Page 97 of She Who Holds My Wrath

“I am still here with you, little flower,” I speak. She’s so close, I swear I can feel her. I reach for the mirror, stroking at where her tear falls. “You just need to be my strong girl for a little while longer. You are going to be okay.”

“I wish you were here, Korithax. I need you,” she whispers into the empty dungeon.

“I am here,” I respond, desperate for her to feel me.

“No,” she whispers hoarsely, the words breaking in her throat. “You are a figment of my imagination caused by severe stress.”

I go still for a moment, but continue, desperately praying this isn’t a trick. “I am not a figment of your imagination, little flower. I’m here, I promise.”

I reach my fingers to where her hand is, right by the shackles and I swear she responds to my touch. “Just hold yourself together for a little while longer. Remember what I said on our wedding day?”

She shakes her head, more tears falling down her beautiful face. I lean close to the image of her, whispering into her ear. “I’ve lived twenty thousand years in darkness. And never once did I crave the sun… until you. You make me wish I had lived a gentle life, just so I had cleaner hands to hold you with. But I promise to spend the rest of our lives keeping you safe, loved, and worshipped.”

I recite the words to her, pushing memories of our wedding down the bond as harshly as I can. I watch her breath calm for a fraction before she responds.

“But you can’t keep me safe anymore,” she cries. And the words hit me straight in the chest, a sting in my eyes as if I was crying too.

“Maybe not with my hands,” I murmur, “but with my will, my power, my love? Always. Just stay strong for me.” I lean in, pressing my lips to her cheek on the mirrors surface. “I love you, Daisy. I am with you. And you are strong.”

“I love you too,” she whispers.

And then… nothing. The Void snaps the mirror shut with a shriek of rage. No. No. I did it. I reached her. I touched her. I spoke to her. I felt her. For one impossible, sacred moment, she was there, real beneath my touch instead of an impossible torment separated from me by time and space. I fucking did it.

I lunge forwards and slam my palms against the now blank surface. “Bring her back. BRING HER FUCKING BACK.”

I hit it again, harder, my fists striking the dead mirror until something akin to pain splinters through my hands. The black glass gives me nothing. No flicker. No glimpses of her. No mercy.

But of course it doesn’t. The Void only knows cruelty. It thrives on my agony. My strength leaves me all at once as I slide down against the edge of the mirror, falling to the ground. My wife. My wife is tied up in a dungeon somewhere beyond this cursed place, and I was so close that I could feel her. Close enough to smell her skin, to hear her voice in return to mine, to touch the warmth that still belongs to me. And now she is gone again. Ripped away the second I reached her.

I bow my head, grief and rage twisting so violently inside me I can’t tell where one ends, and the other begins. Once again, this monstrous place has shown me exactly how far I am from her. Close enough to ache for her. Too far to save her.

Kaelith’s death is the first time I laugh in the dark.

Daisy stands over him, drenched in his violet blood. When his head hits the floor and rolls, when she drives it onto a spike on his own throne, something savage in me exhales.

“That’s it,” I whisper, grinning with my forehead pressed against the barrier. “That’s my queen. Put his fucking head up where everyone can see it.”

It’s another day, or week, I don’t even fucking know anymore, of me just staring at that godsdamned mirror. Hoping for a glimpse of her. But something’s changed. Something feels… strange. The Void feels almost like it’s distracted. It’s not as taunting today. Not as volatile.

The bond, still weak and frayed, suddenly tightens. Not to Daisy, but to me. To wherever my soul is hanging in this nothingness.

Another tether hooks into my chest, pulling from a different direction. This is an old, but familiar magic, one that feels written into my bones.

The Void growls. It doesn’t like the fact something is pulling me away. It doesn’t like the fact it feels like it’s losing its toy.

Light spears though the dark, harsh and gold.

For the first time since I died, I feel substance around me. Cold stone. The scent of incense and age-old magic filters through the black. The mirror that has shown me Daisy all this time warps, stretching like melting glass, then shatters into a thousand pieces that spiral away into The Void.

In its place, a temple coalesces. Pillars of obsidian, a ceiling lost in shadow, and runes burning along the floor. And there, on an altar at the centre—my body. Whole. Armoured. Chest still. Skin pale.

I stare. It’s like looking at a stranger and at myself all at once.

A figure stands beside the altar, radiant and shaking. Velentha. Her dark cropped hair sits around her clenched jaw. Cracks of light are running through her skin, like she’s made of living glass about to shatter.

“Velentha?” My voice comes out hoarse, echoing weirdly in this half-space. I don’t know if she can hear me. She looks at my body, a sadness in her silver eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I should have done this sooner.”