Chapter 136 The Loss
They buried Samuel with bare hands and a patch of loose stones, high on the slope where the sky felt close enough to touch. The scrape and scatter of the rocks carried on the wind, rough-edged and hollow, the sound settling inside Daisy's chest. Cornelius insisted on a cairn, “to fool the animals,” but Mira mumbled the words of an old rite Daisy didn’t recognize. Delia placed a sprig of willow at the peak, her face rigid, though her eyes looked bruised from the inside. Even Xeris bowed his head, just once, and said, “Good run, old man.”
They didn’t linger. The snow was falling again, dry, mean flakes that stung the skin and threatened to erase the trail behind them. Each flake scratched at faces and wrists, the cold sweeping between them like a warning. The party walked in silence, the air brittle with something unsaid, as if the sharp weather was gnawing at nerves and feeding a tension that waited, quiet and hidden, for its time to break.
Daisy led, her boots barely breaking the crust. The locket pressed cold against her neck, the map inside a steady presence on her chest. The black lines on her arms tingled, then flared in response to her anxious excitement—a mixture of dread and hope beneath her skin. The magic within her was tied to risk, surfacing when she advanced despite fear and fed by the uncertainty that pushed her forward. It was always like this; when anticipation made her nerves prickle and she persisted despite being afraid, her power responded, drawn out by the tension between hope and danger.
The path twisted, lost all sense, then vanished entirely. At the edge of a ridge, they found what Mira had described: the mist.
It wasn’t mist, not really—more a wall of glassy vapor, shot through with veins of silver and blue. It pulsed, as if breathing, and Daisy could see shapes moving within: reflections of the party, then flashes of people she’d left behind, some faces she’d never seen.
Mira didn’t hesitate. “Through. Fast.” She gasped for breath. “Don’t stop. Not for anything you hear. Or see.” Her hands shook as she yanked a coil of rope from her pack, looping it around her waist with jerky urgency, thrusting the bitter length at Daisy. Daisy caught a flicker in Mira’s eyes—something sharp and haunted. Once, by firelight, Mira had spoken of a place where the mist could steal a person's name, and she’d sworn never to enter such a fog again. Now, her urgency trembled on the edge of memory, as if she feared the legends were all true.
Daisy looped it around herself, then passed it to Xeris, who tied a knot one-handed. Next, Oliver. He hesitated, staring at the mist as if it owed him money. Before wrapping the rope, he ran his thumb along its length, checking for weak spots with a care that bordered on ritual. For a heartbeat, he pressed the frayed fibers to his lips—half a silent promise, half superstition—then wrapped the rope and pulled it tight, knuckles paling as if testing the strength could steady his own. Delia and Maribel took the ends; Delia knotted them together, hands practiced despite the cold.
Cornelius took up the rear. “Ready or not,” he said, then stepped into the fog.
The world vanished.
Daisy expected cold, or pain, but the mist was warm, almost gentle. The rope tugged at her hips, anchoring her to the others, but every sound was muffled, the silence ringing in her ears so sharply it left her dizzy, as if sound itself had been scraped away. She reached out for anything familiar, and caught a faint, acrid scent—ozone and scorched metal—filling her nose in place of sight, making her blink at the strange tang on her tongue. The air tasted like old electricity, humming against her teeth, and in that absence of vision and voice, Daisy lost track of herself entirely.
She walked, or floated, she could not tell. The mist thickened, then parted, revealing her standing on a throne made of twisted iron and broken bones. Her veins were pure black, the chain inside her a visible web, pulsing out to the horizon. In her hands was a scepter shaped like the locket, dragon heads at both ends. Below, thousands knelt—people she knew, people she’d killed, people who’d died for her. The sight confronted her with the internal conflict she had long tried to suppress: a profound desire to be strong enough to save everyone, set against an equally powerful fear that this very strength could corrupt her, turning her into the tyrant she dreaded becoming. The vision forced her to grapple with this tension, compelling her to question whether it depicted her true ambition for power or merely reflected her deepest anxieties about what she might become. The clarity of the vision, sharper than a dream but tinged with a sense of wrongness, heightened her awareness of the stakes within herself. Somewhere beneath it, she wondered—did the mist show her future, or merely prey on her darkest fears? For a moment, she sensed a pulse in the locket against her chest, a reminder that not every illusion came from within.
