I thought I could fly.
I was wrong.
Outside the bounds of the Revel, my wings were worthless, limp, dead —and of just the same use as two feather pillows tied to my back. Wind ripped into my face, swept through my hair, and tangled in my dress’s delicate layers. A slipper—then another—fell off my feet. My mask slipped past my chin, catching at my neck, and I clawed at the silk ribbon and beadwork until it, too, fell away. I cursed, loudly. The roar of the wind carried that off, too.
But I was dreaming. Dreaming. I should be able to fly.
Why couldn’t I fly?
I tried to summon my imagination, but my thoughts were jumbled, erratic, lost . I couldn’t think beyond the roaring wind. Couldn’t see beyond the hair that cut into my eyes. My wings twitched, slowly slumbering into life, but it wasn’t fast enough—it was too late—
Without anything to steady me, I plummeted like a rock. And slammed face-first into the Shadow Bringer.
He spun around with a snarl, wings flaring, and twisted a hand in the front of my dress, pulling me close. With his other hand, he unsheathed his blade and thrust it under my jaw. It was all so instinctual—a cloak of violence worn a thousand times.
“You fool !” he shouted, stopping our plummet with a single push of his wings. “I nearly cut off your head. I thought you were a demon. Or a—”
“Do I look like a demon?” I snapped, clinging to his chest even as I pushed his blade away. “And since when do demons wear dresses—or silk slippers?”
His eyes were unusually sharp as he stared at me. “You can’t control your wings.”
“Clearly not.”
“Then why did you jump?” he asked, repositioning me in his arms. “It was pure idiocy to follow me.”
I thought I could fly. And I wanted to help you.
“Take me back to the Revel so I can continue dancing, then,” I said, but the words snagged. Felt dry and wrong.
“It’s too late for that,” he said, eyes narrowing. “I have a future to amend. If I’m not already too late.”
“How? This is a dream , Bringer—a memory —”
“I have to try. The Maker can allow Somnus to make small adjustments in time if He wills it. Just as He did with Elliot’s dream. And my dream, too—when I met you as a boy.” His chest heaved against mine, betraying every emotion that hid behind his wall of shadow. I had never heard him sound like this. So broken and frantic. “Five-hundred years. Five-hundred years of rotting away in the dark. How can that be my fate? My purpose ?”
The Nocturne stretched below us, still as glass, reflecting the sky’s last stars. Near the horizon, the barest hint of dawn trickled in. For a moment, it was just us, the clash of sky against sea, and our mingling breath.
“Your village and its Corrupt have broken your life. They confined you. Stifled you. Forced you to live a life you didn’t want for yourself.” His voice broke, then. “Now consider what that reality would do to you for more than five lifetimes. Five lifetimes—alone .”
Visions—memories —flashed before me, demanding my attention and pulling me under. They made me into the Shadow Bringer—Erebus. Made me see and feel the world as he did.
He drifted into the Nocturne, cloak dragging underneath its starlit waters.
This was what he had waited for. His power—his purpose.
It was all for this.
But when he placed his bare hands upon the waters, the Nocturne changed. To his horror, it darkened, twisted, and boiled. Cracked apart like hollow bones. Demons roared under its waves and broke free from its depths. They screamed violently into the night, desperate for blood and dreamers’ souls. The Nocturne’s shadows—its darkness—could not be cleansed. He could not do it. He had failed.
He stumbled back.
Mithras was wrong. Their plan was wrong.
He was no hero. His powers held no noble purpose. He was a blight, a curse, a disease.
And for it, humanity would be destroyed.
The Weavers charged him at his castle—attacked him in grief and fury.
Rock crushed his outstretched arms; his left dropped, useless. But even mangled and broken, trembling and bloody, his right hand held, commanding the dark as it threaded together the final stitches of his domain.
“You will not take my soul!” he roared.
And the Realm roared back.
At first, he had counted the days.
Scraped them into his bedchamber walls. Etched them in the pages of a book.
But the living shadows—the monsters, the creatures, the half-ghosts—began to see.
And scream.
Shadows curled toward him, rolling around his shoulders in a hideous cloud. Perhaps a minute passed—or a century. How could he tell? His senses were paralyzed, his hands heavy and numb. But it did not matter.
Nothing mattered anymore.
