains, and whether that vision was truth or possibility, I’ll be damned if I let that be her fate without a fight.
I think of Micah, and the terrible bargain she made, and the hollowness in my chest where she used to be. I need to understand what happened. I need to find out why she thought she had to sacrifice our bond, and maybe, if I’m very lucky, I need to find a way to bring her back to me.
Most of all, I think of Sam and Locke, waiting for me just beyond this cursed place. I think of what we could be to each other, what we will be to each other if I’m brave enough to seize it, if I’m strong enough to fight for the love that’s still within my reach.
I put one foot in front of the other, and then another, walking through the field of bones toward something that might be hope.
The earth splits open directly in front of me with a sound like the world cracking in half.
Skeletal hands erupt from the cursed soil like flowers blooming in fast-forward, dozens of them reaching for me with fingers still adorned with rings and bracers from lives long ended.
They wrap around my ankles, my wrists, my waist, holding me absolutely still but somehow not hurting me.
Their grip is firm but almost gentle, like they’re trying to comfort rather than restrain.
I should scream. I should struggle and fight and tear myself free, but something tells me that would be the wrong choice.
Instead, I stand perfectly still as thorned vines snake upward from the disturbed earth, glowing with faint golden light that pulses like a heartbeat.
They move with serpentine grace, coiling through the air until one strikes out quick as lightning to pierce the skin beneath my second mark.
The pain is sharp and immediate, burning through me like liquid fire, but I don’t cry out. I welcome it. The vine burns new magic into my skin, and I can feel it changing me on some fundamental level, marking me with power I don’t yet understand.
When the skeletal hands finally release me, I am different. Branded. Burned. Rubbed raw by forces beyond my comprehension, but I’m not broken. I’m not dead. I’m something else entirely, something new and dangerous and absolutely unafraid.
I stumble forward through the parting mist, each step carrying me closer to the edge of this cursed place and back toward the world of the living.
Rue, Locke, and Sam are exactly where I left them, though they look like they’ve aged years in the time I’ve been gone.
The moment I cross the threshold back into the realm of the real, Sam rushes forward and I collapse into his arms, unable to hold myself upright for another second.
I can’t breathe properly, can’t find words for what I’ve just experienced.
“She’s gone,” I whisper against his chest, the words torn from the deepest part of me.
His arms tighten around me immediately, pulling me closer as if he could shelter me from the entire world through sheer force of will. “Angel. . .” His voice is soft with understanding and sorrow.
Locke’s eyes narrow as he dismounts and comes closer, “Who’s gone?” he demands.
Rue frowns, genuine concern. “Esme, who are you talking about? What happened in there?”
I press my hand to my chest, to the hollow space where warmth used to live, and Sam’s eyes widen with understanding and horror. He knows what it means, can probably sense the severed connection through our own bond.
“Micah,” he says quietly, his voice heavy with the weight of absolute certainty. “Her Tether. It’s broken.”
A shriek tears across the sky above us, high and piercing and filled with malevolent hunger.
Then another joins it, and another, until the very air seems to vibrate with their cries.
Darkness descends upon the Plains like a living thing, swallowing the last of the dying light and bringing with it the promise of violence.
Shadow wraiths have found us and they’re coming.