Chapter 9 Malachi
Malachi
The potential last living Moirae had stumbled into my presence, and somehow, I had managed to let her kill herself.
I had guided the dream, yes. But the moment her mind realized it was hers to bend, my hold broke.
The shift hit like a blade slipped between my ribs—control bleeding out before I could grasp it.
What followed was not my hand but hers, and for the first time in centuries, something close to fear crawled under my skin.
My thumb dragged over the scar in my palm, a habit I thought long buried.
She had turned the dream upon itself, and that truth cut deeper than I expected.
Dreamwalking was one of my blessings—an inheritance from Eryndis passed down through her chosen few.
Once, the Moirae had shared in that gift, Eryndis’s favor woven into their bloodline by the Nightmother herself.
Eryndis had once woven the Moirae bloodline with the threads of all the goddesses, binding them in ways the ruling houses could not control. But balance seldom favors the powerful.
The three remaining goddesses sowed fear into the ruling mortal houses, whispering that Eryndis’s reach had grown too vast, her truths too dangerous. The houses called it blasphemy and named it law, committing to cutting the Moirae line from the world.
A wet, gurgling cough tore from her throat, raw and ragged. Blood pooled beneath her, staining the snow in dark rivulets and seeping into the cracks of the cobblestones. Shadow-fingers licked the snow at her heels.
I crouched and gathered her. She felt fragile in my arms, chilled and trembling beneath a fever already consuming her.
The shadowed mist crept toward the blood seeping from her chest, drawn to it like hunger given form.
Her skin was pale and clammy, her breath a set of shallow scrapes.
I hesitated for a moment, my gaze drifting to the inky black curls tangled across her face.
Lifting her gently, I brushed the hair aside and tilted her head just enough to expose the back of her neck.
Nothing. No divine mark of longevity seared into her skin. Just the smooth, vulnerable curve of her neck—unmarked. Mortal.
A low curse escaped my lips as I cradled her closer. I felt the unfamiliar weight of her mortality pressing against me. Death could still take her if I wasn’t careful.
I rose, tightening my grip, her head settling against my chest. A ribbon of shadow writhed around us, leeching from the rawness of her wound, from the soft pull of spilled blood.
Shadows were fragments of the Veil, drawn to pain like moths to flame. Their touch could damn the dying faster than death itself. They pressed closer, testing me, tasting her.
“Enough.” My voice cracked like frost. Power slipped from me on instinct. The nearest tendrils recoiled, hissing as they sank back into the dark.
Not yet.
With a final glance at the blood-stained snow, I stepped into the waiting arms of the Veil.
For those who could dreamwalk, the Veil remembered—places where blood had fallen became doorways, marked and waiting.
I had carved enough of them into Nyxarra to walk its underbelly blindfolded.
The mist snapped shut like a jaw and wrapped us in cold.
The Veil was both border and body. It had been built that way—half wall, half world—woven by Eryndis when she stitched the realms into balance.
To mortals, it was only the threshold they could see—fog marking where one realm ended and the next began.
But beneath that surface lay its true form: a fold of living shadow threaded through every threshold, a corridor between worlds that only the gifted could walk.
It writhed and shifted, infinite in every direction, its whispers not always meant for the living.
My vision blurred as we passed through; the black mist clung to my skin, cold and slick.
It wrapped tighter around Aurelia, probing her wound as if testing whether she belonged to it already.
Not yet, I told it again, wordless.
We tumbled from the dark before the castle’s medical wing, the stale tang of incense and drying herbs climbing into my lungs.
The heavy doors groaned and gave beneath my shoulder.
Inside, the chamber was long and cold—walls lined with shelves of tinctures and relics, the air heavy with old prayers.
A single stone slab stood at its center, scarred from centuries of healing and sacrifice. I laid Aurelia upon it.
“Bring a Synnex healer up from the cells,” I said, my voice cutting through the murmurs of Nyxarran attendants—pale forms with shadow-veined eyes, all a little too hollow.
