Chapter 35
ESME
Salome rises from her seat, her movements fluid despite her age, and gestures for us to follow.
“Then let’s begin,” she says, gathering our items from the table.
She leads us through a narrow doorway I hadn’t noticed before, into what appears to be the heart of her dwelling. The room is circular, with walls made of rough wood, and moonlight trickles down through a skylight in the ceiling.
But she doesn’t stop here.
She heads to a narrow spiral staircase, tucked in one corner, which seems to descend deeper than the cottage’s modest appearance would suggest. As we move down, the air grows damper with each step, carrying a sharp mineral scent.
After what feels like several, strange minutes of descent, we emerge into an earthy basement lit by wall candles.
“My bathing room,” Salome murmurs.
My eyes fall on a wide, shallow basin carved from a single slab of stone.
It sits in the center of the subterranean grotto, fed by a slow, rhythmic drip of water that falls from a stalactite perfectly centered above it.
The air here is different, not just damp, but heavy with a static charge that makes the fine hairs on my arms stand on end.
“I don’t just live here to hide, Salem,” Salome says.
“This is my jacuzzi. Handy for my own rituals that keep the years from eroding my body and mind into dust.” The faintest smile crosses her lips as she looks from Dayn to me.
“It will serve for your purposes, too, provided you aren’t afraid of a little exposure. ”
“Exposure?” I ask, my voice sounding thin.
“You’re here for a soul retuning. Skin contact with the water will help with magical conduction,” Salome says, already moving toward a side alcove filled with jars of some kind of dried remains and pungent oils.
“Strip. Get in. Don’t waste my time. I’ve seen more bodies than there are trees in this forest, and I suspect your dragon has already seen everything I’m likely to look at. ”
The bluntness of her words hits me like a slap.
Are we that obvious? I glance at Dayn. He’s already unbuckling his belt, his expression unreadable, though his amber eyes are fixed on me with a quiet intensity.
There’s no mockery in his gaze, no teasing arrogance. Only the quiet weight of the moment.
I move to undo the buttons of my shirt. The basement is cold, a deep-earth chill that seeps through my boots. I peel off my layers—the rugged shirt, the trousers—until I’m standing in nothing but my thin black underwear. I feel small in this ancient space, my pale skin stark against the dark earth.
I hear the rustle of fabric, then the soft splash of water.
“Esme,” Dayn murmurs.
I turn. He’s already in the basin, the water reaching his waist. His broad shoulders are bare, the scars of his long life tracing silver patterns across his bronzed skin. He looks like some kind of primal god of the deep earth. He reaches out a hand toward me.
I take a breath, trying to steady the quickening rhythm of my heart, and step into the basin.
The water is ice-cold.
It’s a sharp, piercing shock that steals the air from my lungs. I gasp, my toes curling against the smooth stone bottom.
“You call this a jacuzzi?” I manage.
I realize after a moment that the sensation is not just cold, but heavy. It feels denser than normal water, pressing against my skin with a weight that feels purposeful. I wade deeper, my skin prickling, until I reach the center.
Dayn takes my hands, pulling me toward him. His heat is a contrast to the water, a lifeline in the freezing liquid. I sink down until the water reaches my chest, my knees brushing his beneath the surface.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“It’s freezing,” I reply.
A faint flicker of amusement touches his mouth. “That’s not why.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Don’t start.”
Salome returns, her arms laden with several small black bowls and a bundle of dried herbs that smell both bitter and sweet. She looks at us the way a surgeon might look at an open chest cavity—calculating, precise, and entirely detached from the pain of the patient.
“Good,” she says, her voice lowering. “Stay still. If you break the connection, the feedback might liquefy your insides. Try to remember that.”
“Wh-What?” I stammer.
She moves to the edge of the basin and places my wooden bird and Dayn’s scale there. Then she touches a finger to a hidden rune on the stone rim.
The change is instantaneous.
The water, which had been gently rippling from our movements, suddenly goes glass-smooth, almost like a solid plane. Beneath the surface, faint silver lines begin to glow, threading outward from the basin’s walls and snaking around our bodies. They pulse with a slow, sickly-white light.
“Just some extra juice,” Salome murmurs. She drops my bird and Dayn’s scale into the water. “Now, girl, close your eyes.”
I do so, after stealing one last anxious look at Dayn.
