40. Esme
ESME
Dayn stands close beside me as we approach the new, shimmering spiritual barrier that encircles Darkbirch’s grounds. It looks healthy, to say the least. I can feel the supernatural charge emanating from it before I even touch it.
The barrier parts for me smoothly, like a curtain of liquid light, almost as if it’s been waiting for me.
“Come.” I grab Dayn’s arm and pull him through with me. As I hoped, it doesn’t attempt to reject him. A moment later, we’re on the other side.
But the moment I cross the threshold, something shifts inside me.
It’s so subtle at first I practically don’t notice it.
A flutter deep in my core, like the stirring of something that’s been dormant.
But the sensation spreads, and it feels almost like warmth.
As if something inside recognizes this place. Is... pleased to be back.
Weird.
The sensation continues, a quiet hum beneath my skin that feels both foreign and strangely familiar. Like something inside me is coming home. I push the thought aside, focusing instead on the path ahead.
Everything’s different about this place. It looks the same, but our spirit grid’s been fundamentally altered. I’m probably reacting to something about it.
We’re barely halfway to the main courtyard when three security personnel emerge, their darkblood signatures registering against my senses.
I recognize Alden, a senior warden with an impressive scar curving from his temple to his jaw.
Then I notice their eyes: they’re darker than they should be, flickering with faint shadows.
Yes. Things have definitely changed about this place.
“Salem,” he says, his voice carrying a note of surprise. “And... Daynthazar Draxion.” His hand rests casually on his weapon, though he doesn’t draw it. “Wasn’t sure we’d see either of you again.”
“Yet here we are,” I reply, keeping my tone neutral. “Alive and mostly intact.”
Alden studies us for a moment before nodding. “I’ll inform Director Reinhardt and Corvin of your return. They’ll undoubtedly want to speak with you.” His eyes linger on Dayn. “Interesting times we’re having. Seems you’ve missed quite a bit.”
“I’m sure we have,” I say, already moving past him toward the northwest section of the academy. “We’ll be in my quarters until then.”
“Your coven has changed,” Dayn observes quietly. “Can you feel it?”
I nod, grateful he senses it too. “Something’s off. The energy is... different.”
“The Ides,” he murmurs. “Their presence has altered the entire atmosphere. It’s threaded through the people too.”
I swallow, trying to take my mind off the flicker of unease inside me.
It’s just because everything’s new. Every change comes with a period of adjustment.
And this is the biggest change that’s ever impacted not just our coven, but the entire darkblood world.
I can’t expect to just return and for everything to feel like it was, like the home it used to be.
We reach my northwest tower, and I lead Dayn up the winding staircase to my private turret room.
The door swings open at my touch, the wards recognizing my signature.
Inside, everything is exactly as I left it—books stacked on the desk, my spare cloak thrown over the chair, the glyph-stained window overlooking the forest beyond.
Yet it almost feels like someone else’s space now. Like I’m stepping into a memory rather than a room. It’s the strangest feeling.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I murmur to Dayn, already moving toward the bathroom. “Salome’s bath left a weird residue on my skin. I want to wash off before doing anything.”
He nods, moving to the window as I close the bathroom door behind me. The hot water is a blessing, steam rising to fog the small mirror as I scrub at my skin. The mineral film from Salome’s ritual bath clings stubbornly, an odd silvery sheen that finally yields to my scrubbing.
When I emerge, wrapped in a simple black robe, my hair still damp against my neck, Dayn is exactly where I left him. He stands silhouetted against the window. His shoulders look tense as he stares out at the academy grounds.
“Anything interesting out there?” I ask, toweling my hair dry.
He turns, and his amber eyes track my movement across the room. “Just shadows and… questions.” He pauses. “You look better.”
“Amazing what soap can do,” I reply, though we both know it’s more than that. Something irrevocably shifted between us since Salome’s bath.
And now, in this small space, there’s no avoiding it.
I sit on the edge of my bed and look up at him. “We should probably talk about what happens next,” I start.
“Yes,” he agrees. “Though I suspect that’s a conversation with many possible directions.”
I exhale slowly. “Let’s start with the obvious. We’re here. I need to find Esther and figure out what she did to me. And then there’s… the other matter.”
