Page 33 of What Is Dark Within Me

Is that you? she asked the bones, trying to make sense of the shifting silhouette. It was slight, perhaps female. Black clothing covered the figure from wrist to toe. The only remarkable thing about her was what appeared to be a spiked crown from which two spiral horns jutted out a full foot above the woman’s head.

The bone’s laughter rippled through her.Do you not remember this moment, general? Look closer.

I don’t—

The woman took a step forward and the splashes of color coalesced into something tangible. Her hair was longer than Aleja’s, tied into an elaborate pair of braids weaving between the horns. It was the shade of reddish-black she had only ever seen on herself. Her jawline was soft and rounded, her eyebrows thick, her upper lip slightly fuller than the lower one. In her right hand, she carried a sword flickering with black flames, like the one Nicolas wore on his back.

“What is this? That—that can’t be me.” She realized she was speaking out loud again.

I have spent six centuries waiting for this moment.

An intense stab of pain burned in her gut. Aleja’s eyes shot open in time to watch the bone bounce across the pentagram as Nicolas knocked it from her hand. She was too afraid to blink, lest she be returned to that horrible vision.

The Otherlanders were tricksters, she reminded herself.

That couldn’t have been real.

It couldn’t have.

Nicolas crouched in front of her, taking one of Aleja’s hands in his own. He’d only touched her once before, when they’d shaken hands to seal their bargain. His skin was burning hot, but she found it difficult to pull away. The pain in her stomach now felt cold, like someone had drawn back a blade and left a hole in her gut.

“I don’t know if we can trust those bones,” she managed. “They showed me Violet’s doctor, telling her she was terminal. He gave her the relic and told her about the Unholy Well, then… it showed me myself, but it wasn’t really me. It was some sort of trick. The bones wanted to hurt me.”

Aleja looked down at her hands, her veins prominent from clenching. Nicolas’s shadow shifted, wings opening a quarter of the way before tucking against his body again.

“They’re simply bones. A Remnant. They may have some lingering instinct to cause pain, but they can’t lie.”

“Then what was—”

“A question for another time.”

“No!” Aleja’s voice echoed off the rounded ceiling until it was amplified like a chorus. “I’ve had enough of you talking about free will when all you give are cryptic answers. You lied about what you did to my family. My grandmother has been living in your fucking palace this whole time. It wasyouwho saved me when Garm punctured my lungs, even before we were bound to each other. And now you’ve brought me to this place and you’re claiming these bones didn’t just make me hallucinate myself as some fucking warrior princess, but you don’t want to explain? Fuck you.”

Not your most articulate speech, but I appreciate the number of swears you got in, said the voice.

Nicolas sat down, resting his forearms on his knees as he looked away. She’d half-expected him to snap back for the outburst, but his face was solemn. The light was bright enough to illuminate a freckle beneath his left eye, a shade darker than his skin.

“I’d hoped to tell you this under different circumstances,” he eventually said.

“Whatever it is you have to say, do it, because if you try to deflect one more time, I swear on my grandmother’s grave—ugh! I swear I will walk out of this place and find Violet myself, even if I feel like I’m dying the entire time.”

He sighed and looked at her. His eyes were less silver now, and more the color of an ocean storm—roiling and dark. “You used to live here.”

Aleja didn’t know what to do but stare at him.

When Nicolas seemed to realize this answer was not enough to satisfy her, he went on, “You were an Otherlander once. Those bones remember you because you were the one who slayed them. You were quite the hunter, back then. I wouldn’t have asked you to scry with them if I’d known that was the case.”

Her head felt like it was full of television static. “Fuck you,” she said again, this time in a whisper, because, after all that’d happened, the Knowing One was still lying to her. “Tell me the truth.”

“It is the truth. I can prove it. Come with me.”

The thought of standing was overwhelming, but she refused to take Nicolas’s hand. Aleja forced herself to her feet, the sunshine on her face the only thing keeping her grounded. Then, that too disappeared as she followed him into the shadows.

She didn’t feel like she was walking so much as floating. I'm going to have to find a therapist after all this, she told herself.

I’ve been trying to tell you that for the last six months, the voice chimed in.

Aleja let her body take over, trailing Nicolas through a door she hadn’t noticed, then up a flight of stairs and into a bedchamber. Like the one she’d woken in, its furniture had a swooping asymmetry, resembling organic shapes more than a deliberate design, like a garden allowed to grow wild. Four pillars of fire framed a bed carved from cherry wood, brilliant even under a thick coat of dust.

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