Chapter 15 Brynn
brYNN
The pain almost feels physical, like a jagged hook tearing through my spiritual center.
Like a piece of my very architecture has been ripped out, leaving a raw void where something essential used to be.
My connection to Helena—a constant, subtle pressure in the back of my mind for months—is gone. Not faded or distant. Annihilated.
Esme’s face is a pale blur above me, her voice a distant echo through the roaring in my ears.
I’m on the cold, damp ground, my body curled into itself, trying to contain an agony that has no source and no end.
My hands are fisted in my hoodie, knuckles white, as if I can physically hold myself together.
Then other hands are on me, cool and steady. My mother. Her scent of dried herbs cuts through. “Breathe, Brynn,” she commands, her voice a low, firm anchor. “Breathe with me. Now.”
I don’t remember how I get from the graveyard to the infirmary, but I come back to myself on a narrow cot in a quiet side room.
The sharp, clean smell of antiseptic has replaced the damp earth.
My mother sits beside me, her hand resting on my forehead, her thumb making slow, soothing circles on my temple.
“She’s gone,” I manage, voice rough. “Helena. It was like something… took her.”
My mother’s expression tightens. “I don’t know, darling.
No one truly understands the spirit realm.
We just learn to live with what it gives…
or takes.” I wonder if she’s thinking of my father, the way he vanished and never found his way back to us even in spirit form.
She clears her throat softly, as if to steady herself.
“But, Brynn… three spirits? All this time, you were connected to three?”
I can only nod, the movement making my head throb.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrug. “Figured I'm allowed to have, like, one thing that's just mine… This place is basically a supernatural fishbowl, everyone watching everyone else’s every move all the time.”
She gives a long exhale, then pulls me upright, wrapping her arms around me. I lean into her, my face buried in her shoulder. As I breathe in her scent, the tears I didn’t know I was holding back finally fall.
Over her shoulder, I see Ezekiel and Angus.
They linger near the foot of my bed, like the world’s most depressing welcome committee.
Their spectral forms are insubstantial, but there.
They are silent, but their sorrow is a palpable weight in the room…
especially Ezekiel’s, Helena’s husband. I can practically feel his cold, heavy blanket of grief. They lost her, too.
Mom holds me for what feels like hours, though the clock on the wall says it's only been fifteen minutes. The pain’s faded from I'm-dying to more regular sucks-to-be-me levels.
And Helena's last words keep playing on repeat in my head. Flesh to flesh... soul to soul... The dragon and the darkblood... become one.
It sounds like madness. Utter, complete madness. But it looked like she literally got yanked out of existence to deliver that message… so maybe I should pay attention?
Meanwhile, the council will debate strategies. Esme will prepare for a likely suicidal ritual. Dayn will try to reason with a world that only understands violence. And I’ll sit here, nursing a wound no one else can see.
No. I won’t.
The numbness begins to recede, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity.
Grief is a luxury. Helena didn’t get ripped out of existence just for me to sob in the infirmary.
She was trying to tell us something vital…
and maybe, just maybe, I should trust her.
Or at least give her the benefit of the doubt.
Something that the council, in their infinite, stubborn wisdom, is unlikely to do.
Gods know, this whole thing needs a different perspective.
But first, I need to visit someone.
I pull away from my mother’s embrace, my resolve hardening. Her eyes search mine, questioning the sudden shift.
“I need to go to the dungeons,” I say, my voice steady.
Her brow furrows. “Brynn, you need to rest—”
“No,” I say, swinging my legs off the cot. The room tilts for a second, but I steady myself. “I need to talk to Chad.” And maybe this time actually listen to what he has to say.
As I walk back to the dungeons, the lingering shock in the academy is a low hum I can practically feel through the soles of my boots.
People rush past, their faces tight with fear and purpose.
But I move through it all like a ghost. Ezekiel and Angus trail behind me, their spectral presence still a silent, sorrowful weight.
Down the stone steps I go, back into the chill. The two dead clearblood bodies have been removed, but the air is still thick with the metallic tang of their terror. Chad is exactly where I left him, standing near the bars of his cell. He watches me approach, his expression unreadable.
I stop in front of him, the cold iron of the bars a stark line between us. I hold up my hand, uncurling my fingers to reveal Rothmere’s ring resting in my palm. His eyes fix on it.
“A leash,” I say, my voice flat. “That’s what you called it.”
“It is,” he confirms, his voice low.
“And you’re giving it to me.”
“I am.”
I look from the ring to his face, searching for the lie, the angle, the hidden clause in this insane contract. I find only a deep, profound exhaustion. With a decision that feels both reckless and necessary, I slide the ring onto the middle finger of my right hand.
The magic hits me like a plunge into icy water.
It’s a cold, intricate web of power that sinks hooks directly into my mind, but it doesn’t stop there.
A single, shimmering thread shoots out from the sapphire, crossing the space between us and burrowing deep into Chad.
I can feel him. The raw energy of him—the simmering demonic power he keeps so tightly coiled, a caged beast pacing behind the bars of his control.