Something tugs at his mouth. “Care to elaborate?”
I can see he plans to make this as awkward as he possibly can. Something dragons truly excel at.
“The other matter,” I say, my voice a fraction steadier than my pulse. “Helena’s favorite topic. ‘Completing the union.’”
The word hangs between us, hyper-charging the already charged air. I don’t miss the way his gaze travels to my bare throat, then my lips, and he looks as if restraint costs him.
“Go on,” he says, voice low.
My heart beats faster. “Helena was insistent about the idea. That it’d somehow be the key to fixing this multi-way-war mess. I don’t know how, but I also thought about what you said earlier: that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have an alternative to total reliance on the Ides.”
Slowly, Dayn pushes off from the windowsill, making the small room feel even smaller as he moves closer. He stops a couple feet away, crossing his arms.
“So, you’re saying that you want me?”
“I…” My voice catches as I look up at him, my breath faltering as I take in the details that always seem to strike me anew, no matter how many times I’ve seen him.
Dayn towers over me, his broad shoulders filling the space like he owns it, the sharp lines of his jaw shadowed by the low light, emphasizing that damn aristocratic bone structure.
But for the first time, it feels like I have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from his attention. Salome’s ritual stripped away the haziness padding my feelings. Now I feel them rise, raw and unbidden and… unstoppable.
“I-I’m saying the Ides are a gamble we can’t fully control,” I say, though the words feel like a thin veil for the riot that’s going on beneath my skin.
“Helena’s idea... it would apparently, somehow, create a different kind of power.
One that belongs to us, not any third party.
And one that’s mutually beneficial. It would be great to get specifics of how this’d work, but I’m not sure we can.
We’d have to find Helena and try to drag it out of her. ”
“And is that all?” he asks quietly. Slowly, he reaches out, and his thumb traces the line of my jaw, his touch searing against my skin. “Because right now, your blood’s humming, Esme… telling me something much more primal.”
Dammit. I can’t lie to him anymore, or to myself.
Not when Salome’s water stripped the lies from me.
My skin still tingles from the bath, from the way the ritual peeled me open and let…
so much rush in—feelings I’d thought were muted, distant, but now they’re sharp and insistent, coiling hot in my chest every time his gaze lingers like that.
I can’t breathe. Not with his thumb trailing down my neck, gently finding the pulse that’s currently erratic enough to signal a total system failure. The logic—the analysis that usually keeps me grounded—feels like a smoldering ruin. Salome did so much more than just wake me up…
“It’s more than the Ides,” I whisper, the admission feeling raw and jagged in my throat, and a part of me can’t believe I’m actually saying it. “That’s just the excuse. The rational one. The version I can say out loud without feeling like I’m stepping off a cliff.”
His thumb stills against my throat.
I force myself to keep going, because if I stop now, I’m not sure I’ll start again.
“The truth is… you’ve been under my skin for longer than I wanted to admit.
Longer than I could admit, maybe. I kept telling myself it was circumstance.
Proximity. Survival. That I was just reacting to being thrown into your world.
” I let out a small, humorless laugh. “But it was never just that. You make me angry. You make me feel seen in ways I’m not always sure I like.
You push, and you notice, and somehow you never let me disappear into the background the way others are content to. ”
My throat tightens.
“And after Esther—after realizing how much of myself I’ve been missing, how much of me was…
muted—I’ve started asking myself what was actually mine.
What feelings were real. What choices were mine.
” I look up at him then, because he deserves that much.
“And, despite the blood and marriage bonds, despite the very real possibility I was suffering from Stockholm syndrome… you, somehow, were the easiest answer.”
Something shifts in his face, something small but dangerous.
“I trust you,” I say, and that feels bigger than everything else. Bigger than desire. Bigger than fear. “Which is terrifying, because I don’t do that. I don’t hand people the sharp parts of me and hope they won’t cut me with them. But with you…” I swallow. “With you, I keep doing it anyway.”
The room feels too small for breathing.
“Yes, I want you. Gods, obviously, I want you.” My mouth twitches faintly. “I’m not blind. I’ve noticed the whole dragon-king-being-illegally-attractive situation.”
That finally earns the smallest pull at his mouth, but I keep going.