Page 49 of Claimed By the Mothman (Greymarket Towers #1)

H e thought it would hurt. He thought the Lustrum would tear him apart, jagged and merciless as it stripped him of all he was and all he ever had been, not even leaving behind memory.

Instead, when he passed through the red threshold, the floor vanished and he found himself floating in a space that was both empty and not at the same time.

He had awoken this morning and Nell had been asleep beside him, curled beneath the blanket.

He had gazed at her for a long while, listening to her breath rise and fall, watching the early morning light cast her in a golden haze.

She hadn’t stirred as he slipped from the bed and lightly touched her hair, just once, in silent benediction.

He had said he would walk beside her into the Lustrum, and he would have. But when he walked into the kitchen and saw the red doors, he could not wait.

Because he had hoped, deep in his marrow, that there was a chance.

He was Harbinger, and Harbingers searched for the patterns. And in this one, he found a narrow seam, and he remembered something he’d only caught whispers of in the Broodhome: That sometimes, very rarely, a seam could be closed and mended by a new thread.

He had always dismissed it as myth, but now he prayed for it to be true. Perhaps, if walked willingly in her place, offering himself in her stead, it might take only him and leave her whole.

Now, in the formless void, the shape of his body begin to soften at the edges. First his fingers and the very edges of his wings. His breath began to spin out and away from him, as if wrapped around a spindle that was slowly gathering it from his lungs.

Sig closed his eyes—or thought he did—and felt the Lustrum press forward. The not-air bent with the weight of ages as it approached. It paused before him, and Sig could sense curiosity in its attention.

We remember you. Harbinger, herald of sorrows, you have stood at thresholds and watched them fall.

Memories of the Dooms he had witnessed flickered across Sig’s unraveling memory. The village swallowed by waves. The hospital that collapsed, suddenly and fiercely. A child’s final breath in the smoke of a burning home.

He felt the instinct to ascend rise in him as he sensed his own Doom approaching, as his body continued to fade away into the nothing.

But Sig bore down and forced it to quiet.

He would not rise, nor would he call. For so many years, he had watched others’ fates and done nothing. Now, he would do the same for himself.

The Lustrum moved closer and curled around the shape of him like the night wind.

Why have you come, Harbinger? This is not your pattern.

“I come willingly,” he said, or thought he said.

Curiosity thrummed through the air.

You are not sacrifice, but signal. This is not yours to offer.

“It is now,” he spoke through a mouth he could no longer feel.

Why?

The Lustrum folded around the question and drew closer.

Sig gathered what was left of himself, what was slowly becoming the memory of him.

“Because I love her.”

Love is not your function.

“No,” Sig whispered. “But still I love her.”

A sensation of consideration. Sig could feel the creeping nothingness eating away at him. His antennae were no longer there. His wings were half unmade, now even less than a memory.

Then we accept.

The Lustrum enveloped him as the unmaking deepened. Sig became nothing more than faint sensation. He could still feel the bond deep within him. It was dimming too, softening as if tucked beneath thick blankets, waiting for endless slumber.

With all that he had left, Sig let his memories—the ones that spooled through his nonexistent fingers now—drift to Nell. To her laughter, the feel of her mouth, her beautiful mix of softness and sharpness. He heard her whisper, “I love you.”

Yes. If this is the end, it is worth it. She is worth it.

He gathered the memory to him to give him strength, and let go.

The hush that had cradled him moments before suddenly grew tense. A wrongness flooded through the space, and the Lustrum twitched.

The bond keened sharply through what remained of Sig and he convulsed—no, congealed—as the last of him was dragged violently back from abstraction.

Nell. She had entered the Lustrum.

He could feel her, moving through the space, moving through him , even through the not-parts that were but whispers in his consciousness. Her fury—rage— love— burned down the bond, solidifying in his chest, drawing him back from the brink and towards her.

Blind and boneless, Sig reached with all his might towards her, towards the only thing left he could feel. She moved with purpose, and with every step she took, he felt his form solidify slightly. With every breath she took, he felt the self of him being woven back together.

She had entered the thing that had once nearly unwritten her, and now she was rejecting it , choosing with each step as she moved towards him.

And the Lustrum was allowing it.