His eyes were heavy, and his heart was full of hatred.
He felt the knock before he heard it.
Felt her walk up the castle steps as if she crawled over his skin.
He snarled, charging across his bedchamber and twisting through his castle’s broken innards. After all this time, they had sent someone to kill him. He did not remember who ‘they’ were—but she did not belong in his Domain—did not deserve to see him like this.
Enemy. Enemy. Enemy.
The Shadow Bringer stood at his mirror and wiped blood from his throat, his chin, his lips—it soaked into the cloth, staining it crimson.
Maker, it is everywhere.
He had forgotten he could bleed.
How dare she—how dare she enter his castle, his fortress, and try to manipulate his power. He had sensed it when they first met. The shadows had bent to her will, loosening around her throat when he had meant to keep them taut.
How dare she.
She was here.
Her dark eyes shone with the light from his candelabras, smoldering with fury as she challenged him.
He was alone—and not.
He knelt beside two skeletons, laid a hand on their bones. How brittle they felt. How empty and wrong.
In a past life, they had called him Erebus.
Not the Shadow Bringer—not the Devourer or the Shadow Bringer.
Erebus.
He did not think about the bones at his feet as he descended into the dark, did not think about her as the walls drew nearer around him. He did not feel the cold as it seeped into his bones, did not feel the hollows under his eyes growing tighter and deeper.
His anger, his purpose—they had dissolved, leaving behind nothing in their wake.
It was fitting.
He was nothing, and to nothing he would soon return.
He blinked hard, clearing mire from his thoughts. Shook his hands through his hair, kicked the ground with the heel of his boot. Darkness, everywhere.
Save for in there.
He staggered forward, leaning heavily on the wall as the starlit cavern swam around him. It was as he had left it, a shadowed cathedral with a living sacrifice at its altar. Esmer, too, was how he had left her, dark hair curling over the stone and face settled into an expression of serenity. She was beautiful. He had resisted thinking—or feeling—as much, but he couldn’t deny it. Hadn’t been able to since he first met her.
In a different time, perhaps he would have told her.
Except—
Was that her brow tensing, her mouth twisting into a grimace? The Bringer blinked again, struggling in vain to rip the image from his sight. When she had first closed her eyes, sinking into the oblivion he had so carefully prepared for her, he imagined he would feel hope.
Relief.
Triumph.
Feel something besides the deep, roiling pit of regret and self-hatred.
He stole the glass from her lips, placing it against his own.
She had done well—surprisingly, wonderfully well—for someone without any formal instruction.
It felt strange to feel this way.
To smile and for it to be true.
He took a long drink, longer than he should, letting the unfamiliar feeling settle back into his stomach with the rest of the wine.
Esmer had saved him.
She fought for his life and his redemption, even in the face of the demon, and had emerged victorious.
He clung to her, vision smeared and thoughts torn beyond recognition. Vaguely, he felt his hand drop into her lap.
He did not move it.
Her eyes reflected the stars.
Dark and rimmed in artful grey, they shone brightly, brilliantly—at him. Even masked, they held power and weight.
She was stronger than she realized. The shadows listened to her—heeded her will and her spirit. Even now, the darkness inside of him sang to the darkness inside of her.
He danced with her as he instinctively knew how, the precise memory of lessons having long faded from his mind. He worried that he would forget the steps, the rhythm, the sequence. That he would forget what it was like to lose himself to music. But their movements were natural. Easy. He could lose himself in this dance, this music, this night.
He could lose himself in her.
But as he looked back into her eyes, to that power, lingering there, his wonder became clouded by doubt. She could not—would not—be his. Not in this broken world. He first had to change the future.
He had to change it for her.
The memories snapped away.
I was back in the Bringer’s arms, held high over the Nocturne.
“What was that?” I whispered. The words trembled. The emotions of his memories had slipped through the veil, grabbing ahold of my own with taloned claws. “I saw you—I was you.”
“That was the power of the Nocturne. Or Somnus. I don’t know why that was shared. I—” His mouth worked open and shut, words failing to come, just as gentle threads of vulnerability swept in, breaking in depths of his eyes. He had wanted to share, I realized. Wanted to share these memories—these raw, broken fragments—with me.
So the Nocturne—or Somnus—had stepped in and done it for him.