The Synnex healers were different: sun-warmed, their very blood carrying a trace of light that scorched their realm, often blessed by Kaerani, goddess of passion, fury, and renewal. It was why Prince Kaelith imprisoned them. Their light healed what our darkness could not.
The Nyxarran healers faltered, clinging to their oaths more than to survival. A woman with grey skin and black eyes stepped forward, her voice brittle. “Releasing the light without sanction is forbidden,” she whispered. “If Kaelith learns we brought a Synnex healer to the surface—”
“Now,” I said. “Or you’ll find yourselves chained next to them.”
A tense pause. Then footsteps fled down the corridor.
Moments later, a healer was dragged in. He stood tall despite what remained of his shackles, chestnut curls wild from the dark below.
Dirt smeared his tan skin, and the scent of iron and damp stone clung to him.
Exhaustion hollowed his face, but warmth did not abandon it.
His wrists bore fresh scars where iron had rubbed them raw.
He approached Aurelia with an almost reverent touch, peeling back her thick leathers and furs.
She had been dressed well for someone stupid enough to travel during Darkfrost—I’d give her that.
Layers upon layers, yet they hadn’t saved her from herself.
Or from me. I’d guided the dream, but she’d twisted it.
Kaelith would not care whose fault it was—only that I’d let his newest curiosity bleed before he could claim it.
“My name is Santiago,” he said quietly, kneeling beside her.
The healer’s breath hitched. He was staring at the fresh wound near her heart alongside the scar I’d noted earlier, but this new mark sat lower, fresh and red.
Deep-purple veins spiderwebbed outward, a grotesque tapestry of suffering.
A wound born of the dream, one that would scar beside the one she already carried.
I knew its kind—the Veil’s punishment for turning thought into violence. Among dreamwalkers, intent was a blade; what we harmed in the dream could bleed in the waking. Aurelia flinched. Her hand snapped up and closed on the healer’s wrist with surprising strength.
Her eyes opened, a startling, fevered blue flaring against the red, catching his for a heartbeat before she fell limp. The healer caught her head before it struck the stone, his jaw tightening in concentration.
He inspected the wound, lips pressed into a thin line, fingers tracing the corrupted veins with care. The injury pulsed—sickly, alive. The skin around it blackened, and a faint mist curled from the raw edges, whispering in the healer’s ears.
“How did this happen?” His voice was sharp, protective—almost accusing.
“She did it to herself,” I replied, my tone devoid of concern.
The healer’s eyes snapped to mine, burning with silent judgment. He lingered too long, longer than any in this realm should dare to, his gaze filled with an emotion I neither understood nor cared for.
“Problem?” I asked, my voice dripping with impatience.
He said nothing, but his hands moved with precision, pressing over the wound as he began a healing chant.
Light spilled from his hands, burning the dark back inch by inch. Her face contorted, caught between agony and surrender. The tendrils recoiled, hissing. He was competent. Effective.
“Will she live?” I asked, stepping back into the dark that stretched along the edges of the room. I needed her alive. Nothing more, nothing less.
The healer lifted his gaze once more, holding mine with a solemn weight. “Yes,” he said, his voice laced with quiet warning. “She’ll live. But whatever is inside her will fight whatever plans you and this realm have for her.”
I said nothing, offering only a slow nod. Let it fight. It changed nothing. I would deliver her to Kaelith. And she would serve her purpose.
As a boy, I had been taught the hymns—verses about threads unbroken, knots no blade could sever.
We sang them in whispers before sleep, our voices small in the candlelight.
Later, in the barracks, they told us those same songs were poison.
Heresy. They put torches in our hands and made us burn the scraps we had once memorized.
Melody was replaced with command. Myth with obedience.
Even now, I heard both: the child’s song and the soldier’s silence, two truths grinding against each other.
Those hymns used to sound like hope. Now they sounded like warning.