“Phase one: preparation,” Salome continues. “Opening the soul.”
She whispers words in a language that sounds ancient beyond reckoning, and the air pressure changes. Sound dampens around us, as if the chamber has been sealed in invisible glass. My ears pop with the sensation of being underwater, though my head is still above the surface.
Then the water begins to hum with something I feel deep in my bones, a vibration that resonates through my marrow. Behind closed eyelids, I detect the silver lines pulsing in time with it, growing brighter.
“Good,” Salome says, her voice sounding distant despite her standing just feet away. “We begin.”
I feel the water start to pull at me, yet it’s somehow not a physical tug. It feels like it’s reaching into my chest and grabbing hold of the edges of my aura. Like hooks have been placed in my very essence, my identity, and are now gently tugging.
The memories of the past weeks—Heathborne, Draethys, the Ides, the flight through the stars, Draethnar—start to flatten.
Even conversations with Brynn, training sessions at Darkbirch, the recent fight in the forest, they lose their color, becoming two-dimensional, like old photographs left in the sun.
The muted emotions I’ve been struggling with—the confusion, the desire for Dayn, the concern about the Ides—start to slip away.
They just… dissolve. I try to hold onto them, to keep their significance, but they slip through my mental fingers like sand.
“Don’t fight it,” Salome commands, her voice sharp. “Let the water take what it needs to.”
The pulling sensation deepens, reaching into places inside me I didn’t know existed. I feel myself being hollowed out, purposefully emptied, as if someone is carefully scraping away at my interior walls.
Panic rises in my throat. I tighten my grip on Dayn instinctively, my fingers digging into his arms.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs, his voice the only warm thing in this cold, invasive process.
The water moves through me now—spiritually—flowing through channels that have no physical form. It searches, probes, dissolves barriers I didn’t know were there.
I gasp, my eyes flying open, but the world is now a blur of blue light and silver lines.
“Dayn,” I try to say, but the word is just a thought.
I’m losing my grip on who I am. The shadows I’ve grown used to calling upon feel distant, unreachable. The sharp, analytical mind I prize is turning to slush.
The cold is sharpening now, becoming a knife-edge. The water presses against my skin, grounding me to the stone while simultaneously exposing every nerve ending. There is nowhere to retreat. No mental fortress, no sarcastic shield, no shadow-shroud.
I am completely open.
And that’s when I realize, with sudden, terrifying clarity, that I don’t know what’s underneath. What remains when everything else is gone? Who am I at my core, without all the influences that have shaped me?
Without Esther’s guidance, without my darkblood traditions, without Darkbirch’s structure, who is Esme?
The question yawns before me like an abyss, and I have no answer.
I shiver violently, not just from cold but from the profound vulnerability of the moment. I feel myself becoming something neutral, unshielded. Not the person I was molded to be, not the person I thought I was—just... open. Raw potential without direction.
It’s terrifying.
“Good,” Salome says, her voice cutting through the strange silence. “It’s worse than I thought. That means it might work.”
I want to scream at her what does she mean? But my voice seems disconnected from my will. I can’t even find the part of me that holds anger. I am just a frequency. A raw, unshielded state of being.
Not Esther’s weapon. Not the Salem prodigy.
Just… Esme. And Esme is terrified of how little she exists.
“Now,” Salome says, her voice turning sharp. “The Draconic Overlay. Dragon, prepare yourself. You are the anchor. You are the frequency she needs to mirror to achieve the restoration.”
Dayn’s grip on my hands tightens. I can’t see him clearly, but I feel the shift in his energy. It’s no longer just heat, it’s a roar.
“Esme, look at me,” he commands.
I force my eyes to focus. He is so close that the short distance is charged, electric. The silver lines beneath the water connect our bodies, glowing with a fierce, blinding white light.
The water between us begins to tighten. I can see it happening—the liquid surface tension increasing until the water becomes like a living channel, a bridge of pure energy.
“Force the resonance, dragon,” Salome orders. “As hard as you can. It must overpower any other influence.”
Dayn doesn’t hesitate. He closes his eyes, and a wave of power rolls off him that nearly knocks me backward. It’s more than fire. It feels like the weight of centuries. It’s the sound of wings beating against a storm, the heat of a mountain’s heart, the ancient, golden authority of his bloodline.
He pushes it into the water. He pushes it into me.