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And for the first time in a year, Taly felt a pull, like a current flowing past her, dragging her downstream, as time once again began to move forward.

Epilogue

He could not remember who he had been. There was no room for those memories now. The creature that lived within him had pushed them out to make space. Pushedhiminto the shadows and trapped him in the darkest corners of his own mind.

He had fought back in the beginning. Until he had forgotten how to fight.

He had felt frightened for so long. Until he had forgotten what it was to be afraid.

Little by little, the pieces of him had fallen away, until there was nothing left but fragments.

Sometimes, the creature would pass a mirror, and he would catch a glimpse of his face. He couldn’t remember it, no longer had the words to describe the color of his eyes or the shape of his chin. It was like looking out a window as a stranger passed by, and yet he somehow knew that face had once belonged to him.

He could see that face right now. Tonight, the creature was resting. It reclined in a soft leather chair, its head tilted back as it watched the woman sleeping on the bed. It was distracted, and that gave him more freedom to creep out of his dark corner, to peer out those windows at the world beyond. There was a mirror on the wall. The frame was gilded. Expensive. The creature liked extravagance. It liked rich fabrics and fine clothes, and when it had come to the city that its followers called Ryme, it had found itself a grand house with servants to tend to all its needs.

It had been wealthy once, it had told him. Though wealth was not what it sought now.

Death is what it had become. Death is what it craved.

Just as the woman on the bed would soon be dead. Her lifeblood drained through the tubing running out of her and into this weakening body.

An earth mage. He had once been an earth mage, his magic connected to the ground itself, to every living thing. So at odds with this creature and its strange magic that festered inside him like a wound.

But it had come inside anyway. Shoved its way in and latched onto the part of him that was mortal—his mother’s human blood. That’s what allowed it to cling to him day after day, even as this body began to get sick.

Indeed, the arm it had extended, tubes running out of its skin, was streaked with lines of decay. The magic it stole from other earth mages would sustain it for a little while longer, but this vessel was dying. Just like the vessel before it had died. That was the inevitable outcome when death itself attempted to mimic the living.

“Sire.”

The creature looked up to the woman standing in the doorway. She had soft black hair and bright brown eyes. She was one of the mages that had followed the creature willingly, fear and hatred blinding her to its lies.

The creature nodded its head. “Speak,” it said in its stolen voice.

The woman took a tentative step forward. Even the willing ones were afraid of this thing and how unnatural it seemed. “Vaughn,” she began, voice quavering slightly. “We just got word that he—”

“I’m aware.” The creature had felt the shadow mage’s passing. Fey souls were made of aether, and it always felt the loss of aether as it passed from this world. As more of itself, more of death and nothingness prevailed. “I warned him that someone else might be better suited to retrieving the girl. Someone with less history. But he insisted. Arrogance, it seems, was finally his downfall.”

“Yes, Sire.” She ducked her head. “What—” It held up a hand, and the woman paled. “Sorry,” she breathed. “Aneirin.”

That made the creature happy. That had been its name long, long ago, before its brothers and sisters had tried to erase it.

Out of everything they had done to it, that was their most egregious sin. It did not want to be forgotten.

“What are your orders, Aneirin?” the woman asked, glancing nervously at the unmoving body on the bed. The latest sacrifice—she wouldn’t die tonight, but… soon. And then they would have to find another.

The creature plucked the tube and needle from its arm, rolling down its fine sleeve to cover the corruption marking his skin. It rose to its feet. “The same as they were before. I want the time mage.” It could not let her go to another. She was a new variable. An advantage in this war it had not believed it would ever find again. “Give the generals her description and Vaughn’s final coordinates, but also begin briefing the city agents. If Castaro gets his hands on her, he will try to hide her away. We cannot allow that to happen.”

“Of course.” The woman raised a fist to her chest in a salute, then quickly exited. Like a cornered animal that had just been given a path to freedom.

The creature didn’t mind. It enjoyed their fear. It had not enjoyed such things before its fall, but after so many millennia spent sleeping in the dark, of having its power exploited, it had changed. Was still changing. It had no idea what it was yet to become.

The creature moved to the window, pulling back the curtain so it could see the city lights twinkling in the dark.

He felt that eye turning inward. It was no longer distracted, so he crept back to his corner. He did not remember his name. And he was already forgetting the few bits of memory he’d managed to recover during that brief glimpse into the outside world.

Soon, there would be nothing left of him.

And then only the High Lord of Death would remain.