Chapter 24
LYRA
The first sword came for my throat. I barely got mine up in time. Steel crashed against steel hard enough to send pain shooting through both wrists. My knees bent beneath the impact, boots grinding into ash-covered stone as the version of myself on the other side of the blade smiled.
My smile.
Wrong on her face. Hungry where mine should have been uncertain. She pushed harder. I shoved back. The Shadow rune beneath my leathers burned. Darkness stirred at my feet.
Not yet.
The voice slid through my mind so cleanly that for half a heartbeat, I forgot the sword trying to split my skull open. My grip slipped and the other Lyra twisted.
I ducked just before her blade cut through the space where my neck had been. “What the hell—” I staggered backward. She followed.
Not yet, Starborn.
The Codex. Of course. Of all the moments it could choose to become suddenly conversational.
“You have incredible timing,” I muttered. The copy lunged. I parried badly, steel shrieking between us.
I have had worse.
“Helpful.” A burst of fire tore past my shoulder.
The copy recoiled.
Lidia appeared beside me with flame coiled around one fist and murder written plainly across her face. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one.”
“Excellent. You’re hallucinating now.”
“I’m not hallucinating.” One of the other versions of me moved.
Lidia barely had time to turn. The woman dressed in mourning black crossed the battlefield without making a sound, blood-dark hands closing around a sword that hadn’t been there a heartbeat before.
Lidia swore and threw up a wall of fire. The Mourner walked straight through it.
The flames bent away from her. Lidia stared. “Oh, fuck that.” She dropped beneath the swing and drove her elbow into the woman’s ribs. The projection barely moved. Then the ground buckled. Stone surged beneath my boots and threw me sideways. I hit hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
A blade struck the place I’d been standing.
Emrin stood several paces away with both palms pressed toward the earth. “Move first,” she snapped. “Ask questions later.”
“I was moving.”
“You were staring at it.” The first version of me had recovered.
She came again. Except as she stepped through the drifting ash, the leathers vanished.
Simple linen replaced them. A faded cream blouse.
Soft brown skirt. A braid over one shoulder.
My stomach dropped. I knew those clothes.
I had owned those clothes. I had worn that blouse the morning before the Solstice preparations began in Edenlo.
There was dirt beneath her fingernails. Green staining her fingertips. Crushed feverroot.
Gods.
She smelled like home. Not smoke. Not blood.
Not burning wood. Rosemary drying above Maia’s stove.
Fresh bread from Nara’s oven. Rain against the healer’s roof.
My sword lowered before I could stop it.
The Hollowborn tilted her head. There were no runes marking her skin.
No magic glowed beneath it. No Sanctum. No prophecy. No Shadow.
Just me.
Before everything else. “You could have stayed.” My throat closed. Behind her, the battlefield disappeared for one impossible second. Edenlo unfolded around us.
The narrow lane outside our cottage. Blue flowers growing crooked beneath the window. Maia hanging linens in the morning sun. Irelia sitting on the fence where she had been told approximately a thousand times not to sit. They were alive. Both of them. My sword dipped another inch.
“Lyra.” Lidia’s voice came from far away.
The Hollowborn smiled. “You could have stayed.”
“No.” The word barely existed.
She took another step. “You wanted to.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice.” The street behind her sharpened. Maia looked toward me and my heart stopped as she smiled. It was exactly how I remembered it. For once, my mind was not plagued by the memory of her dying. Not blood. Not ash. Just Maia. “Come home,” the Hollowborn whispered.
My fingers went numb around the sword. A blow slammed into my shoulder hard enough to send me stumbling.
A wall of earth erupted between me and the vision. Edenlo vanished behind it.
Emrin stood on the other side of it, breathing heavily. “Whatever it’s showing you,” she said, “it isn’t real.”
The Hollowborn stepped around the wall.
Her gaze shifted to Emrin. “Neither was the life she thought she had.”
Emrin went still. So did I. The projection smiled with my mouth. Then attacked. This time I met her head on. Steel cracked between us. She fought badly. Not because she was weak, but because she was me before any of this.
Before Calis.
Before Kieran.
Before blood had become part of training. Her stance was too wide, grip too tight. Weight wrong. I knew every mistake because I had made every one of them. And that made killing her somehow worse.
She swung high. I stepped inside the strike. My sword entered beneath her ribs. Her breath caught along with mine. For one terrible heartbeat, we stood chest to chest. She looked down at the blade inside her. Then at me. Her eyes bore a sadness I knew too well.