Daisy tried to scream, but the sound coiled back inside her, filling her head with a dark joy.
She blinked, and the vision shattered. Now she was alone, the city empty. Petals drifted from the sky, each one burning to ash before it touched the ground. Their falling scattered the streets with a hush so deep her steps echoed through the silence, each footfall ringing louder until the sound was all that kept her company. She wandered Brightwater's streets, following the echo, until she reached the old castle.
Inside, a single dais, and on it, her mother—dead and cold, eyes replaced by ceramic flowers. Delia and Oliver stood behind, their mouths sewn shut. Xeris lounged on the throne, gold eyes bored, a daisy crown on his brow.
“You wanted this,” he said. “You let it happen.”
Daisy shook her head. “No. No, I—”
“You broke it,” Delia rasped, the thread unraveling from her lips. “You broke us.”
Daisy ran, but the world bent, wrapped around her, and forced her back to the dais. She fell to her knees, the weight of failure pressing her into the stone. Pain lanced through her chest, each breath shrinking to a shallow gasp, her lungs crushed as if by invisible hands. Her vision tunneled, colors narrowing to grey around the edges, cold crawling up her arms until she could barely feel her fingers. The ache was raw and physical, as if defeat itself had claws hooked between each rib, pinning her down.
A hand touched her shoulder—cold, but familiar.
She looked up, expecting her mother.
Instead, she saw the Emperor, Varian, his veins a network of black, eyes empty, smile perfect. For a split second, memories flashed behind her eyes—the way his voice once filled the halls of Brightwater with quiet commands, the chill she remembered when he first touched her locket, the night he promised her freedom if only she bowed. Varian had always haunted her paths, his power wound tight around everything she couldn't break free from, the shadow behind her every choice. Seeing him now, where her fears were laid bare, knotted her insides with dread.
He whispered: “All chains end with you.”
She woke to screaming—her own. The sound tore raw from her throat, cracked and jagged, as if scraped up from something broken deep inside. Her voice rasped through the mist, hoarse and wild, a wordless note that shuddered with all she could not say.
Oliver held her tight, rocking her in the mist, the rope around his waist frayed and bleeding. His hands were slick with sweat, his face drawn but alive. "Daisy," he said, over and over. The words trembled at first, raw and high, then calmed with each repetition. "You're here," he murmured, voice cracking, and then again, steadier—quieter—willing the truth to settle between them. "You're here."
“Daisy,” he said, over and over. “You’re here. You’re here.”
She sobbed, then laughed, and pushed her face into his chest. “It got inside,” she gasped. “It showed me—”
“Don’t care,” he said, fierce. “Not letting go.”
He looked her in the eyes, and for a moment she thought he’d kiss her. The air vibrated with the possibility. Instead, he rested his forehead against hers, breath mixing in the cloud.
“You’re not alone,” he whispered. “Not ever.”
She wanted to say something clever, but the words weren’t there.
Then a flare of heat: Xeris, reaching through the mist, hand on her back. His touch steadied, then claimed, and for a second, Daisy was anchored by both of them, their rivalry dissolved into one impossible lifeline. For that brief heartbeat, something wild sparked inside her—a wicked thrill edged with guilt and hunger, as if being held between them opened a door she pretended did not exist.
The mist thinned, then broke. The three of them staggered out together, blinking in the sudden clarity of the valley beyond.
Behind, Mira and Cornelius pulled Delia and Maribel free. Delia clung to Maribel, both of them shivering but intact.
The rope that had tied them was gone, burned to cinders.
Daisy looked at Oliver, then at Xeris. Both watched her, faces unreadable.
She glanced down at her arms: the black veins had faded, just a little. The locket at her neck was warm, as if pleased. Inherited from her mother, the locket was a family relic said to contain the first spell that saved their bloodline. Its unpredictable magic never responded to command, but reliably surfaced in moments of fear or hope, feeding on her risks and returning power in kind. Daisy often wondered whether she wore the locket, or the locket wore her; either way, its presence was a promise and a warning she could never quite escape.
She squared her shoulders. “Let’s finish this,” she said.
Oliver grinned, all teeth and hope. Xeris’s eyes glinted, hungry and bright.
They walked on, together, into the heart of the new world.