—

The world inside the Lustrum was too dark and too bright all at once. Colors beyond the human spectrum bled around the edges of her vision: reds that ached, silvers that sighed, a black so rich it felt like the night sky itself.

Nell stepped, but did not land. She moved, but didn’t cross space. The Lustrum didn’t feel like a place this time, but instead the inside of something vast and ageless.

It’s not personal, sweetheart.

Edward’s voice echoed in her ear, just as it had before, and was joined by a Greek chorus of memories.

But this time was different. This time, the words didn’t tear through her soul and make her wish to lie down, to let go. Oh, they were trying—they curved in like a hawk’s talons, searching for purchase.

Yet something else stopped them. Something stronger and deeper. Her memories of Sig.

Of his hands, whispering worship on her skin.

His voice, filled with awe as he called her beloved.

The love she felt with every breath he took, with every glance, with every movement.

The bond crooned within her and Nell’s heart surged.

“I defy you,” she whispered to her memories, to the Lustrum. “I refuse to let my past unmake me, not anymore.”

The air around her lurched and the walls—if they were indeed walls—rose before her, rippling with that same, bloody red of Lustrum. A door rose before her, blocking her passage.

Without hesitation, Nell reached for it and stepped through.

Another corridor rose before her. Another door stood.

She opened it again. And another. And another.

She would open every door for eternity until she found him.

A deep whisper flickered within her. You’ve never been enough.

She exhaled, slow and steady. “I’m more than you ever imagined,” she responded.

The bond flared within her, and she felt Sig—on the edge of unraveling completely. But he was holding. He was solidifying as she moved, as she breathed, as she vowed against the space that held them both.

Nell began to run. Down hallway after hallway, through door after door, the walls warping as she passed and the air growing hot and hazy. Doors melted as she passed through them. The not-floor beneath her feet grasped at her ankles.

“I have been claimed,” she growled, throwing herself through yet another door. “I have been claimed by Sig Samora and you—will—not—STOP ME!”

With one final push, with everything she had, she tore open the final door and beheld him.

He was floating, nearly formless. His wings just a breath now, his body a suggestion instead of sustenance. He was there, but barely, an echo of the essence of him.

Above him, around him, loomed the Lustrum.

And it was beautiful. An abstract god with eyes of distant stars. It looked at her, through her, and Nell felt the weight of galaxies cluster onto her skin, into her bones.

Do you not wish to rest? The words floated through her, pressing against her skin and her ribs. The gentleness in the whisper nearly brought her to her knees. It was laced with tenderness, compassion—and an undercurrent of curiosity.

“No,” she said, her voice resonant with the truth of it.

Her eyes drifted to Sig, her lover, her heart, as he balanced between there and not-there. She drew a deep breath and called to him.“Come back to me.”

The Lustrum pulsed in defiance—a thrum of refusal that shook the air. The shape loomed, vast and unfinished, a thing built of hunger and unmaking.

Nell glared at it, her heart pounding like war drums behind her ribs. “No,” she declared.

She reached down, inward , scraping through grief and rupture and all the quiet days when she’d made herself smaller to fit into someone else’s vision.

She reached for every version of herself that had been abandoned, erased, discarded.

Found them. Gathered them. And claimed them for her own, forging them into a kintsugi of love and self and choice.

The ring blazed on her finger. She lifted her chin, flung out her hand, and screamed—

“He is mine!”

The chamber rippled and reality bent like hot glass, but Nell pressed forward, seeking, searching, until she was next to him. Sig flickered in and out of shape—barely real, barely here —and Nell placed her hands on his chest, feeling him try to hold shape beneath her touch.

“I am his, and he is mine,” she cried, voice ringing like a vow. “I claim him. I claim this. I claim us.”

The bond began to weave, stitching itself back together from everything they were and had been and might become: want and wonder, ache and awe.

Nell breathed the truth into the space between their mouths. “I am yours because I choose to be.”

She grabbed him, and felt him grab back.

The air cinched in on itself like a drawn cord. The walls bowed inward. The light bent, slow and deliberate, sliding across their skin in blistering reds and storm-light violet.

Beat by beat, breath by breath, she felt Sig solidify beneath her hands, felt him anchor, felt his thrum stutter, stabilize, and settle, pulsing in time to the echoing hum in her chest.