Chapter 2
DAYN
Rayala moves toward Esme, her bare feet making no sound on the stone floor.
I stand back, my arms crossed tightly over my chest, my heart hammering a strong rhythm against my ribs.
I’ve known Rayala since before the Blood Wars—she is a creature of the deep places, a spiritual healer, a fae who traded her sight for the ability to see the architecture of mind and soul.
If anyone can find the cracks Esther left behind, it is her.
But the silence in the cave is suffocating. It tastes of damp earth and the sharp tang of the ancient dark magic still radiating off Esme. My skin prickles, the dragon within me pacing restlessly behind my sternum.
I already know Esther Salem played a foul hand in that final trial: she snatched her from me and took her gods know where.
That woman’s ghost is a parasite, and she has always looked at Esme as a tool rather than a granddaughter.
Unleashing an Ide—a primordial force of destruction—is not something a mortal does without a price.
I need to understand what that price was. Back in Darkbirch, I broke Esme away from the Ide’s grip, but I need to know exactly what Esme sacrificed, what pieces of herself she might have lost, and then… restore what I can before the consequences fully manifest.
Rayala stops inches from Esme, who stands rigid, her chin tilted up in a gesture of defiance that I know is mostly armor. She looks so small in this ancient place, surrounded by its history and Rayala’s and my shadows.
“Sit,” Rayala rasps, her voice like grinding stones.
Esme glances at me, her storm-gray eyes searching mine for a reason to trust this. I give her a singular, sharp nod. I need this. She needs this. We need this.
Slowly, cautiously, Esme sinks onto Rayala’s stone dais, her movements economical despite the obvious tremors in her hands. The scryer doesn’t hesitate. Her gnarled fingers reach out, hovering just an inch from Esme’s temples. The air begins to shimmer.
“Ooof, the girl is a tapestry of scars,” Rayala whispers, her milky eyes rolling back into her head. “So many threads pulled tight. So many knots tied in the dark.”
Esme's eyes narrow to silver daggers on me, and I tilt my head slightly, my expression softening into a wordless request: Trust me. Just this once.
I watch in tense, agonizing silence as Esme lets her eyelids close and Rayala continues.
My gaze is fixed on Esme, and I can’t help tracing the curve of her jaw, the pale column of her throat.
Seeing her here, safe but at least partially broken, stirs a dark, territorial pull low in my gut that I struggle to suppress.
My mind betrays me, slipping back to the grotto construct of the second trial—to the weight of her body against mine, the frantic, desperate heat of our joining.
I remember the way she arched under me, the way her breath hitched when I bit the line of her shoulder, the raw, unfiltered magic of our souls tangling together.
It kills me that she doesn’t remember. To her, that intimacy never happened. To her, I am still the arrogant dragon who abducted her, the husband of a forced blood-vow. The gap between what I know of her and what she remembers of me is a chasm I have to bridge.
Rayala’s hands move down to Esme’s shoulders. “This outer layer,” the scryer mutters. “An unnecessary barrier.”
Rayala’s fingers hook into the collar of Esme’s frayed fatigues. Before I can breathe, the scryer peels the dark fabric away, casting the shirt aside. Esme is left in only her black bra.
I swallow hard, my throat suddenly like sandpaper at the sight of her bare skin in the starlight.
Her shoulders are pale, almost luminescent, marked here and there by bruises, but she is breathtaking.
I can’t help but admire the lean, dancer-like curves of her body, the delicate ridge of her collarbones, the way her ribs expand and contract with her shallow, nervous breathing.
I crave her. It’s a base, draconic hunger that has nothing to do with our magic and everything to do with the scent of her skin.
I remember the feel of it against mine, the friction, the way her heartbeat seemed to sync with my own.
I shouldn't look at her now, half-clothed before Rayala's scrutiny, yet my eyes refuse to grant her privacy.
Each exposed inch of her carries an echo I can almost taste—the salt of her neck, the soft gasp when I found the places that made her surrender.
I follow the contours of her form: the curve where waist meets hip, the vulnerable hollow of her spine, the shadow between her breasts beneath black fabric.
I want to trace these paths with more than just my gaze, to press my mouth to each place until her heart falters beneath my lips and my name becomes the only word she knows.
I want to reclaim what was stolen, to burn away every other touch until my presence is carved into her essence, until whatever darkness claimed her understands that she belongs to me first.
Rayala doesn’t care about my inner turmoil. She places her palms flat against Esme’s sternum, right over her heart.
Esme gasps, her back arching, her eyes flying wide. “It’s cold,” she whispers, her voice trembling.
“Silence, vessel,” Rayala commands.
The scryer begins to hum, a low, dissonant vibration that makes the jars on the tables rattle.
