Chapter 4
FOUR
NASYRA
Two weeks after resurrection
My magic remembers things my mind doesn’t.
I discover this by accident, standing in Lakhu’s training yard with shadow-flame dancing between my fingers.
One of his guards—a massive dragon in human form, scarred and silent—is supposed to be teaching me to control my new abilities.
Instead, he watches from a distance while I struggle to make my fire obey.
It won’t listen. Responds to emotion instead of intent, flaring when I’m angry, dying when I’m calm. The opposite of the disciplined control I remember having before.
Frustrated, I reach for one of the training dummies—a construct of straw and enchantment—and feel something shift inside me.
The enchantment. I sense it. Can feel the threads of magic woven through the straw, holding it together, making it move. More than that—I can see how to unravel it. How to pull at specific threads until the whole thing falls apart.
My shadow-flame lashes out before I consciously decide to act. Not burning—unmaking. The enchantment comes apart in my grasp, thread by thread, until the dummy collapses into a pile of ordinary straw.
The guard makes a sound of surprise. I stare at my hands, at the dark fire that’s finally done something I meant it to do.
“I could do this before.” The words come slowly, drawn from memories I didn’t know I had. “Unravel magic. Sense enchantments.”
The guard says nothing. Just watches me with an expression I can’t read.
I spend the rest of the day practicing. Testing the limits of this rediscovered ability. By sunset, I can sense every ward in Lakhu’s stronghold—layers upon layers of protective magic, old and new, some strong enough to take my breath when I focus on them.
And beneath all of that, far to the west, I sense something else.
A signature. Dark and distinctive. Shadow-touched in ways that call to my own twisted magic.
Zyphon.
I could find him. Track him across miles using nothing but my magical awareness. Hunt the monster who killed my brother and make him pay for what he did.
The thought settles into me like poison. Sweet and deadly.
I don’t tell Lakhu about this new development. Don’t tell anyone. Instead, I practice in secret, honing my senses, learning to track that distant signature through the noise of a thousand other magics.
He’s moving. I feel it—the signature shifting position, drawing closer to the shadow-territories. Closer to me.
Coming to finish what he started, maybe. Coming to make sure I stay dead this time.
Let him come. I’ll be ready.
Three weeks after resurrection
I leave in the dark of night, slipping past guards who don’t expect their guest to flee.
Guest. That’s what Lakhu calls me. A guest, not a prisoner. Free to come and go as I please.
So why do I feel the need to sneak?
I push the question aside and focus on the signature burning in my awareness. Zyphon is close now—hours away, maybe less. He’s entered the shadow-territories, moving through them with an ease that suggests familiarity.
I find him in a ravine as darkness falls.
And nothing goes the way I expected.
Now
He wouldn’t fight back.
I hit him with everything I had. Shadow-flame that should have killed him. Rage that should have burned him to ash. And he just... took it. Stood there bleeding, looking at me with grief instead of hatred, speaking of dying in my place.
Monsters don’t do that. Murderers don’t offer themselves up for slaughter.
The doubt gnaws at me as I flee through the forest, Lakhu’s guards close behind. Their roars split the air, their wings crashing through the canopy. They’re not being subtle. Whatever they want, they want it badly enough to tear through the forest to get it.
To get me.
Guests don’t get hunted.
The thought surfaces, sharp and unwelcome. I shove it aside and focus on running, on putting distance between myself and the pursuit. My lungs burn. My legs ache. The shadow-flame flickers weakly at my fingertips, drained from the confrontation.
I’m not fast enough.
They catch me at the edge of a clearing.
Two dragons in human form materialize from the shadows, cutting off my escape. A third lands behind me, his shift from dragon to man accompanied by a crack of displaced air. I spin, shadow-flame sputtering to life in my palms, but I’m exhausted. Depleted. No match for three trained warriors.
“The prince wants you returned.” The largest of them speaks, his voice flat. No sympathy. No pretense of concern for my well-being. “Now.”
“I’m a guest.” The words sound hollow even to my own ears. “I’m free to come and go—“
One of them laughs. Short. Ugly. “Is that what he told you?”
The third guard circles behind me, and I feel the cold press of iron against my wrists before I can react. Manacles. Enchanted, from the way they make my shadow-flame completely die.
“Hey—“ I yank at the restraints, but the magic holds. “What are you doing? Let me go!”
“The prince will explain.” The large one grabs my arm, his grip bruising. “Move.”