Remnants of his emotions spilled over, running down my face. Loneliness, anger, desperation, cruelty. But also regret. Longing. Fear. They bubbled up in my heart, sank deep into my skin.
“Do you understand now?” he asked. But then he shook his head. His internal mask was back, even as he ripped his physical own away. “In a few moments, I will step into the Nocturne. Just as the dawn breaks, I will sink my hands into its waters. I will try to purify it, trying to tear away the dark as I did in the demon’s stomach. But I will fail.”
“And the demons will come.”
He shook his head. “The demons are already here. There were demons at the Revel.”
The amber-eyed man, I realized, horrified. The men and women with wickedness in their words and their hearts.
“Why didn’t anyone say anything—do anything? How were they there so freely?”
“It was all a part of Mithras and I’s plan. We tricked powerful demons into attending the Revel in disguise, promising them a chance at humanity. A chance to mingle with the wealthy and select their preferred host. In return, the demons would cease their war on the Weavers. No longer would they plague the Nocturne’s dreams.” His hands tightened around me. “It was all a lie, of course. Lies, everywhere. From both parties.” He looked away. Gritted his teeth as he glared up at the Revel. “That’s all the demons ever want—freedom. They want to walk upon the earth and breathe its air, just as we do. But that would be chaos. It cannot be allowed to happen.”
“But it did happen. It still is happening.”
“It wasn’t intended to happen, though. There is no meaning to Corruption. No meaning to the loss of dreams.”
“How did Mithras betray you?” I asked, wondering aloud what I’d been meaning to ask ever since I saw Erebus and Mithras together in the coliseum. It was clear that they respected each other both as comrades and friends.
The Bringer’s eyes darkened. “While I was pulling the dark from the Nocturne’s waves, Mithras was supposed to gather the revelers—the demons—and lure them down. The plan was to ambush them and destroy the Nocturne’s shadows in one fell swoop, all with the Weavers backing us.”
“But something went wrong. I saw it break apart in the memory you showed me.”
He nodded. “At my touch, the Nocturne cracked open, releasing every shred of darkness it held. And when I turned back to Evernight, horrified at what I’d done, Mithras and the Weavers were already there, watching me. Mithras hadn’t lured the demons down, he’d brought the Weavers. All so that they could witness me summoning demons like a monster.” He looked away, noting the faint shape of Erebus on the rocks below. “They didn’t even question me. They attacked as one with Mithras leading the charge.”
My wings stretched behind me, slowly coming to life. I could feel the Bringer’s power working through them, bidding them to move. When they steadied at last, the Bringer let go. “Thank you.”
“That wasn’t me,” he said softly. “This power is yours now, too. It has been yours from the moment we met.”
Dawn taunted at the horizon.
“Fly with me,” he commanded. No—pleaded. “I have to stop this. And if I can’t…” He trailed off, looking murderous.
“You’ll throw Mithras to the demons?” I guessed.
He smiled. It looked positively violent. “Something like that. I want to see Mithras’s traitorous face when he realizes what I’ve done. Then I want to see him when he realizes I remember .”
We flew to the Nocturne, wind sweeping over our bodies and lingering between the feathers of our wings. It felt glorious, this flight. I wanted to savor it. I wanted to stretch my wings as far as they’d go. I wanted to rise high above the Realm and see it all. Every domain. Every secret. Every hidden, quiet place.
But there was no time.
Erebus was a blot on Evernight’s shore. He crouched low upon the rocks, wings draped behind him like a magnificent, snowy cloak. They were his only recognizable feature in the half-dark. He didn’t hear us coming—didn’t see us as we landed behind him. But the skittering of rocks sent him running—sprinting to the Nocturne’s waters as if a horde of demons were behind him. And maybe he thought that they were.
Erebus’s wings dissolved into smoke, propelling him forward. What had made us quick in the skies made us cumbersome on land—and Erebus knew this. Recognized this. The Shadow Bringer willed his wings away, too, but he was too late. Erebus crashed into the Nocturne, arms outstretched.
And he sank them deep within the water.
“No! ” the Shadow Bringer roared.
Too late , I thought, horrified. And because of what? Me?
It was a nightmare replaying itself. A terrible memory unlocked, just to be lived again. The water began to bubble—boil underneath, just as it had done in the Bringer’s memory. Then it cracked, snapping apart like a vessel overfull.
