Read Chapter 15: The Confession

The rain had stopped, leaving the alley slick and gleaming under a sliver of moon. Dain moved through the shadows on instinct, his boots silent on the wet cobbles, his hands empty and useless without his crossbow. He’d been tracking her for an hour—not by sight, but by the faint, wrongness in the air, a cold that didn't belong to the night.

He found her crumpled against a stack of rotting crates, her hair plastered to her face, her fingers curled into claws against her chest. Even in the dim light, he saw it—the grey undertone beneath her skin, the way her veins traced dark rivers under her wrists. She was burning with cold.

"Elara." He dropped to his knees beside her, his voice rougher than he intended. He pressed two fingers to her throat. Her pulse was there, but faint, fluttering like a trapped bird.

Her eyes cracked open, unfocused. "Dain." Her lips barely moved. "You—you shouldn't be here."

"Shut up." He lifted her, cradling her against his chest. She weighed nothing—less than nothing, as if the void inside her had eaten her substance. He carried her through the winding streets, past shuttered windows and sleeping houses, until he found a broken door leading into a collapsed tannery. Old leather and lime dust hung in the air, but it was dry and hidden.

He laid her on a workbench, stripping off his wet coat to cover her. She shivered violently, her teeth chattering. He tore a strip from his own shirt, wet it with rainwater from a leaking roof, and pressed it to the cut on her brow.

Her hand shot up, catching his wrist. Her grip was cold, too strong for someone on the edge of collapse. "Dain. The void. It talks to me."

He went still. "What does it say?"

She swallowed, her throat working. "That I'm alone. That you—that you only want what I can do. That I should—" She stopped, her eyes sliding away from his.

"Finish it."

"Let go." Her voice cracked. "Let the cold take me. Then I can't hurt anyone."

Dain set his jaw and pulled her hand away from his wrist, gently but firmly. He took the locket from his pocket—her locket, the one she'd hidden in the cathedral floor. He held it up so the tarnished silver caught the faint light.

"Elara. Where did you get this?"

Her face went grey—greyer than before, if that was possible. She tried to turn away, but he caught her chin, forcing her to look.

"This was my sister's. Anya. She wore it every day until she—" His throat tightened. "Until she didn't."

A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the drip of water and the distant howl of a dog.

"I found it," Elara whispered. "Years ago. In the ruins outside Halsfell."

"Found it." He repeated the word flatly. "My sister died in a healing ritual. A circle of three—two healers and a patient. The patient lived, but everything went wrong. The healers, both of them, burned out from the inside. Anya was one of them." He watched her face for a reaction. "The other healer was never found."

Elara shut her eyes. "Dain—"

"The locket was with her body. It should have been buried with her." His voice dropped low, dangerous. "But instead, it turns up in the pocket of a travelling healer with a secret brother and a talent for hiding things. So I'll ask you again. Where. Did. You. Get. It."

She started to cry. Not the pretty, silent kind—ugly, wrenching sobs that shook her thin frame. She curled into herself, her hands pressed against her stomach as if she were trying to hold something in.

"I didn't know," she gasped. "I swear to every god in the grey, I didn't know. My brother—Elias—he was the one who took me there. I was twelve. Twelve years old, Dain. I wasn't supposed to be part of the ritual, but they needed a second conduit and Elias said I was strong enough. So I held Anya's hand, and I—" She choked. "I took the patient's pain. I pulled it into myself, and it was too much. Too much. I screamed, and the pain rebounded. It went back through me, and I didn't control it, and it hit Anya instead of the ground. It hit her and she—she went white. She just—went white."

Dain felt the world tilt. The locket slipped from his fingers, clattering to the stone floor.

"Elias pulled me away," she continued, her voice raw and broken. "He told me to run. He said they'd blame me, and he was right. So I ran. I ran for three days until I couldn't feel my feet, and when I stopped, I had this." She reached out, touching the locket on the floor. "I don't know how I got it. I don't remember taking it. But I kept it. Because if I forgot her, then it would be like she never mattered at all. And she did. She mattered."

Dain stared at her—at the shaking girl on the workbench, the one who had saved his life in three different cities, who had pulled a monster's void into her own body to save a child she'd never met. The same girl who had, twelve years ago, killed his sister with an accident born of youth and fear.

He should hate her. He should walk away, leave her to freeze in this collapsed tannery, let the void take her as it should have taken Anya's killer.

But she was crying. And she was cold. And even now, with the truth spilling out between them like poison, she was looking at him with raw, desperate honesty—the kind of honesty she'd never shown him before.

"Anya wasn't just my sister," he said slowly. "She was my twin."

Elara's sobs cut off. "What?"

"Twins. The bond is deeper." He picked up the locket, his thumb tracing the worn initials. "When she died, I felt it. The moment she went white, I felt something in me snap. And I've been looking for answers ever since. For the other healer. For the reason it happened." He looked at her, his eyes hard. "For you."

"Then why did you help me escape the cathedral?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "Why did you spend weeks chasing the creature with me? Why did you pull me out of the burning house in Vesterly?"

Dain didn't answer for a long moment. The rain started again, pattering against the roof. He finally spoke, his voice rough.

"Because when I saw you in the courtyard, covered in the void and still fighting—" He stopped. Swallowed. "Because you looked nothing like a killer. And I'm a good judge of monsters."

She laughed, a bitter, hollow sound. "I'm becoming one."

"Maybe." He tucked the locket back into his pocket. "But you're not there yet."

He stood, turning his back to her, bracing his hands on the rotting frame of a door. His shoulders were tight. "The void inside you—it's stronger now. You pulled a hollowed minion back to humanity. That takes more power than a normal healing. It gave the creature a piece of itself to withdraw from you."

"I know." Her voice was steadier, quieter. "It's feeding me now. Teaching me to like the cold."

"You can't go back to the creature's lair," he said. "You're too weak. You'd be swallowed whole."

"I have to try." He heard her shift her weight. "It's the only way I can use this, Dain. The emptiness. I can poison it with what I pulled from Marten. If I can get close enough—"

"It will kill you first."

"Then I'll die trying." She took a ragged breath. "That's what I'm for. That's what Anya would have done."

He turned slowly, meeting her eyes. "Anya died trying to save someone. She didn't get to finish the job. If you go now, you're not finishing her work. You're repeating her mistake."

Elara stared at him, her lips parted. Then, slowly, she pushed herself up on one elbow. "Then what do we do?"

Dain walked back to the workbench, reaching into his boot to pull out a slender iron vial—the only weapon he'd managed to keep. He uncorked it, and a faint, bitter smell rose. "The cathedral archivist gave me this before he died. Said it was a last resort. A tincture that can mute the soul's damage—give a healer time to set their own bones, so to speak."

"You had this the whole time?" Her voice sharpened. "And you're only now—"

"I didn't trust you." He said it plainly, without apology. "I wanted to see what you'd do when you had nothing left. Turns out—" He paused. "Turns out you're still fighting. So maybe you're worth saving after all."

He held out the vial. She took it, her fingers brushing his. The touch sparked—not pain, but something warm, unexpected.

Elara looked up at him. "And after I drink it? After we stop the creature?"

Dain's jaw tightened. "Then we figure out the rest of it."

He didn't say the rest—that the "rest" might end with him putting a stake through her heart. But they both heard it.

Elara drank.