Page 90 of Shifting Hearts

SEVEN

Eris

T he cold hit me first. Not the wind — the wind was nothing.

I’d trained in ice fields and cursed deserts, stood knee-deep in blighted snow as my blade warmed with enemy blood.

No, this cold was the kind that came after touch.

After warmth. The kind that lived under your skin and whispered: You left again. And this time, you might not come back.

I walked until I couldn’t hear the cathedral behind me. Until the pulse of Brannan’s threads — still tangled through my veins — quieted to a distant ache.

But they didn’t fade, not completely. They wouldn’t. Never again.

I pressed my fingers against the dreambone necklace at my throat. It was too warm. Too aware. It pulsed against my skin in time with the ragged beat of my heart. A warning. A countdown.

Something was wrong.

Something was changing.

The wind stank of prophecy. Of endings.

I should’ve kept going. I should’ve run until the horizon split, until my knives dulled and my name meant nothing to anyone.

Instead, I turned back.

The cathedral waited, heavy with the silence of the aftermath. The fire was ash. Brannan hadn’t moved. He sat in the dark like a statue left behind by some ancient god — jaw clenched, threads glowing faintly beneath torn sleeves, body still raw from what we’d done.

And when his eyes lifted to mine, I saw it.

The truth I’d been avoiding.

He knew.

“What did you do?” His voice was quiet. Measured. That terrifying, exhausted kind of calm people get just before the world breaks open beneath them.

I didn’t answer, but then we both knew I didn’t need to.

His gaze dropped to the dreambone hanging from my throat.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “It’s the death-oath isn’t it?”

I nodded once, jaw tight. My mouth felt like it was full of blood

His eyes flared — not with magic, but with understanding. The kind that sliced deeper than any blade. “You have to kill me, don’t you?”

I looked away. The cathedral had never felt smaller, or more alive.

“How long?” he asked.

My throat worked, but the words caught. Time was a noose, and I’d pulled it myself.

“Soon,” I said finally. A whisper that tasted like ash. “Days. Maybe less.”

The silence stretched between us like an executioner’s rope. Brannan’s hands curled into fists on his knees, threads biting into his skin until they burned white. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. That was worse than fury—worse than begging.

“You should’ve told me,” he said, voice low. Not an accusation. A fact.

I laughed, but it broke halfway through. “And what then? You’d have unmade it? Torn the bone from my throat with your pretty threads? Don’t lie, Brannan. You would’ve tried.”

His jaw tightened. He didn’t deny it.

I pressed my palm against the dreambone, as if I could still it. Stop the rhythm that wasn’t mine. “It doesn’t matter. All that mattered was that it was made. Magic is funny like that.”

He stood then, slow and deliberate, like he was remembering what it felt like to move after being carved open. “If this thing says you’ll kill me,” he said, “then we’ll break it.”

“It doesn’t break.”

“Neither do I.”

The words hit harder than any spell. For a heartbeat, for a single reckless breath, I wanted to believe him. To believe that threads and bone and prophecy could bow to sheer stubbornness.

But the dreambone pulsed hot against my skin, and I knew better.

“Brannan—” I began.

The doors of the cathedral slammed open before I could finish. Cold air blew in, carrying the stink of war, of ruin. And beneath it, something deeper, sharper — rotten.

That’s what it felt like.

The oath turned inside me. Punishing hesitation. Poisoning refusal.

I opened my tunic and showed him the veins at my ribs — already turning black at the edges. The corruption crept outward from my heart like frost spreading through a cracked pane of glass.

Brannan flinched. “How long until?—”

“Not long,” I said. “Oath-magic’s greedy. Especially when you break its rules.”

He stood, slow and sure, as if he’d known this would come, eventually. As if part of him had been waiting.

He crossed the stone between us and knelt. Reached out. Took my hand.

I should’ve pulled away. Should’ve shoved him, cursed him, anything to keep distance, but I let him touch me, because I was so tired of pretending, I didn’t want to be held by the man I was supposed to kill.

He guided my hand to the side of his neck. His pulse thundered beneath my palm. Warm. Alive.

“I’ll make it easy,” he said. “Do it. End it.”

I blinked.

“No.”

“Eris—”

“No.” My voice cracked. “Don’t ask me to become what they made me. Not tonight. Not with you.”

His expression twisted, but he didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. “If you don’t kill me, it’ll kill you.”

“Then it kills me.”

He stared at me like I’d just handed him his own funeral.

“You can’t mean that.”

“I do.” My throat burned. “You think I haven’t tried to find a way around it? That I haven’t bled and bargained and begged for some loophole? There isn’t one. The oath is carved in bone. I was a child. I didn’t know what I was becoming. But it doesn’t care.”

Brannan’s fingers curled tight around my wrist. “Then let me go. Let me end this for you.”

“I can’t let you die.” I reached up and yanked the dreambone from my throat — the necklace ripped, brittle cord snapping. Teeth scattered across the floor like shattered pearls, like memories lost to the dark.

The magic screamed.

So did I.

The pain was instant — a searing, holy agony that ripped through my chest like a blade dipped in fire. My body convulsed. My knives sparked at my hips. And for a heartbeat, I thought I might die, anyway.

But then the light flared — bright and brutal — and the bond broke.

The death-oath splintered.

The magic in my blood writhed, and then… went still.

I gasped, falling forward onto my hands. Sweat poured from my skin. My head spun.

Brannan caught me before I hit the ground. Cradled me like something sacred. Or ruined.

The broken necklace lay between us. One of the baby teeth was still whole — milk-white, soft-edged, stained with a sliver of blood from where it had nicked my thumb as it fell.

“A shard of me,” I whispered. “Of who I was. Before the oath.”

He didn’t speak. Just held me tighter.

“I’ll forget them,” I said, quieter now. “The pieces those teeth held. My mother’s face. The sound of my name before I was Eris the Knife.”

“Then I’ll remember for you.”

I broke.

Right there in his arms, with the magic bleeding out of me and the cathedral still echoing with old ghosts, I broke.

Because that was the cruelest part of all.

I had chosen him. Again. Despite everything.

And in doing so, I had carved another scar into the only story I had ever known.

One not written in blood.

But in choice.