Erebus stumbled, shaken by the Bringer’s cry and the demons forming into life around him.
He had seemed so composed at the Revel—commanding and strong. In control of his emotions and his path. When I looked at him now, I saw the boy back in the woods. I saw a boy fearing for his life. A boy doubting his purpose and his worth.
And in his fury at his failure, the Shadow Bringer lunged for him.
They met in the churning waters, grabbing for each other’s throats. The Shadow Bringer went under—then Erebus. The Nocturne parted, welcoming them—and then swallowed them whole. I halted at the edge of the rocks, stunned. If I jumped in, what could I do? Would I lose myself in the Nocturne, just as the Bringer had warned?
Demons swarmed from the Nocturne, crawling from its violet-blue waters. Others flew overhead, mocking. Taunting. One dipped down—too close—and clipped my hair with its claws. When it flew away again, it was howling. Screeching into the night with a desperation so animalistic it made my skin crawl.
Something wet slid down my face. When I pulled my hand away, it was bright with blood.
Oh, hell.
I was in for it now.
I unsheathed my blade, gripping it with no small amount of uncertainty. Fear had loosened it—made it easier to summon. But fear had loosened my hands, too. Made them weak. Made them tremble. Made them cold all the way down to my fingernails. The sword had worked before on one demon, but what could it do against the might of one hundred ?
Another demon dropped toward me, feet skimming the Nocturne. Its wings were stunted and frail—too feeble to hold the weight of its body. It crashed into the rocks with a pathetic cry, shivering as it tried to stand.
Go—kill it. Do what you’re capable of.
The thing finally managed to stand. It peered at me, eyes wide and glassy. Water dripped down its wrinkled face, dampening its fur.
Now—before it attacks. Before it shows its true power.
I could feel my blade’s power. It thrummed underneath my hands, waiting to be used. Pleading to be used. I knew what it was capable of, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Because the demon looked sad . Fearful and uncertain, just as I was. It continued to shiver, glancing between the sword in my hands and my face.
What it saw in me, I wasn’t sure.
When it sensed I was no longer a threat, the thing sank to its belly, crawling into a nearby hole and gave a small, warbling cry before falling silent. My sword hung limply from my fingers, scraping against the rocks.
What was I doing ?
Tears sprung to my eyes, unbidden and unwanted.
I stumbled back to the Nocturne. I could feel the Shadow Bringer’s darkness—the shadows that lingered, even now. Shadows that trailed behind him as he fell deeper, deeper, deeper —sinking down into the water until I couldn’t see him anymore. And through that darkness, I could feel his pain. The deep, aching sorrow at seeing his past lived out again. The indignation—the anger —at fighting himself. The pain of drowning. The fear of being lost to the Nocturne’s dreams. And there was something else, too. A longing for something.
A longing for me .
I dropped to my knees, numb to the demons dropping from the sky and crawling from the water. The Shadow Bringer was lost to the Nocturne. And if he were to come back, I had to save him. I had to fight for him—now —before he fell deeper. This felt real. This was real.
I sank my hands into the water, reaching for his threads of shadow. The trail of darkness that lingered behind him like unraveling strings. I wrapped them around my arms. Willed them to me with everything I had. And then I pulled. Mentally and physically. I pulled hard . Even as the demons screamed. Even as they howled in fear and agony. I ignored them all—ignored what I couldn’t understand—and focused on the Shadow Bringer.
Erebus was there, too.
I could feel him as I called to the Shadow Bringer. He was falling fast, lost between the Nocturne’s dreams and the demons breaking free from it. Again I saw that boy back in the woods. Again I saw that boy fearing for his life. Despite his rank, despite his power—he was just a boy. A boy doubting his purpose and his worth as they crumbled between his fingers.
So I called for them both. Summoned the shadows that spun from each of them.
And when I saw a body emerging from the deep, I lunged for it.
“Hang on!” I screamed, grabbing for his arms, his shoulders, anything . Miraculously, I found his hands. And he held on.
But just as I pulled him up, I slipped on the rocks, falling sideways. Something grabbed for my foot, dragging me down. Pain lanced up my leg, red-hot and searing. Whatever tore at my foot was moving up my skin, climbing its claw up my leg as I fought to swim back to the surface. But the thing on my leg was stronger. It viciously pulled me down, down, down .