They march me through the forest without ceremony. No gentle guidance. No patient explanations. Just rough hands and cold iron and the growing certainty that I’ve been played for a fool.
Lakhu is waiting at the edge of his camp.
He looks different in the moonlight. Colder. The sympathy that’s been his constant companion for three weeks is nowhere in evidence. Instead, his beautiful face holds nothing but calculation.
“Nasyra.” He says my name the way you’d say the name of a disobedient pet. “You left without permission.”
“I didn’t know I needed permission.” I keep my voice steady despite the fear climbing up my throat. “You said I was a guest.”
“I said many things.” He moves closer, and I see it now—the predator beneath the patient mask. “You believed what was convenient to believe. That’s hardly my fault.”
“Why?” The question erupts before I can stop it. “Why bring me back? Why pretend to help me?”
“Because you’re useful.” Simple. Brutal. “Your unique combination of abilities makes you valuable in ways you can’t begin to understand. Fire-Bringer blood and innate magic—do you have any idea how rare that is? How powerful?”
“I’m not a tool.”
“No?” His smile is poison. “Then what are you? A woman out of time, with no family, no allies, no understanding of the world you’ve woken into. What choices do you have, exactly?”
I want to argue. Want to spit in his face and tell him I’d rather die than be his weapon.
But the manacles are cold against my wrists, and his guards are watching, and the terrible truth is that he’s right.
I have nothing. No one. Just borrowed clothes and twisted magic and memories that might not even be real.
“What do you want from me?” My voice comes out smaller than I’d like.
“Right now? Obedience.” Lakhu gestures, and his guards begin marching me toward the camp. “You’ll return to your quarters. You’ll stay there until I decide otherwise. And you’ll stop asking questions that don’t concern you.”
I stumble as they push me forward, my feet catching on roots in the darkness. “And if I don’t?”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. The threat is clear in every line of his body, in the cold light of his gaze.
I’m not a guest. I never was.
I’m a prisoner. A weapon being shaped for someone else’s purpose.
And the monster I was sent to kill refused to raise a hand against me.
They lock me in my quarters.
The room that seemed comfortable before now feels like a cage. Four walls of black stone. A door that won’t open from the inside. A window too small to climb through, barred with iron that hums with enchantment.
I sink onto the bed—that too-soft monstrosity with its squeaking springs—and stare at my hands. The manacles are gone, removed once they were certain I couldn’t escape. But I still feel them. Still feel the cold weight of iron, the way they made my magic die.
What do you know that’s actually true?
The question echoes in the silence. I try to answer it, try to separate fact from manipulation.
Fact: I died three hundred years ago. That much is certain—my body remembers death, remembers the blade, remembers the blood.
Fact: Lakhu brought me back. Used some artifact, some dark magic, to drag me from death’s embrace.
Fact: He’s been manipulating me since the moment I woke. Shaping my memories, directing my rage, pointing me at targets he wanted destroyed.
But the memory of Balroth’s death. The crystal-clear image of Zyphon tearing my brother apart. Is that fact, or is that manipulation too?
I close my eyes and try to remember. Try to push past the clear memory to whatever lies beneath.
Fragments surface. Hazy. Indistinct. Balroth’s hand in mine, leading me somewhere. His voice, gentle and reassuring. The forest closing around us, dark and deep.
And then—nothing. A gap where memory should be. Like someone cut out a piece of my mind and replaced it with something else.
Something that makes Zyphon the villain.
I think of his face in the ravine. The grief etched into every line. The way he stood there bleeding, refusing to fight, speaking of a lifetime of dying.
I’ve never forgotten. Not for a single day.
What if he was telling the truth?
What if everything Lakhu told me was a lie?
The questions hurt. Physically hurt, like someone’s driving spikes into my skull. I curl onto my side, pressing my palms against my temples, and try to breathe through the pain.
I don’t know what’s real anymore. Don’t know who to trust. Don’t know anything except that I’m trapped in a cage of stone and lies, and the only person who’s shown me anything like honesty is the monster I was meant to kill.
The monster who wouldn’t fight back.
The monster who looked at me with love.
I stare at the ceiling until exhaustion drags me under. My last thought before sleep claims me is a fragment—a memory or a wish, I can’t tell anymore.
Zyphon’s hand reaching for mine. His voice, low and warm, saying words I can’t quite hear.
And the feeling—fierce, undeniable—that once upon a time, I loved him too.