Page 108 of Ashen Souls

What the fuck had just happened?

He had demanded the one word I couldn’t give him. Not surrender. Not desire. Love.

The true horror wasn't the demand itself, but how perilously close I had come to meaning it. But I couldn't shake the feeling that he didn't want those words only for comfort. There was something else hiding behind that demand.

I pulled my knees to my chest, leaning hard against the headboard. Daeren was right about one thing: I hadn’t uncovered the truth. I was merely tracing the perimeter of a colossal lie.

The trap had been set centuries ago, and I was standing right in the middle of it.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and crossed into the kitchen. I poured a glass of cold water and drank it fast, letting the shock ground me.

My fingers brushed my left wrist. The sigil lay dormant, reduced to a stark, dead-black scar.

I couldn’t live suspended between two realms, terrified of my own sleep. If reclaiming my life meant digging up every buried secret of the Nyxeth bloodline, I would do it.

I left the kitchen, walked back into the bedroom, and pulled open the nightstand drawer. The velvet box sat where I had shoved it.

I opened the lid. In the pale light of early dawn, the dark alloy of the ring was smooth, the engraved sigil precise enough to survive the collapse of worlds.

And then it hit me.

I hadn't actually worn the ring yet. Not on the finger meant for binding vows.

I looked down at my left hand. Just brushing the surface yesterday had been enough to hurl me across centuries into a hallucination. Putting it on properly might seal the tether permanently. It might pull me somewhere worse, or trigger whatever dormant trap Daeren was waiting for.

I took the ring from the box and sank onto the edge of the mattress, the metal pinched between my fingertips.

I was already inside his maze.

I slipped the ring onto the ring finger of my left hand.

It fit perfectly.

Nothing happened for a heartbeat. Then, warmth bloomed from the ring. It seeped into my skin, traveling up my forearm with the sickening jolt of a dislocated joint snapping back into its socket.

The sigil on my wrist answered.

The room spun. The ambient hum of Vesbridge retreated into a muffled void. I braced my hand against the mattress as the air turned unbreathably thick.

The ring throbbed in perfect tandem with my pulse. A pressure gathered at the base of my skull. The world folded inward.

There was no drifting haze.

I was wearing Avelia’s skin.

Gravity shifted as the mattress vanished beneath me, and I found myself standing. Damp moss pressed against my bare soles. I recognized the clearing instantly. The midnight silk of my ceremonial dress pooled in the silver light, and the glassy, black surface of the forest lake stretched out behind us.

Daeren stood only a breath away. Identical rings already encircled our fingers.

Avelia’s hands did not tremble. A staggering power accumulated within her chest, surging upward and threading through my bone and sinew. My lips moved, reciting something that vibrated deep in my jaw.

Waves of pale light spiraled outward from my core. Her magic was clean, an expression of absolute will. It cocooned Daeren and me, sealing us inside a sphere of perfect isolation.

He yielded entirely to her current. The magic wove between our bodies, pulling our separate pulses into a single beat.

The light condensed, flowing down our arms and pooling at our wrists. The mark burned into Avelia’s flesh, perfectly mirrored on Daeren’s.

The same sigil that scarred my own wrist.