Faintly, I began to hear a song. A whisper of a memory, calling me deeper.
Elliot’s arms, wrapping me in a hug.
Mother’s hands, tying a ribbon through my hair.
Father’s eyes, bright with approval—with joy. At me .
Eden’s voice, begging me to play.
Esmer! Esmer—come here. Come see.
Eden, begging me to stay.
Esmer, please. I miss you.
I wanted to follow the Nocturne’s call. Ached to follow those voices—those memories—down, down, down. But before I could, the Bringer heaved me up and out of the Nocturne. His wings stirred the water and the air from the effort. A curtain of shadow followed behind, twisting around us like a blanket.
“They were just dreams,” he spoke into my hair. “Just dreams.”
The Bringer was cold and wet, but I didn’t care. I clung to him with all the strength I had left, almost shattering at the contact. I wanted to bury my face in his chest and cry.
“Esmer, look at me.” His voice was low. Insistent. “What do you see?”
What do I see?
I tilted my head up, expecting to see the Shadow Bringer. Maybe a little bruised or torn up from his tumble with Erebus, but him nonetheless. But it wasn’t him. Or at least not him entirely. His eyes were the same—a brilliant silver with shadows melting from their edges. But his moon-white hair was black as night. His skin was darker, too. It spoke of a life lived away from dreams. A life lived in the sun.
He was, and he was not.
“What am I?” he asked. It was a whisper. A question that feared an answer.
“You’re Erebus,” I breathed, and the shadows around us tightened, cocooning us from the Nocturne’s incessant pull.
“That isn’t possible.” He looked at his hands, stretching every finger. “I was just a shadow of myself before—” He stopped, looking at me as shock and understanding flashed across his face that was his—and not. “You can manipulate darkness, just as I can. I was a shadow of myself—a shadow missing its whole. You merged us. You should have let me go. I would have found my way back to the surface.”
I felt the Shadow Bringer as he fell, but I felt Erebus, too, and I had called to the shadows that bound them. But I hadn’t merged them.
“Only Weavers can merge with other variations of themselves. Their physical bodies are mortal, but their Realm bodies are not. And I am no Weaver. I would know —” He trailed off, haunted by this new possibility. “I would know,” he repeated, hoarsely. The fight in his eyes was dying. He was fighting with himself.
Mightily.
A warbling, desperate cry made us both jump; the demon I spared earlier was crawling toward us on the rocks. Before we could understand what was happening, it shuddered violently as its wings fell off, its fur melted into skin, its wrinkled scalp grew hair, and its limbs arranged themselves into shorter, more precise variations. Variations that were fully, irrevocably human.
“You saved me,” the woman sobbed, grasping at the stone as she tried to stand. “I was trapped in that monster’s body, but together you pulled my soul free.” She looked down at her hands, which were smooth and no longer clawed, then closed her eyes, smiling widely as her body began to disappear. “I’m being called home,” she cried. “I’m home—”
And then, in a burst of star-flecked shadow, she was gone.
“Her soul was trapped in a demon’s body—?”
“She looked just like the demons in my castle,” the Shadow Bringer sputtered. “Maker, even her cries sounded like them.”
That’s it.
“What if that’s where souls go after Corruption?” I began, starting to formulate a theory that left me nauseous. “We know demons can take over physical bodies, but where do the souls go? The tales say you devour them, but that isn’t true.” I stumbled on, growing more and more certain that I was right. “It would make sense that the soul would anchor itself to the closest thing resembling a body. And that body would be the demon’s. A soul for a soul, a body for a body.”
The Bringer looked utterly horrified. “Were that true, it would change everything.”
“Those demons in your castle—the demons you were tasked to protect for five-hundred years—what if those were people ? The souls of those lost to Corruption.”
He shook his head. “Impossible. They have never shown any resemblance of humanity within them.”
“But neither did that woman,” I insisted. “While trapped, they might forget they were ever human in the first place.”
Overhead, Mithras jumped from the Revel.
He was coming to betray Erebus—coming to show the Weavers what he had done. And once they knew, it would be chaos. We would be hunted, as the demons would be. We’d be banished or killed and sent back to the world from which we came.
But he wouldn’t see us.
Because the Bringer had already sent us away in a flash of roiling darkness.
