Chapter 171 To find the Emperor
Daisy’s feet carried her on habit, not will.
She crossed the ghost city in a trance, senses tuned to the locket’s pulse, each step weighted with a grief that dulled her awareness of everything except the rhythm in her chest. Shadows drifted through empty windows and the silence pressed in heavier than the rain, amplifying the isolation tightening around her. She saw splintered barricades at the mouth of a side street, a child’s shoe sunk in the mud, a message scrawled in soot on the wall, half-washed away—fragments of loss that echoed the absences within her. Veins in her arms ached, now as thick as the tendons beneath; blackness had reached her neck, over her cheekbones, almost to her eyes, and with each pulse she felt a sharp reminder that she was unraveling alongside the city. She could feel the city straining, haunted by what she had unleashed—or failed to save—and guilt pressed close, as present as the rain. Rain slicked her hair, dripped from her jaw, and pooled in her collarbone. She didn’t bother hiding. No one was left to care; abandonment weighed heavier than any need for safety.
She walked until the world narrowed to the familiar ruins of her old home. The house stood where it always had, but smaller, hunched in on itself, the roof bowed, and one wall collapsed inward. The door hung askew, and the porch was littered with broken glass, crushed daisies, a soup of mud and splinters. Every footstep inside was memory, turned inside-out: the kitchen table where Delia, her quick-tempered sister, had picked splinters from her knuckles, the shelf where Maribel’s good cup used to sit—Maribel, generous and stubborn, the friend who felt like a sister. And the cot in the corner where Daisy once curled up in the crook of her mother’s arm.
She pushed deeper, hands trailing over the plaster, leaving black fingerprints behind.
In the main room, the ceiling had caved in, the rafters heavy with soaked insulation. The only dry patch was under the window, where the old daisy locket still hung from a nail, forgotten by whoever had picked the rest of the house clean. Daisy took it down, thumbed it open, and closed it. The chain inside was just cheap wire, but the glaze on the petals caught the faintest bit of light, even on a day like this.
She stood there, the locket in her fist, and let the pain rise.
It came in waves: first a cold, empty silence, hollowing out her chest and stealing her breath. Then anger surged, heat prickling behind her eyes and tightening in her fists. Finally, a swell of grief crashed over her, so strong she couldn’t breathe. Her veins burned, and she teetered on the edge of collapsing, half fearing she’d pass out, half wishing she would.
Overwhelmed, she curled in on herself, clutching her knees, forehead pressed to the rotting floorboards. Rain streamed down the wall, trailing over her back, pooling beneath her; she let the despair seep in. She ached to scream, to rip the magic from her veins and hurl it into the street, but fatigue suffocated all rage and release. She simply lay there, trembling, the chain in her blood slowing, stalling, then surging again, as her agony faded from violence to numb exhaustion.
Time folded. She didn’t know if she’d been there minutes or hours.
At some point, the locket began to glow—not bright, just a slow heat against her chest, a heartbeat not her own. It pulsed with her veins, the city, and the magic in Brightwater’s bones. With each pulse, she felt the Emperor’s patient presence. He was not hunting her. He waited, drawn by the power still alive in her blood. She was the last link, the final step. If he could claim her, or bind what she carried, the city and its secrets would finally bow to him. She sensed his need—not just for her, but for whatever haunted the roots of this ruined place, an old hunger reaching through her skin.
He wanted her desperately.
He wanted her to come to him.
Daisy pressed the locket to her lips and whispered the only word she had left.
“Never.”
She forced herself upright, the bones in her legs trembling like a newborn animal’s. The veins on her face glimmered, reflected in the broken glass on the floor. She looked at herself, at the monster she’d become, and a hard laugh escaped her. It rang sharp, but it didn’t shatter her.
The locket’s heat spread up her neck and into her jaw. She felt the chain in her blood stretch, thin, but not snap. The magic inside it coiled tight, barely contained—a lifeline and a curse, holding back the Emperor's will and every hungry shadow left in Brightwater. If she broke the chain, the old bond would shatter, freeing the power that bound her life to the city. Once broken, Daisy knew, the Emperor could never claim it, but the cost might consume her or sever her last hold on what she loved. It would never snap, not on its own. It had to be broken.
She reached the door, the rain now a wall outside, and stepped through.
The city was waiting, silent as a grave.
She walked toward the city center, toward the ring of daisies burning in the sky, the locket pulsing with every step.
Daisy felt nothing left inside.
But that was enough.
She was the root now. She anchored what was left, raw and battered as a stump in the flooded ground, drawing stubborn life from the city’s broken heart. The history, the pain, the magic—she held it all fast, refusing to be pulled free.
She would finish the story.