Chapter 76
Lirael
The Eternal Night Market sprawled beneath Frosthaven like a tumor, all black ice and flickering torches, more primitive and infinitely more dangerous than anything in Ark City. Here, the veil between legal and forbidden had worn so thin it barely existed. Stalls sold everything from demon-scorched relics to vials of liquid shadow, and the vendors' eyes tracked us with predatory interest that made my skin crawl.
I kept one hand on the knife in my boot, the other loose at my side, ready. Every instinct screamed danger, but Elwin navigated the labyrinth with the confidence of someone who'd walked these paths before. He finally stopped at a hovel so nondescript I'd have walked past it without a second glance.
He knocked three times, a specific rhythm, and after a long pause, the door creaked open.
The woman who answered was ancient, her spine curved by centuries, body swaddled in moth-eaten furs. But her eyes—milky with cataracts yet somehow piercing—fixed on me with unnerving intensity. She cackled, a sound like breaking glass.
"You want to become Sophia Moonwhisper?" Not a question. An accusation.
I held her gaze, refusing to flinch. "Can you make it happen?"
She turned without answering, shuffling into the hovel's darkness. Elwin and I exchanged glances before following. The interior was a chaos of jars and bones, dried herbs hanging from rafters, and the overwhelming scent of something ancient and wrong that made my stomach turn.
The crone—Nightmother, Elwin had called her—retrieved a black lacquered box from a cabinet that looked older than the city itself. Inside, cushioned on velvet, sat a vial of liquid silver that seemed to pulse with its own luminescence.
"Moon's Tear," she rasped, holding it up to the flickering lamplight. "Moon mushroom spores mixed with elven tears, aged under three full moons. Paint it on your face, and you'll wear another's visage perfectly. Even their magical signature can be mimicked, if you're strong enough to survive the application."
My stomach dropped. "Survive?"
"Sophia is royal blood. Her magic runs deep, her signature complex. To copy that level of power..." She fixed me with those terrible eyes. "The Moon's Tear will have to integrate with your bloodstream, merge with your essence. It will feel like burning alive from the inside out. The process takes three hours, and if you stop halfway through, you'll be scarred beyond recognition. Possibly dead."
Elwin grabbed my arm, voice rising in panic. "No, you can't—there has to be another way—"
I gently pried his fingers loose, keeping my eyes on the Nightmother. My heart was pounding, but my voice came out steady. "Do it."
"Lirael, please—"
"This pain?" I looked at him, and something in my expression must have conveyed the truth I couldn't speak—that compared to three years in Eden, compared to Sebastian's collar and Genesis's experiments, three hours of agony was fucking nothing. "I can handle it."
The Nightmother's smile was approving and grotesque in equal measure. "The Moonwhispers saved my life once, long ago. I do this not for coin, but because I owe them a debt. Sit."
She gestured to a chair that had probably witnessed horrors I didn't want to imagine. I sat, forcing my hands to stay loose on the armrests. Elwin positioned himself beside me, still protesting, but I squeezed his hand once—reassurance or farewell, I wasn't sure which.
The Nightmother dipped a brush into the silver liquid. The first stroke across my cheekbone felt cool, almost pleasant. Then the burning started.
It began as a tingle, rapidly escalating to pins-and-needles, then to something that felt like my skin was being peeled away one layer at a time. I bit down on the leather strap the Nightmother shoved in my mouth, tasting copper as my teeth cut into my lip. The pain intensified, spreading from my face down my neck, fingers of agony digging into muscle and bone.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
Elwin was crying, apologizing over and over, his hands gripping mine hard enough to bruise. I focused on that pressure, used it as an anchor while the Moon's Tear rewrote my flesh. Every nerve ending screamed. My vision whited out, then returned in fragments—the Nightmother's methodical brushstrokes, Elwin's tear-streaked face, my own blood dripping onto the floor from where my nails had gouged my palms.
Time became meaningless, measured only in waves of agony that crested and broke and crested again. I lost track of how many times I nearly passed out, how many times I wanted to scream for her to stop. But I didn't. Couldn't. Because somewhere in those frozen mountains, my people might be waiting, and this pain was the fucking price of reaching them.
When the Nightmother finally set down her brush, I could barely stand. Elwin supported me as I staggered to the cracked mirror on the wall, and the face that stared back made him gasp.
Platinum hair, now long enough to brush my waist. Deep purple eyes that caught the lamplight like gems. Porcelain skin unmarked by scars, and there on my neck, the silver tracery of royal blood, so perfect it seemed to pulse with its own light.
"It's exactly her," Elwin breathed, wonder and horror mixing in his voice. "You're exactly her."
The Nightmother's warning cut through my daze. "The glamour lasts forty-eight hours. After that, the Moon's Tear dissolves and your true face returns. Use your time wisely, little imposter."
I nodded, unable to speak past the lingering phantom pain. As we stumbled back into Frosthaven's frozen streets, I caught my reflection in a shop window—Sophia Moonwhisper's face staring back at me with my own desperate eyes.
Forty-eight hours to infiltrate the Nightwatch, find answers, and escape before this all comes crashing down. Forty-eight hours before Sebastian inevitably tracks me here.