CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: SHADOW AND TEETH
The temperature dropped twenty degrees when Sey crossed the threshold.
Frost crackled across the stained glass windows. The torches guttered, their flames twisting into screaming faces before snuffing out entirely. The air itself turned thick and cloying, tasting of burnt hair and rotting violets.
I'd seen Sey angry before.
This wasn't anger.
This was the end of the world.
His shadows didn't slither—they poured, a living tsunami of darkness swallowing the throne room whole. Courtiers screamed as inky tendrils wrapped around their ankles, their wrists, their throats. The king's crown warped on his head, the metal screeching as it bent inward like a closing fist.
"Mine."
The word wasn't spoken. It was carved into the walls, the floor, the inside of my skull.
Lyr laughed.
The sound was pure madness, bright and sharp against the suffocating dark. He spread his arms, his dragon crest glowing crimson. "Come to claim what you can't keep, shadowling?"
Sey moved faster than sight.
One moment he was at the doors. The next, he had Lyr pinned against the obsidian throne, one black-clawed hand around his throat.
"You dare—"
"Enough!"
Yassie's voice cut through the chaos like a blade.
He stood between them, his unarmed hands raised. The shadows recoiled from his bare skin, hissing like scalded cats. Sey's snarl faltered.
For one impossible heartbeat, the brothers stared at each other—Sey with his fangs bared, Lyr with blood trickling from his nose, Yassie with tears cutting tracks through the dust on his face.
Then the stained glass exploded.
Shards rained down as the phoenix window shattered outward, revealing the night sky—and the winged horror perched on the broken ledge.
The creature was all teeth and talons, its feathered wings stitched together with glowing runes. Its eyes—
Its eyes were mine.
"Ah," Lyr gasped, grinning around Sey's grip. "Right on time."
The beast opened its maw and screamed.
The sound liquefied my bones. I collapsed, Aurora's heart pounding so hard I thought it would burst from my chest. Through the haze of pain, I saw:
Sey whirling toward the creature, shadows erupting from his skin
Lyr wiping blood from his lips, his smile never fading
Yassie lunging for his discarded sword
The king cowering behind his twisted throne
And the beast's unblinking, knowing gaze—
Locked solely on me.
All of a sudden it was just i- and the phoenix.