The air around Esme begins to darken, subtle wisps of black smoke curling out from her skin.
It’s thin, like a dying fire, but the malice in it feels unmistakable.
The remnants of the power that gripped her.
Then Rayala's fingers lock rigid against Esme's skin. Her spine straightens and her milky eyes flash obsidian for a heartbeat—the same darkness that swirls from Esme's skin. And then her weathered hands jerk backward.
“I cannot… probe deeper,” she says. “Something is… blocking.”
“What?” I practically growl.
“Curious, indeed,” the old scryer murmurs.
“I didn’t visit you for curiosity, Rayala.” I step into the light, my shadow eclipsing the dais. The dragon in my blood snarls, demanding I snatch Esme from these prying fingers and bury her in my own heat. She shivers, her bare shoulders glistening with cold sweat.
“It is a seal,” Rayala rasps, her sightless gaze drifting toward me. “A lock of ice forged in the blood of the Salem line. The grandmother... she walled off rooms she didn't want anyone to touch.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Esme asks with a frown, her voice thin.
“The deepest parts of your soul, your heart… they’re inaccessible. It seems she wanted to wall off the capacity for anything that isn't a blade.”
Confusion mars Esme’s features. “That's not—I mean, I remember things. My father. The way he used to—” She stops, hand drifting to her chest, pressing there as if checking for a heartbeat.
“What?” I press.
She swallows. “Just realized I… do feel different. It’s strange. When I think about him now, it's more like... facts.” Her eyes meet mine, suddenly vulnerable. “I should feel something, deeply, right? But there’s a kind of numbness.”
I step closer, the distance between us now negligible. Rayala’s presence fades into the periphery, leaving only the sharp, electric hum of the air between me and the woman who is my wife and yet appears to be not truly herself. I need to test the thickness of this ice.
“And what do you feel when you look at me, Esme?” I ask.
She stiffens, her gaze snapping back to mine.
For a long, agonizing moment, she doesn't speak.
I watch her eyes—those storm-cloud irises—as they search mine.
I see the familiar calculation, the analytical mind of a Salem trying to solve a puzzle, whilst keeping control, composure, attempting to give nothing away.
But I also see the flush in her cheeks that tells me she still feels something.
She might not feel the deepness of her past, but her body at least still recognizes the man who claimed her. The blood-bond we share is a cord of gold and shadow, and even if she’s forgotten the hour we spent in the grotto, her nerves haven't.
“I see a dragon who talks too much,” she says finally, her tone clipped. “I see a political complication. That’s all.”
Liar.
The question is whether what feeling remains in her for me, what feeling she’s capable of now, will be enough to…
complete our union, in the way Helena warned us we must. “Flesh to flesh… soul to soul. Light and darkness… must bond… fully. The dragon and the darkblood... become one. No hesitation. No doubt.” She demanded souls intertwining, in the most complete way possible.
The purpose of Helena’s instruction is still something of an enigma, even to me: how exactly will completing our union in this way bridge the toxic chasm of the Blood Wars, among so many other malice-soaked conflicts and skirmishes?
I stare at Esme, wondering how one intimate act could unravel centuries of generational rot.
What exactly will completing our union unleash, and how did Helena come to this conclusion?
What piece of knowledge did she come across in her afterlife that I missed, that we both missed during her life?
Yet Helena is one of the few people I deeply trusted in this world. We shared the same vision: a world of harmonic coexistence, or at least workable respect, between our kinds. I trust that she wouldn’t have given us this advice lightly.
But now, with what happened, with what Esther did… I might have to first break through whatever interference she planted.
“You're shaking,” I murmur, my gaze fixed on the tremor in Esme’s hands.
“I'm cold,” she snaps. She grabs her discarded shirt, pulling it back over her shoulders in a jerky movement. “Rayala, if you can't break the… seal, or whatever you say I have in me, then what can you do? I don’t want to keep carrying some foreign thing inside me.”
“I’m afraid this is not something I can fix myself,” the scryer replies.
“My remit is mostly limited to diagnosis, especially at this age. Nor can you fix it, easily, though it could be done…” Her milky eyes turn toward me with unsettling precision.
“Daynthazar. I’m certain your hoard of knowledge contains something useful for this predicament. ”
I press my teeth into my lower lip, considering.
I do have ideas—all of which would require Esme to surrender what little trust she has left.
I’ve read more than enough texts on invasive rituals and spectral interference to know exactly how she’d react to hearing them in her current back-to-defensive state.
The memory of our first shared mission at Heathborne surfaces unbidden: her glare, her ongoing dagger-sharp commentary, the very clear explanation of what she’d do to me if I ever tried something like that again.
This would be worse. Which, unfortunately, is part of the appeal.