Chapter 37 Esme #2
“Your granddaughter’s soul is at stake,” Dayn says, his voice calm yet with an undercurrent of danger. He takes a step forward, his gaze cold, analytical. “I’m merely here to offer a contrary opinion to your… rather biased lecture.”
He turns his gaze to the bookshelf, to the memories trapped in glass.
“You speak of sacrifice, of cutting away weakness. I understand the logic. Your coven has survived for centuries by being ruthless, by prioritizing the whole over the individual.” His eyes meet mine for a fraction of a second, and something I can’t name flickers inside them.
“But this path you’re coercing her down, this summoning—”
“Save the lecture,” Esther snaps. “She will be the conduit for a power that will save us all. A power you dragons fear.”
“I don’t fear power,” Dayn says, his voice dropping. “I fear zealots who wield it without understanding the cost.”
He stalks another step forward, closing the distance between them.
“Why don’t you tell me, Esther Salem,” he continues, “why are you so afraid of an alternative? Why are you so blindly devoted to the Ides, to a power that demands she mutilate her own soul to use it? What happened to make you believe that utter annihilation is the only path to salvation?”
Esther’s form flickers, her composure cracking.
“This isn’t ‘utter annihilation,’” she hisses, the sound like a razor in the quiet.
“Tapping into the Ides’ power is merely the natural evolution of our kind.
It will strengthen us, grow us, drive us to new heights.
..” She gives a scornful laugh. “And you speak of salvation? You know nothing of salvation. You are the annihilation. You and your hoard, who burned our world before, and now dare to question our methods for saving what’s left… So step aside. We are out of time.”
The gray void around us seems to shudder with her anger, and the next thing I know, her arm is flaring out and she strikes at the bookshelf. A wave of spectral frost, black and shot through with silver, lances out from her hand, aimed squarely at the memory of my father.
Dayn moves with impossible speed. He’s in front of the memory before the frost can touch it, one hand raised. A shield of solid gold light springs into existence, blocking the attack and also absorbing it. The black frost vanishes into the gold, leaving not even a wisp.
“Don’t touch her memories.” Dayn’s voice drops into a dark, molten growl that slides straight down my spine.
The air wavers around him, shimmering over the sculpted planes of his shoulders, the slow, controlled rise of his chest, the unmistakable command in his posture—a burning, deadly promise of defiance against my grandmother’s deathly frost.
Esther lets out a sound of pure fury. She abandons subtlety, her spectral form dissolving into a vortex of swirling, silver energy. “Get out of this space, dragon, I warn you one last time: this is not your territory.”
When Dayn doesn’t budge, her energy rushes at him, a silent storm of ancestral rage and power. He stands his ground, a bulwark of golden light, and the two forces collide with a soundless explosion that makes the very fabric of this non-place ripple.
I stagger back, gasping. How is he doing this?
This isn’t a physical plane. This is a place of soul and memory, spirit and pure darkblood will, the deepest sanctum of Salem magic.
He shouldn’t be here at all, let alone wielding a spiritual power that can clash with an actual spirit on her own terms.
It’s not dragon magic; it’s something else entirely.
And he’s definitely not a guest in this trial. He’s a… belligerent, gate-crashing god.
“Once again, Esther Esme Salem,” Dayn says, his voice low and scorching, a draconic growl simmering beneath the words as they resonate through the very air of this realm, “you underestimate the power of your own blood.”
A strange sensation prickles the back of my neck, then. It starts as a subtle warmth, a phantom touch against my skin, just below my hairline. It’s so out of place in this sterile void that I almost think I’m imagining it. But it grows, spreading like sun-warmed honey, a steady, grounding heat.
For a flickering, impossible second, the gray void dissolves and I’m kneeling in Merlin’s chamber again, the scent of stone and candle wax sharp in my nose.
And I can feel him. Dayn, standing behind me, his hand resting on the back of my neck, thumb stroking my skin with a possessive, gentle pressure.
A jolt, hot and liquid, shoots through me at the thought, but then the sensation blurs, and I’m back in the gray void, my heart hammering against my ribs.
The bookshelf of my life shudders, glass panes rattling. Dayn’s golden light beats against Esther’s spectral storm, a sun trying to hold back a blizzard of black ice. He is a shield over my past, a furious, living wall between my grandmother and the memories she wants to excise.
“You have meddled for the last time,” Esther hisses, her form coalescing into a needle-sharp point of pure will. She drives herself at him, and the impact sends cracks spiderwebbing through the gray nothingness around us.
Dayn meets her charge, a low growl tearing from his throat.
His power is raw, primal, a territorial fury I’ve never seen him unleash.
It’s not just a shield anymore; it’s a weapon.
Golden talons of light slash at her spectral form, and she’s forced to recoil with a silent scream that makes the memories on the shelf flicker and dim.
They are tearing this place apart. They are fighting over the pieces of me.
I’m about to scream “STOP,” when another sound pierces the void.
It is faint at first, a high, thin wail from impossibly far away.
And I somehow know it’s not part of the trial.
It’s real. The sound slices through the sterile space, followed by another, deeper and more guttural—a horn, its note long and desperate.
The gray fabric of the void ripples, and I know we have taken too long.
The void shudders violently, and this time it’s not from their fight. Another sound echoes through. A roar, distant but very real. The sound of a city-sized beast bellowing its rage to the heavens. And then another. And another. An army. Annihilation. And they are close. Too close.
Dayn and Esther break apart, both turning toward the source of the disturbance. The screaming resolves into words, frantic, leaking into the construct from the outside world.
“—the weakest eastern boundary is down! I repeat: emergency breach response NOW!”
They’re here. The dragons are here. They’ve already breached Darkbirch. And we’re not ready.
Dayn’s head whips around, his eyes locking with mine across the void.
The golden light of his spectral form wavers, his focus torn.
The fight for my soul has just been brutally interrupted by the fight for our lives.
The fury in his expression is replaced by a cold, terrible urgency.
He has to go back. He has to protect our physical bodies, still kneeling and standing on the floor of that chamber.
His form begins to dissolve at the edges, turning translucent. He reaches for me, hand still firm and outstretched. “Esme, come with me. Now. I can pull you out.”
But Esther is faster.
“She finishes what she started,” my grandmother snarls, her form coalescing into a furious specter.
Before I can react, before I can even think to take Dayn’s hand, she is on me.
Icy tendrils of spirit energy wrap around my waist, my arms, my throat, pulling me back from him.
The cold is absolute, seeping into my bones, paralyzing me.
“No, wait!” I grate out, struggling against her grip.
“Esther, don’t!” Dayn’s voice echoes, laced with a fury that transcends the boundaries between worlds.
But it’s too late. My grandmother yanks me backward, pulling me away from the bookshelf, away from the sounds of war, away from him.
The gray void stretches, distorts, and I am dragged into a deeper, darker nothingness.
The last thing I see is the furious, golden blaze of Dayn’s eyes before I am swallowed by the silence and the dead’s suffocating grip.