Chapter 27 Bree
Bree
I wake hollow.
Everything feels scooped out. Empty veins. Bones that ache like they remember being pulled apart.
I know the cushions are soft beneath me, but I barely feel them. The Ether drifts around me, tired and thin. When I reach for it, nothing happens. Just that muffled hum under my skin that won’t answer.
But there’s something else.
A warmth. Low in my chest. Small. Steady. Not mine.
Gray’s voice whispers through my mind, quiet and certain: “Love.”
The memory flickers and fades before I can hold onto it.
I press my palm to my chest, trying to catch it. Trying to remember. But it’s gone, slipping away like smoke.
Maybe it’s what he left behind. When he—
Ethos.
Heat crawls through me before I can finish the thought. His hands. His mouth. The way he made me feel like I mattered.
I want that again.
It should feel wrong. It doesn’t. Just feels hungry.
The warmth pulses and I sink into it, letting it wrap around me like I deserve it.
My legs shake when I stand, but they hold.
The chamber is quieter now. Silver fire dimmed to almost nothing. Black stone that should feel oppressive but doesn’t anymore. Or maybe I’m just used to it.
My eyes find the mirror.
I don’t mean to look. Don’t decide to move toward it. But I do anyway.
One step. Then another. Like something’s pulling me.
Not curiosity. Not fear. Need.
My feet carry me across cold stone, and the Ether follows slow and tired, black threads weaving through silver. It should worry me. It doesn’t.
Rhett’s laugh echoes somewhere distant, warm like fire.
I reach for it, but it slips away like smoke.
I stop in front of the glass and stare at my reflection.
She looks different. More certain. Eyes still green but flickering like static.
The warmth flares in my chest.
I gasp, my hand flying up. My reflection does the same, but slower. Like she’s moving through water while I move through air.
“Why can’t I stop?” I whisper to the empty chamber.
The mirror doesn’t answer.
The warmth pulses again, stronger this time. It pulls—not toward something, but toward the glass itself. Like gravity. Like recognition.
I lift my hand without thinking and press my palm flat to the surface.
It hums.
Faint, but real. I feel it vibrate against my skin, feel the way the glass shifts slightly under my touch. Not quite solid, not quite liquid. Something between.
The warmth in my chest flares bright enough to hurt.
For just a second I see something in the reflection behind me. A shadow. A shape.
A face I recognize but shouldn’t. Dark hair. Eyes that looked at me like I mattered.
Seth.
But I killed him. Didn’t I?
The thought fractures before it finishes.
Gone.
I pull back, breathing hard. What was that?
The hunger twists tighter, and I don’t know what I’m craving anymore. His touch? His voice? Or something else entirely?
Jace’s voice cuts through sharp with worry: “We’ve got you.”
The words dissolve before they finish forming.
The warmth pulses like an answer I can’t read.
I press my palm to the mirror again, desperate to understand. I need to know why I can’t look away, why the glass feels alive under my hand, why every time the warmth flares I feel less alone.
Maybe it’s him. Maybe he’s so deep inside me now that even mirrors call with his voice.
It should terrify me. Instead, it makes me lean closer.
The temperature drops.
I spin around, jerking my hand back. The warmth flickers like a candle in wind.
He’s here.
I feel him before I see him. The air thickening. Light shifting black-blue. My body reacting before my mind catches up—fear and want colliding so hard I can’t breathe.
“Still staring at yourself, little Queen?”
His voice comes first, smooth and cold and perfect. Then he’s there, materializing from shadow, and I have to force myself not to step toward him.
He’s beautiful. That’s the worst part.
The warmth in my chest pulses sharp and sudden.
I gasp.
His eyes flicker with something that looks like satisfaction.
“There it is,” he murmurs, moving closer. Circling me like a predator studying prey. “That spark. That hunger.”
I can’t answer. Can’t think past the way my body responds. Heat pooling low even as some distant part of me screams to run.
Thane’s voice cuts through, cold and sharp: “Little queen.”
But it sounds wrong. Too warm. Like a memory trying to become real.
It slips away.
His fingers brush my jaw, tilting my face up to meet his gaze.
“You’re exquisite,” he says, and it sounds like worship and possession all at once.
His thumb traces my lower lip, and the warmth flares again.
The sound that escapes me—half gasp, half moan—I don’t recognize it.
His smile sharpens.
“See?” His voice drops lower, intimate. “Even your magic knows who you belong to.”
The words settle into my bones like truth.
Because he’s right. Isn’t he?
The hunger. The pull. The way I can’t stop wanting him even when I know I should.
That’s all him. All his influence threading through me until I can’t tell where I end and he begins.
Even this warmth—this foreign pulse in my chest—must be another thread he’s woven. Another way he’s claimed me.
His hand slides from my jaw to my throat, not squeezing, just resting there. Possessive.
“The Council is preparing to meet,” he says, his voice steady and rhythmic. Each word designed to drown thought. “They believe you’re lost. That the sanctuary failed.”
My breath catches. The sanctuary. The guys.
Wes’s quiet voice whispers through my mind: “Beautiful.”
It hurts to hear. Hurts worse when it fades.
“They’ve moved on, little queen.” His thumb strokes once across my pulse. “Convinced themselves you made your choice.”
The words twist like knives.
“But I stayed.” His eyes lock on mine. “I’m the only one who knows what you really need. The only one who can make you feel what you deserve.”
Each sentence pulls me back under, unraveling whatever fragile thread of independence I almost regained.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe they did give up.
Stellan’s voice drifts through, elegant and precise: “Darling.”
The word aches. I reach for it desperately, but it dissolves like mist.
Theo’s voice follows, certain and gentle: “We see you, Bree.”
But they don’t. Not anymore.
Maybe I’m only worth something when I’m broken enough to need him.
The warmth pulses weakly, like protest. I barely feel it beneath the weight of his words.
His hand moves from my throat to my hair, fingers tangling gently. Possessively.
“Look at yourself,” he murmurs, turning me back toward the mirror.
I do.
My reflection stares back. The Ether around her is more black than silver now, moving with purpose and control I’ve never had before.
She looks powerful. Dangerous.
I remember standing here before. Staring at myself in the black silk. Thinking I looked like Riley—confident, certain, everything I wasn’t.
I thought I was pretending. Playing dress-up.
But I see it now. I wasn’t trying to be her.
She was showing me what I could become.
What I was always meant to be.
His.
For just a moment, I swear I see another hand beside mine in the glass. Different. Unfamiliar.
Then it’s gone.
Ethos doesn’t notice. He’s already speaking again, his voice a constant pressure that leaves no room for other thoughts.
“Tomorrow, I want you again.” His breath is warm against my ear. “I need you.”
I should say no. Should pull away.
Instead, I just nod. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe my silence is just heavy enough that it feels like consent.
His smile curves against my temple. “Good girl.”
The warmth flickers once more, weaker now. Barely there.
I let it fade beneath the hunger that feels like coming home. Beneath the certainty that this is where I belong.
I don’t notice when he steps back into shadow. Don’t register when the chamber grows darker.
I just stand there staring at my reflection. At the black Ether curling around me like smoke. At the girl who finally knows what she wants. At the girl who is finally everything she always wanted to be.
Even if what she wants will destroy her.