The ring is definitely a key, and I am holding it.
A strange, giddy sense of power rushes through me. I look at him, at his perfect, rigid posture. “Let’s test this, shall we?”
He just watches me, his jaw tight.
I need to test this. What's something harmless but impossible to do with dignity? Something that would annoy him without consequences…
“Pat your head and rub your stomach,” I say, discovering the limits of my own maturity.
His body jerks like he's been shocked. His right hand rises to his hair—that hair I've rarely seen with a strand out of place—and begins patting awkwardly.
His left hand circles his stomach like he's soothing an upset kid.
The coordination is a disaster. His expression, though—that's priceless.
Pure Chad. Half murder, half mortification. “I will end you” and “end this, now.”
“Okay, stop,” I command.
His hands drop to his sides. He glares at me, his knuckles white.
“Thoroughly amused?” he asks.
“Not yet.” The cold anger I’ve been nursing bubbles to the surface, sharp and clean.
“I want the truth, Chad. All of it. From the beginning. And if I sense even a hint of a lie…” I flex the finger wearing the ring.
“…I'll make you recreate that dance challenge with the splits that went viral last month. The one with the hair flips. Trust me, your ass is not built for that kind of flexibility.”
He exhales, a long, slow breath that seems to carry all the fight out of him. He leans his forehead against the bars, his eyes closing for a moment.
“Rothmere found me when I was just a kid,” he begins, his voice a low monotone.
He tells me everything. About his mother’s murder, a crime apparently committed by an unidentified darkblood.
About the years of brutal training, molding him into the perfect weapon, the perfect spy.
About the ring, a tool to control the demonic half Rothmere both coveted and feared.
He tells me about his mission at Darkbirch, about reporting on our defenses, about feeding Rothmere my research—but supposedly not all of it.
“You must have wanted to get close to Esme,” I say, the pieces clicking into place. “But you got me instead.”
“Well, yes and no… She was too much like him,” he says, his voice rough.
“All fire and ambition. You… you were quiet. You saw things other people missed. You were a challenge.” He looks up then, his green eyes meeting mine through the bars.
“Rothmere… he wanted Draethys. That was the endgame. And he wanted Dayn’s blood. ”
“And you were going to give it all to him,” I say, the accusation flat.
“I was,” he admits. “Until the Salt Flats. Until he basically told me my death was inevitable. He was never going to give me the name of my mother’s killer. He was never going to let me go. I was just a tool to be discarded.”
He takes a breath that seems to cost him something. The dungeon torchlight catches the hollows beneath his cheekbones, making shadows dance across his face. Gods, he looks tired. Almost human.
“So I came back,” he continues. “To warn you. To... try to fix what I could.”
“Why?” The question burns in my throat. Nothing about this adds up, and I hate puzzles I can't solve. “Self-preservation? A sudden crisis of conscience? You could have just bolted, made another life elsewhere.”
His eyes lock onto mine through the bars.
“Because he would have used everything I gave him to destroy this place. To destroy your family. To destroy you.” The words tumble out of him like they're being chased.
“I gave you the ring because it's the only proof I have that I'm done with him.
Because I couldn't let him hurt… you, everyone here.
It's why I came back. Because I... I care. About… about you, Brynn.”
Oh.
His confession lands with all the grace of a drunk griffin at a fancy garden party, and I'm left staring at him like he's just sprouted a second head—one that speaks exclusively in bad poetry.
His face freezes in a way that tells me he's just surprised himself as much as he's surprised me.
I can't stop staring at him. There's this hot, tight knot of anger in my chest, but it's getting tangled up with something else—something fluttery and unwelcome that I absolutely refuse to examine right now. The ring feels suddenly heavy on my finger. A leash. A proof. A confession I didn’t ask for.
“This thing is a liability,” I say finally, my voice regaining its steady, analytical tone.
I pull the ring off with a sharp tug. The connection snaps, and his energy vanishes so completely it leaves a weird hollow feeling, like missing a step on a staircase.
“If Rothmere ever gets his hands on it again, he controls you completely.”
“I know.” His voice is quiet.
“I’ll look for a way to destroy it,” I say, slipping it into my pocket.
“To break the enchantment without breaking you.” I force myself to look at him directly, and we stare at each other for approximately seven very uncomfortable seconds.
“I'll consider talking to Reinhardt. Explaining.
.. whatever this is. Maybe even vouch for you as an asset, if I'm feeling particularly unhinged that day.”
His face does this thing where relief and wariness battle for dominance. It's almost fascinating, in a lab-specimen kind of way.
“Maybe,” I add, already turning to leave because I've hit my quota of emotional revelations for the decade.
“For now, enjoy your five-star dungeon experience.
The cots down here are absolute murder on the lower lumbar region.
I'd know—I've face-planted on the lab floor enough times to qualify as furniture.”
I walk away before he can respond, my boots making that dramatic echo-on-stone sound that would be perfect for a villain exit. Which, given recent developments, might actually be what I am.