Chapter 30 Esme
ESME
The golden dust settles on the dark ground, clinging to my clothes and skin like a phantom caress.
The arena of blades shivers and retracts into the ground, leaving the plateau empty.
Hollow. I stand in the silence, my arm aching from a burn that isn’t there, the ring on my finger a dull, throbbing weight.
The space where he stood is a void that pulls at the air, at the light, at the breath in my lungs.
I did what the trial demanded. I won. It feels exactly like dying.
The obsidian ground cracks beneath my feet, not violently, but with the quiet decay of a dream ending.
The blood-dark sky pales to a familiar bruised twilight.
The metallic tang in the air gives way to the scent of damp earth, of yew trees and old stone.
Wrought iron fences, their spear-points glinting with phantom moonlight, rise from the dissolving ground.
I know this place. My feet are planted on the manicured grass of Darkbirch’s cemetery.
But why am I here now?
My eyes focus and I realize I am standing directly in front of the cold granite face of my grandmother’s grave. Esther Esme Salem.
It feels strange now to see my name mingled with hers, a woman I used to feel so close to… and despite the fact that I recently witnessed her last moments, so intimately, I still feel a distance has lodged between us. A distance I’m not sure will ever fully close.
The engraved letters seem to stare back at me, half-accusing, though I’m not sure why.
I brace myself, my hands clenching, every muscle tensing for another attack. An army of the dead. A grief-wraith born from my own bloodline. I must be ready for anything. There are still hours left of this damned trial.
Then a chill that has nothing to do with the night air slithers across my skin. Mist coalesces before the gravestone, thickening and solidifying into a familiar, imposing form.
Esther stands there, with all the spectral authority she has always commanded, her silver-streaked hair pinned in a severe bun, her darkblood robes immaculate.
Her sharp eyes are narrowed, her weathered face a mask of…
cold, absolute fury. Something about her pure, icy presence tells me this isn’t just part of the trial. That she isn’t a construct.
“You were meant to drink his blood,” she snaps, her voice slicing through the silence. “Not sleep with him.”
A hot, mortifying flush climbs my neck, my face, my entire body.
She knows. Somehow, in this twisted reality, she knows.
She sensed or saw. The intimacy of the cave, the stolen hour, is ripped open, laid bare under her disapproving gaze.
The shame hits me like a physical sickness in my gut.
But on its heels comes a rage so pure and white-hot it burns the shame to ash.
“You were really watching?” The question is a raw tear in my throat.
“I am always watching,” she retorts, as if it is her divine right. “You are the future of this coven. I watched you throw it away for a moment of pathetic, fleshy weakness.”
“Weakness?” I take a step forward, my knuckles bone-white.
The lifetime of deference, of reverence, of swallowing her every command, suddenly shatters.
“You told me to drink his blood! You pushed me into his path with no warning, no explanation! Do you think I planned any of this? What did you think was going to happen?”
“I expected you to follow the plan. To take his power, not to wallow in his bed!”
My voice cracks as I almost bellow, “There was no plan!” The sound ricochets off the headstones.
“You just—you just appeared with some cryptic half-truths and expected me to figure it out! Did it slip your mind to mention the blood bond? Or the marriage part? Gods, Esther!” I surprise myself by addressing her by her name, something I have never done in my life.
I'm shaking so hard, fists clenched so tight my nails almost break skin.
“You pushed me toward him and now you're what—surprised he got under my skin?
That's on you. All of it. Every single damned thing that's happened started with that blood. You lit the match, and I got burned!”
Her spectral form seems to vibrate with agitation.
The air around her grows colder, the mist at her feet swirling like angry spirits.
“Do not presume to understand my designs. And lower your tone, child. Your feelings… that act… that corruption… has compromised you. I see it clouds your judgment and weakens your resolve at the very moment you need to be sharpest.”
“It made me feel alive,” I breathe back. The words escape before I can stop them, shocking us both. The admission feels raw and bleeding in the air between us. Something your plans never managed to do. “Besides.” I steady myself. “Don’t you know it’s what Helena wants? That I… sleep with him?”
A laugh escapes Esther’s throat, a deep, scornful thing. “And what do you know of Helena, other than what the dragon king has told you?”
I swallow, clenching my jaw. Admittedly, I don’t know much about my great, great, great grandmother, beyond her attempts to forge alliances with dragons… and her failure to do so.
“Helena’s weaknesses compromised the safety of her entire coven,” Esther snaps. “They led to dozens of her own people being slaughtered, including two of her children. They led to her ruin. And now you would listen to her over me?”
Her words hang in the cold air, heavy with the weight of her own history. A history that every Darkbirch student learns during first year. I can’t argue with her record. Every magical in Darkbirch knows the stories.
Esther, during the Heathborne Incursion of ‘88, singlehandedly managed to lure Director Rothmere’s father into a trap from which he never escaped.
She shattered the Crimson Hand, a clearblood cult, by turning their own purification rituals against them until their sacred grove was just a field of sterile ash.
She collapsed an entire ley line during the Border Skirmishes, an act of environmental magic so audacious it crippled Heathborne’s northern expansion for a decade.
And ultimately, she sacrificed herself to protect our coven.
She is a legend. A weapon. She is the foundation upon which my entire world was built. And she is standing here, in this nightmare trial, calling me weak.
My heart thuds in my chest. Her words should sting worse than they do. Instead, I feel a strange, cold resolve coming over me.
Because that’s the problem with history: every side has their own version, their own bias, no matter their intentions. And, whatever happened in the past, I don’t feel like listening to anyone right now, except my own instincts. My own choice… for once.
“I’m sorry, grandma,” I say with a coolness that feels so foreign when addressing her, “but you lost points in my book the moment you decided to pressure me into drinking an apex predator’s blood while withholding information that mattered.
Forgive me for not rushing to do your bidding again.
I’m loyal to the coven, and I’ll do what it takes to protect it, but with my eyes open going forward. ”
Ergo: I’m done blindly following spirits, no matter how close, new, or ancient.
“Then you should not blindly trust Helena either,” Esther says sharply. “Her approach will lead to worse consequences.”
I inhale. Well, don’t worry. We’re still far from that. What happened just now was only in a construct. To make Helena’s wishes come true… I suppress the thoughts of steam and heat threatening to overtake me—of living that scene in the cave with Dayn… for real.
“In any event,” Esther continues, her voice softening slightly, “I could have handled matters differently, I admit that much. At Heathborne, circumstances were... urgent. But I should have told you more.” She lifts her chin, her gaze lingering on me, as if weighing something.
“But what matters now is that you harness what flows in your veins: control his power rather than let it control you.”
I frown. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”
“I mean take advantage of the new, unique magic surging through you to protect your people rather than compromise them. That begins with completing these trials. So, I will leave you to that now...” She drifts backward, her form thinning slightly.
“However, there is one thing I can do to counteract my past error. To help you face what’s coming. ”
My frown deepens. “Help me how?”
Before I can react, she rushes forward—a cold blur of light and intent—and passes straight through me in a way she never has before.
In a way I didn’t even know she was capable of.
A shock blooms at the base of my skull, icy tendrils threading into my mind, spreading, reaching, and I feel an unbearable pressure behind my eyes.
The breath punches out of me. Then she rips free, out the other side, and for a heartbeat the world goes entirely, utterly black.