Chapter 2
TWO
ZYPHON
Itrack her magic to a ridge overlooking a ravine.
The forest opens here, offering a clear view of the landscape below—dark trees stretching toward darker mountains, their peaks lost in clouds that seem to absorb what little light remains.
The ravine cuts through the earth like a wound, its depths invisible from this height.
Somewhere down there, water moves over stone, the sound barely audible over the whisper of wind through dead leaves.
She’s below. I feel her, the shadow-flame pulsing with an irregular rhythm that speaks of emotion barely contained. The signature flares and dims, flares and dims—anger, maybe. Or fear. Or both.
My own darkness reaches toward her without my permission, tendrils stretching down the ridge, hungry for the fire that mirrors its own tainted nature. I yank it back. Control it. Barely. My hands shake with the effort, cold sweat prickling along my spine.
I descend the ridge in silence, picking my way down rocks slick with moisture and moss.
The air grows colder as I drop below the tree line, thick with mist that clings to my skin and dampens my hair.
Each step takes me closer to the impossible, the miraculous, the terrifying unknown of what awaits at the bottom.
What will I say when I see her? What can I possibly say that would make any of this make sense?
I’m sorry I was too late.
I’ve spent every waking hour wishing I could die in your place.
I kept your flowers alive because I couldn’t keep you.
Pathetic. All of it pathetic.
The shadow-flame signature grows stronger as I descend. Clearer. The wrongness of it becomes more apparent. What happened to her? What did they do to bring her back, and at what cost?
I reach the bottom of the ravine and pause. The trees here grow thick, their branches interlocking overhead to create a canopy so dense that midday looks like midnight. I can barely see a dozen feet in any direction.
But I sense her. Close. So close my shadows are vibrating with barely restrained hunger, pressing against the inside of my skin, demanding release.
“I know you’re there.”
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Feminine. Furious. Achingly, impossibly familiar.
“Show yourself, dragon.” A pause loaded with venom. “I’ve been looking for you.”
I step from the shadows.
And there she is.
Nasyra Hawk. Three hundred years dead. Standing twenty feet from me with shadow-flame dancing in her palms and murder in her mismatched gaze.
She’s exactly as I remember and nothing like I remember at all.
The same pale skin, almost luminous against the darkness.
The same black hair falling past her shoulders, tangled now with leaves and twigs.
The same impossible heterochromia—one eye deep and dark, the other pale and sharp—that I’ve seen in every dream for three centuries.
But the warmth is gone. The spark of mischief that used to light her features.
She looks at me now with nothing but cold rage, her jaw set in a line that speaks of violence barely contained.
The shadow-flame in her hands crackles and spits, casting flickering light across features that could be carved from ice.
“Nasyra.” Her name tears from my throat, ragged and broken. “You’re—”
“Don’t.” She cuts me off, her shadow-flame flaring brighter. Heat washes over me, wrong and cold despite the fire. “Don’t say my name like you have any right. Don’t look at me like you’re seeing a ghost.” A bitter laugh. “Though I suppose that’s what I am.”
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t do anything but stare at the woman I’ve mourned, standing before me with fire in her hands and hatred in her eyes.
“I’ve been looking for you, Zyphon Koros.” My name sounds like a weapon on her lips. “I’ve been looking for the monster who killed my brother.”
The words hit me harder than any blow. Her brother. Balroth. The one who betrayed her, who led her to the altar, who held her down while they drained her blood. The one I killed with my bare hands while the darkness took root in my soul.
She thinks I’m the villain.
She doesn’t remember.
The realization crashes through me, devastating in its implications. Someone brought her back. Someone manipulated her memories. Twisted the truth until she believes I murdered her beloved brother without cause, without reason, without the context that would make that kill justified.
She’s been weaponized against me.
And she’s hunting me because she thinks I deserve it.
“Nasyra,” I say again, softer this time. “Whatever you think happened—”
“I know what happened.” Her voice shakes with fury.