The healer’s cottage flickered behind her again. Maia turned away. Irelia disappeared inside. The Hollowborn whispered, “Look what they made you.”
I ripped the sword free. She collapsed in its absence. Golden light poured from the wound. It spilled across the broken stone in warm ribbons, illuminating the dirt beneath her fingernails before her body dissolved with it.
I stared at the empty space. My chest ached.
You cannot return to a life that no longer exists.
I swallowed.
I know.
Knowing and accepting have never been the same thing.
“Fuck you.”
“Lyra!” I turned too late. A sword slammed into mine, the impact nearly tore the weapon from my hand. The Warrior stood across from me.
Up close, she was worse.
Scars cut across her face and disappeared beneath battered armor. One ran from temple to jaw. Another split the edge of her mouth. Her blonde hair had been hacked shorter, uneven around her shoulders. Nothing about her was beautiful. Everything about her was dangerous.
She struck again. I blocked. Barely. Again. High. Low. High—the blade cut across my thigh.
Pain exploded.
I cried out and stumbled. Warm blood immediately soaked into my leathers. The Warrior didn’t pause. Neither would Kieran.
The thought came before I could stop it. She moved like him. No. She was worse. She moved like me after years of surviving him.
I knew the next strike.
So did she.
I shifted right. She was already there. Her elbow caught my mouth. Copper flooded my tongue. I hit the ground.
“Get up,” she said.
My voice. Kieran’s words. Rage tore through me. I pushed to my feet. She smiled, then came at me again. I tried everything he had taught me. Control the distance. Watch the hips, not the blade. Pain is information. Never retreat in a straight line. She countered every lesson.
Because she knew them too.
Of course she did.
She was what happened if I learned all of them. Her blade sliced my upper arm. Another cut opened beneath my collarbone. Not deep, but enough to make my hand slick around the hilt. Enough to make every movement harder.
The Warrior drove me backward.
Fast.
Precise.
Relentless.
Every strike felt like an answer to a question I hadn’t finished asking. I parried high. She turned the motion and drove the pommel into my ribs. Pain burst through the half-healed cut Kieran had already opened. I gasped. She swept my leg and the world tilted.
My back hit stone.
Her sword came down. I rolled just the blade struck sparks beside my head.
Too close.
Far too close.
I kicked at her knee. She shifted before I connected. Everything I tried, she already knew. Because she was me after years of learning how not to die. The thought chilled me more than the steel. She attacked again. I barely caught it.
My injured thigh buckled. She drove me down to one knee. Her sword pressed against mine.
My arms shook while she looked almost bored. “You survive because other people keep making you stronger.”
I gritted my teeth. “Is that supposed to insult me?”
Her head tilted. “No.” She tightened her grip. “It’s supposed to warn you.” My sword sank another inch. The edge of hers hovered above my face. Think. Kieran would tell me to redirect. She knew that. Calis would tell me to roll. She knew that too. Everything I had been taught belonged to her.
Fine.
I stopped thinking and let go of my sword. The Warrior’s weight pitched forward. Surprise flashed across her face. I drove my forehead into hers. Pain burst behind my eyes.
She staggered a step and I lunged. My hand found the dagger strapped to her thigh. I pulled it free, turned, and drove it beneath her ribs.
Her eyes widened. The battlefield went still around us for half a second. Blood spilled over my hand. Real red this time. The Warrior looked down. Then back at me. The faintest hint of approval crossed her face.
She dissolved before she hit the ground. I stood there panting with her dagger still clenched in my hand.
Unrefined.
The Codex sounded almost offended. “She’s dead.”
Effective.
Despite everything, a laugh nearly escaped me. It died when I heard crying. Not a baby this time. Someone older. Someone trying not to.
I turned to the broken version of me that stood at the edge of the battlefield.
Gods.
She looked worse from inside the projection.
Thin enough that every bone beneath her skin seemed sharpened.
Her golden hair hung limp around hollow cheeks.
There were no visible wounds. That somehow made it worse.
The light beneath her skin flickered. Once.
Dimmed then flickered again. She held no sword.
I slowly lowered mine. She looked exhausted. Not simply tired. Exhausted in some deeper place where sleep couldn’t reach.
“I know you,” she whispered. I didn’t answer. “I know what you keep telling yourself.” My fingers tightened around the dagger. She took one dragging step closer. “That if you wake up tomorrow, you won.”
My stomach twisted. “Stop.”