Chapter 9
Bree
I open my eyes to nothing.
Not darkness—nothing. The air tastes of ash and metal, burning the back of my throat. Like someone carved out the space where light should exist and left only absence behind.
I try to sit up and my hands find ground that feels wrong—too soft, like dust that’s never been walked on, but cold enough to make my fingers ache. Everything about this place feels borrowed, temporary, like it’s deciding whether to exist from moment to moment.
The only light comes from directly in front of me.
A mirror, tall and silver-framed, glowing with its own pale radiance. And standing in it, wearing my face—
Riley.
She looks exactly like me, but everything about her posture screams confidence I’ve never possessed. She stands where I was just moments ago, in the chamber, alone but looking perfectly calm about it.
“No!” The word tears out of me before I can think. “You can’t—”
Riley tilts her head, studying me through the glass like I’m something curious she found. Her mouth curves in a smile that looks wrong on my face.
“Oh, but I didn’t,” she says, voice carrying perfectly through whatever barrier separates us.
My stomach drops. Not denial—delight.
“What do you mean you didn’t?” I scramble closer to the mirror, pressing my palms against the surface. It’s cold, solid, completely unyielding. “If you didn’t do this, then how—”
A sound cuts through the darkness.
Not a sound—a noise. Something that bypasses my ears and crawls directly into my bones. Animalistic and inhuman, like a scream that’s been turned inside out and left to rot in the dark.
I clamp my hands over my ears even though it isn’t sound. My bones vibrate anyway.
I jerk back from the mirror, every instinct screaming at me to run. But there’s nowhere to go, nothing but black stretching in every direction.
“What was that?” I whisper.
Riley’s reflection shrugs, but there’s something sharp in her expression now. Alert. Like she heard it too, even from wherever she is.
“The Void has residents,” she says simply. “Most of them aren’t friendly.”
The Void.
My stomach lurches. I know this place. My Ether brought me here before—dragged Thane with me when I lost control. We were here together in this awful emptiness before Ethos threw us back.
“You put me in the Void,” I breathe, horror crawling up my throat.
Riley’s smile sharpens. “I told you—I didn’t put you anywhere. I had nothing to do with it.”
Before I can ask what she means, movement flickers at the edges of the mirror. Familiar faces rushing into the chamber—Rhett in nothing but jeans, the others close behind, all of them looking frantic and afraid.
My heart lurches. They came looking for me. Of course they did.
I press both hands against the glass, trying to get their attention. “I’m here!” I shout, even though I know they probably can’t hear me. “I’m right here!”
But they’re not looking at the mirror. They’re looking at Riley, and the way their faces shift from panic to confusion to something like relief makes my heart feel like it’s breaking.
They think she’s me.
But why wouldn’t they? She looks exactly like me, stands in the space I should be in, wears my face with a confidence that must seem like healing to them.
Rhett takes a step forward, and I see the exact moment he looks into the mirror. His expression changes—just for a second, something uncertain flickering across his features. Like he’s seeing something that doesn’t quite make sense.
I meet his eyes through the glass, and for just a moment, I let everything I’m feeling show on my face. The terror, the confusion, the desperate need for him to understand that something is wrong.
But then Riley’s reflection shifts, and whatever connection I had breaks like a snapped thread.
“See?” Riley whispers, not even bothering to look me in the eyes. “They’re fine. Better than fine, actually. I can give them what they need, what you never could.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Certainty.” She finally turns to face me fully, and there’s something almost pitying in her expression. “You’re always afraid, Bree. Always questioning whether you deserve them, whether you’re enough, whether you’ll hurt them. I don’t have those fears.”
“Because you don’t know them!” The words come out sharper than I intended. “You don’t know what they’ve been through, what we’ve built together—”
“Except this little trip to your realm seems to have given me your memories too,” Riley interrupts.
Memories… she can’t… that’s not possible. I don’t have hers.
“Memories aren’t the same as—”
The mirror surface ripples, and Riley meets my eyes for a moment, a smirk on her face as she steps back, away from the glass. The connection flickers, their images growing dim.
“No, wait!” I slam my hands against the surface, but it’s already too late.
The mirror goes dark, then simply… disappears.
I’m alone in the nothing.
“No, no, no,” I whisper, crawling forward to where the mirror was, hands searching empty air. “Come back. Please come back.”
But there’s nothing. Just Void stretching in every direction, so complete it makes me dizzy. I can’t tell if I’m standing or floating, if there’s ground beneath me or if I’m falling through space.
I make it to my feet and stumble forward, arms outstretched, searching for anything solid. A wall, a door, another mirror—anything that might lead me back to them.
My foot catches on something, and I fall hard onto what feels like stone. Sharp edges bite into my palms, and when I pull my hands back, they come away wet with something warm.
Blood. Real blood, which means this place can hurt me.
Which means I might not be getting out.
The thought sends panic crawling up my throat, and I have to press my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. I need to think. I need to figure out how I got here, how to get back.
But before I can form a coherent thought, a voice cuts through the silence.
“Brielle.”
My name, spoken low and intimate, like a caress that turns my skin to goosebumps.
I freeze, heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat. I know that voice. I’ve heard it in dreams, felt it whisper through the dark corners of my mind when I’m trying to sleep. Heard it here, in the Void for the first time not long ago.
Ethos.
“No,” I breathe, but even as I say it, part of me—some deep, secret part—responds to the sound like a flower turning toward sunlight.
“You’re frightened,” he continues, and I can hear amusement threading through his tone. “Lost. Abandoned by the very people who swore to protect you.”
“They didn’t abandon me.” But my voice shakes, because what if they did? What if Riley is right, and they’re better off without me? What if they prefer her certainty to my constant questioning?
“Didn’t they?” Footsteps echo from somewhere in the dark, getting closer. “You called for help, and they walked away. You reached for them, and they saw only her.”
“Because they don’t know—”
“They don’t know because they don’t want to know.” His voice is closer now, close enough that I can feel warmth radiating from wherever he is. “It’s easier to believe you’ve finally become what they wanted you to be than to acknowledge what you’ve always been.”
For just a moment, the darkness shifts. A silhouette emerges from the Void—tall, imposing, with an athletic build that speaks of dangerous strength. But it’s his head that makes my breath catch: curved horns rising from a skull, pale bone gleaming against the black.
The horned mirrors. The twisted frame in the chamber.
Terror shoots through me and I stumble backward, nearly tripping over my own feet.
“And what’s—what’s that?” The question comes out broken, stuttered, as he melts back into shadow.
“Mine.”
The word sends heat spiraling through me and ice through my veins at the same time. My knees threaten to buckle. I should run. I should fight. I should do anything except stand here letting his voice wrap around me like silk.
But there’s nowhere to run in the Void.
And part of me—the part that’s tired of being afraid, tired of questioning, tired of feeling like I’m never enough—doesn’t want to run at all.
“Come to me, little queen,” Ethos whispers, and his voice sounds like coming home. “Let me show you what it feels like to be wanted without reservation.”
I close my eyes, torn between the terror of what he represents and the terrible, seductive promise in his words.
In the distance, something howls again—that same wrong, animalistic sound that makes my skin crawl.
But Ethos’s voice drowns it out, warm and patient and utterly certain.
“I’m waiting,” he says.
And despite everything—despite the danger, despite what I know he is, despite what choosing him might cost—I find myself taking a step forward into the dark.