“I remember watching you tear him apart. My brother. The only family I had left.” The shadow-flame grows, spreading up her arms, casting harsh light across features twisted with grief.
“He was trying to protect me from you, and you killed him for it.”
The lie is so complete, so perfectly inverted from the truth, that I almost admire whoever constructed it. They took the worst moment of my existence and flipped it. Made me the monster instead of the man who arrived too late to save her.
I could tell her the truth. Could explain that Balroth led her to that altar. That he held her down while they drained her. That his last words were about how she’d always been the special one, the powerful one, and he’d found people who valued what he could offer them. Her.
But she won’t believe me. Not now, not when she’s standing there with centuries of manipulated rage burning in her veins. If I tell her the truth, she’ll think it’s another lie. Another manipulation designed to hurt her.
She has to remember on her own. Has to find the truth herself, or it won’t be real to her.
“I’m not going to fight you.” The words come out steady, despite everything. “I won’t raise a hand against you.”
“Then you’re going to die standing still.”
Her shadow-flame arcs toward me in a wave of dark fire.
I don’t move.
The flame hits me full in the chest, and my shadows surge to meet it. Not to attack—I won’t let them attack her—but to absorb. The impact staggers me back, pain lancing through every nerve, the dark fire eating at my flesh even as my own darkness works to contain the damage.
I stay on my feet. Barely.
“Fight back.” She sounds confused now, the certainty in her voice wavering. “Why won’t you fight me?”
“I told you.” I meet her gaze—those impossible, beloved eyes—and let her see everything I’m feeling. The grief. The guilt. The desperate, devastating hope that’s been clawing at my chest since I first read that message. “I won’t hurt you. Not ever.”
Her face twists. Another blast of shadow-flame hits my shoulder, spinning me half around. The pain is exquisite, burning and freezing at once, and I smell scorched leather, scorched skin. But I don’t cry out. Don’t defend myself. Just turn back to face her and wait for the next strike.
“You killed him.” Her voice breaks on the words. “You killed Balroth, and I can’t—I can’t—”
“I understand what you remember.” I take a step toward her. Every instinct screams at me to stop, to flee, to shift and put distance between us. I ignore them all. “I know what you think happened. And I know nothing I say will change that.”
“Then die.” She raises both hands, shadow-flame building between her palms into something that will definitely kill me if it hits. “Die knowing what you did.”
“If that’s what you need.” I spread my arms, offering myself to her fury. “If my death will give you peace, then take it. I’ve been dying since I lost you. At least this way, it’ll mean something.”
She hesitates.
Just a moment. Just a flicker of something in her expression that doesn’t match the rage she’s been wearing. Confusion. Doubt. The faintest crack in her certainty.
And then shouts echo through the forest. Dragon roars splitting the air. The sound of wings and branches breaking—forces approaching fast. Too fast to be coincidence.
Her head snaps toward the noise, and I see recognition flash across her features. Fear, quickly hidden. The shadow-flame in her hands flickers and dies as her attention splits.
“They’re coming for you.” I don’t know who “they” are, but I can guess. Someone resurrected her. Someone manipulated her memories. Someone sent her hunting me. And now someone is coming to collect their weapon.
Her jaw tightens. “This isn’t over.”
“No.” I watch her back away, moving toward the sound of pursuit rather than away from it. “It’s not.”
She gives me one last look—confusion and hatred and something else, something I can’t name—and then she’s gone. Vanishing into the mist that swallows everything in this forsaken place.
I stand alone in the darkness, bleeding from wounds that will heal and scars that won’t.
She’s alive.
She wants me dead.
And somewhere in this forsaken forest, she’s being controlled by someone who brought her back specifically to destroy everything I am.
I should return to the fortress. Should tell my brothers what’s happening, rally the Brotherhood, plan a response. That’s what any sane dragon would do.
Instead, I follow her into the dark.
Because even after years of death and grief and guilt that’s carved itself into my soul, I’d rather die by her hand than let anyone else hurt her again.
The woman I loved has come back from the dead to kill me.
And I’ve never been more grateful to be alive.