Stars and Lies (Darkbirch Academy #4)

Chapter 1

ESME

The first thing I see are the stars.

But they don’t look like the stars I know—the familiar, distant pinpricks that watch over the training grounds of Darkbirch.

These are vast, cold, and terrifyingly bright, set against a sky so black it looks like a bruise on the universe.

I’m lying on my back, and for a moment, I think I’m still drifting in that void, that soul-consuming darkness that erupted from Merlin’s tomb.

But then I feel the weight. I’m wrapped in thick, heavy furs that smell of wood, old parchment, and a sharp, metallic tang I can’t quite place. Beneath me is a smooth surface.

I try to move, and my entire body rebels. A groan catches in my throat. I ache in places I didn’t know had nerves—a deep, thrumming soreness in my marrow, a sharp pull in my chest, a heaviness in my skull that feels like someone poured lead into my brain.

The last thing I remember…

The tomb. The crack in the granite. The silence that was louder than any roar. And then that black tide, that inexorable Ide-power, rushing into me, filling me until I wasn’t Esme anymore. I was just a vessel for the vacuum.

I sit up slowly, my head spinning so violently I have to press my palms into the furs to keep from listing over. My vision clears in fits and starts.

I’m not in Merlin’s chamber. I’m in some kind of strange lair.

The walls are rough-hewn rock, but they’re draped with shimmering, translucent fabrics that catch the starlight from a wide, open aperture in the ceiling.

Objects are scattered across low stone tables: jars of glowing moss, obsidian mirrors that seem to ripple like water, and bundles of dried herbs that pulse with a faint, bioluminescent rhythm.

It’s cluttered, ancient, and vibrates with a frequency that sets my teeth on edge… We’re not in Darkbirch anymore.

“You’re awake.”

The voice is a low, familiar baritone that somehow vibrates right through the stone floor and into my spine.

I freeze. Every drop of blood in my body feels like it goes perfectly still, before flaring into a white-hot rush.

I turn my head and see Dayn standing near a low, arched doorway, wearing rough, simple clothing: a pale, cream-toned fabric top that strains across his shoulders and loose pants tucked into dark hide boots. He looks… human. Almost.

Except for the eyes. Those are absolute, undiluted dragon—molten gold and burning with an intensity that pins me to the furs.

He doesn’t move, yet the space between us seems to shrink, charged with a sudden, suffocating magnetism.

He’s watching me with an intensity that feels less like a look and more like a physical touch, his gaze tracing the lines of my face as if he’s trying to… read my soul.

I’m used to him looking at me with arrogance, with frustration, even with a flicker of predatory interest, but this… this feels different.

“You’re staring,” I say, the words coming out more breathless than I intended. I try to find my usual frost, the sharpened edge of the Salem heiress who has no time for draconic enigmas, but the signature cold won't come. My skin feels flushed, almost reactive to the air he’s breathing.

I don’t understand why I’m reacting this way.

My usual defenses—the walls I’ve spent a lifetime building against threats, against everyone—are trying to snap into place, but they feel brittle, compromised.

His gaze feels more electric than it ever did before, a live wire touching the base of my brain.

And beneath the fear and the disorientation, there’s a strange tug in my core.

A pull that defies every logic I possess.

Dayn takes a step forward. He moves with a liquid grace that reminds me he’s a mountain of muscle and fire disguised in linen and hide. He stops just out of arm’s reach, but I feel the weight of his presence, the heat that seeps through the furs and settles in my bones.

“I’m making sure you’re still in there,” he says, his voice low. “The thing that came out of that tomb chamber… it didn’t look like you.”

The memory of the black tide flashes through me, and I pull the furs tighter around my shoulders before I can stop myself.

I force myself to look away from his golden eyes, scanning the rough stone of the lair.

“Where is this? And why the hell did you take me here? My coven—my mother and sister and—”

“Are safe, for now,” Dayn interrupts. “The dome you created… it stopped the dragon invasion. It also turned half the battlefield into a graveyard of dust.”

A graveyard of dust.

A lump forms in my throat, and another chill snakes down my spine.

I actually did it. I released it. The power of a Merlin Ide—the ultimate, catastrophic deterrent my coven has whispered about for generations almost as if it were a myth, a bedtime story.

It wasn't just a spell. It was a localized erasure. And I’m not sure what comes next.

I look at my hands. They look the same—pale, slender—but they feel heavy, as if the gravity of that void is still clinging to my fingertips. And I realize what unnerves me most in this moment is that I don’t know how I did it.

I reach back into my fractured memory, trying to find the bridge between the girl kneeling in Merlin’s tomb and the god of shadow she unleashed.

I remember the third trial, or at least, the beginning of it.

I remember the gray void, the suffocating stillness of the bookshelf of my life.

I remember my grandmother, Esther, her spectral face twisted into a mask of cold, surgical ruthlessness as she reached for the glass pane containing my father.

She wanted to excise him, his smile. She wanted to prune my soul until only the weapon remained.

And then… Dayn.

He was there. He shouldn’t have been, but he was. A golden sun in my ancestor’s winter. I remember the heat of him, the way he stood between me and the erasure of my own… soul. He protected the memory of my father. He pushed her back.

But after that? Nothing.

“Where am I?” I ask, my voice sounding like a rasp.

I struggle to my feet, the furs sliding off me.

I’m still in my dark fatigues, though they’re frayed and torn.

I try to find my internal center, that cool, analytical space where I process threats.

“What’s going on, Dayn? Why am I here? Why am I in this… grotto?”

Dayn doesn’t answer immediately. He continues to watch me with an intensity that borders on predatory yet feels…

unnervingly intimate, his molten eyes seeming to track the erratic pulse at my throat.

There is a weight behind his gaze, a dark gravity that suggests he’s holding onto something—something he’s not telling me.

A muscle ticks in his jaw. “This isn't a kidnapping, if that's what you're thinking,” he says. “We’re here for answers.”

Then he steps aside, gesturing toward the arched doorway.

A small, hunched figure emerges from the gloom of the inner tunnel.

She is ancient, her skin the texture of dried moss and her hair resembling a tangled crown of silver lichen.

She is a scryer, but the most ancient kind I’ve ever seen—a female fae of the deep earth, her eyes milky and sightless, yet fixed unerringly on my face.

“She has been waiting for the vessel to wake,” Dayn murmurs, his hand ghosting near the small of my back, though he doesn't touch me. “Because before we can figure out any kind of next step, we need to know what… happened to you. What you actually did in that final trial.” What Esther did to you in that trial. I can sense the words on his tongue even though he doesn’t say them.

He turns to the scryer, his voice a low command. “So tell us, Seer. Tell us what she invited into her blood.”