Ecludia stepped forward.
While holding that bastard's hand?
The movement was minuscule. Zerin's weight remained on the balls of his feet, his blade half-raised, waiting for the shift that would tell him when...
But this water did not burn… Nor did it freeze.
He was interrupted by something that didn't fit.
A certainty.
Not in the way of someone who had planned for every outcome. It was softer than that—warmer.
Zerin's jaw tightened. He couldn't place her objective.
Was she testing him? Did she really think he wasn't going to slit Ivan's throat again? The absurdity of it almost made him laugh—but that short and ugly thing died in his chest before it could even surface.
Their fingers interlaced as if nothing in the world could separate them. Ivan's thumb rested across her knuckles. Her fingers curled loosely around his. As if the very concept of doubt had been veiled from her.
Then she dared to speak.
"This is... This is my sister."
The words landed like a concussive blast in his mind.
Not Ivan's sister, but hers.
Zerin's focus snapped off Ivan—onto Ecludia.
He hadn't expected this.
Now he saw her.
The same face. The same build. The same shade of hair, the same angle of the jaw. Where Ecludia radiated something genuine, something pure, there was a north star of her own, something she looked up to, inspired to be.
Pride. That was it—not certainty in Ecludia's expression, but the pride of presenting some long-lost part of herself.
Her smile was too bright.
Too wide. The kind of smile that didn't wait to earn it.
She has to be mistaken, Zerin thought.
Or he was the one going insane.
Because Ecludia was looking at him like he should understand. Like the presence of her sister was so palpable that it could explain everything—the hand-holding, the trust, the utter absence of fear. As though he were supposed to see her sister and not the dead man that was really in that place.
His sword stopped trembling.
Zerin's anger didn't fade. He just found its anchor
"I found her. Well. She found me, actually."
Ecludia laughed, and happiness in her expression was so genuine it was like staring into a white-hot star in the frozen sky.
Zerin's nose crinkled.
The scent hit him before the thought could form—vile.
His gaze dropped to the carpeted floor in front of him.
The pattern blurred. Red on forest green. Red on navy. He was lost in the weave, as if an answer would eventually surface from it.
No.
The word surfaced from somewhere deeper than logic.
She's wrong.
She doesn't see it.
She doesn't know.
That smile—too bright, too trusting, too earnest. She genuinely believed, with every part of her, that this stranger… that this monster was her sister.
Zerin's eyes narrowed.
An illusion.
It had to be. A pretty damn good one, if the rest of the world couldn't tear through it. The effectiveness of the craftsmanship alone spoke of something practiced. Something that was skilled at wearing masks.
But how could Zerin see through it?
That was the question that gnawed at the edge of his focus. He wasn't special. Not like this. Not in the ways that mattered. His Aspect was Divine—whatever that meant—but he had stumbled through every confrontation, bled through every victory. He had earned nothing easily.
So why him? Why could he smell the rot beneath the perfume?
"Zerin?"
Her head tilted slightly. Concern took hold of her features, chasing the brightness back. But her eyes weren't on his—they had dropped to his mouth.
Zerin lifted his free hand. Touched his lip. His fingers came away red.
He stared at the blood as if it belonged to someone else. Then brushed it away. His tongue flicked across the split in his lip—he hadn't even noticed biting through.
Ecludia's smile faltered. A tremor in the corner of her mouth—the first crack. Beneath it, something else surfaced.
"Are you... okay?"
Zerin exhaled through his nose.
Did he look okay?
No. He looked like hell—blood of red and blue streaked together into a murky mess, something foul clinging to his senses, and anger coiled beneath the surface.
The internal blaze rose higher, lapping at his ribs, but he managed to contain it.
"I killed Ivan."
The words came hot. A taste of that internal flame bleeding into the cool air of the library, warping it into something else.
"He was working with the hags. So I slit his throat."
Zerin's gaze shifted toward Ivan—just a flick, nothing overt.
He should have waited for the spell to confirm it.
Ivan's features tightened. A fraction of a second, then gone. But Zerin caught it.
Ecludia's eyes widened. Her chest sank with a sharp gasp.
"He… Why? why would he?"
Those words weren't for Zerin. It was for herself. It was the mind scrambling to reconcile two differing realities.
She turned.
Away from Zerin—toward her sister.
Her other half.
Her gaze was the raw need of someone who had built their entire sense of safety on another person's existence.
Her eyes begged for comfort.
She was looking to the illusion for salvation.
And, it worked… Just one look at the illusion, and the trembling building within her extinguished. Not soothed. Crushed. The way one might smother a flame with a bare palm.
She swallowed—Zerin watched her throat work through the motion—and took another step closer while still holding hands with whatever was beside her. Still blind.
"Very well."
Ecludia's voice came out steadier than her body had any right to feel. She was summoning confidence from a well that should have been dry hours ago.
"We save who we can. That's what matters. If we think about the ones we lost—"
She drew a shaky breath. "We can't risk the others."
The words were rational. Sensible. Yet, they were not Ecludia.
Zerin barely heard them.
His eyes, now fixed on Ivan's didn't leave him for a second.
He tracked every feature that should have been rotting. Making sure he couldn't slip under whatever spell had been cast over Ecludia.
The bastard's expression had gone neutral—guarded in a way it hadn't been moments before. It seemed Zerin's revelation about himself to Ecludia was going to make things more difficult for him. The dead man's eyes had lost their earlier fascination, replaced with a calculating look.
Good, Zerin thought.
Let him calculate. Let him scheme. It wouldn't matter.
Ecludia kept staring at Zerin. He could feel her gaze pressing. She was looking for something in his posture—some clue. The tension must have been visible, the way he stood coiled and still.
It would explain why she prodded again.
"Are you okay?"
Her voice was soft. The kind of soft that came from someone who almost didn't want to hear a no.
"I am just tired." Zerin's jaw tightened.
The lie came easily. And why wouldn't it? It wasn't entirely false. He was tired—tired of bleeding, tired of climbing, tired of a path that had never once asked him where he wanted to go.
Ecludia's expression softened at his admission.
She believed him.
Of course she did.
He'd come this far just for her, after all. Through the labyrinth. Through the hags. Through Ivan's betrayal, and many other things she didn't know. She had been in that cell for an infinitesimally small time compared to the other captives—where others could have suffered weeks or even months.
Her trust in him was earned.
That was what made watching her give that same trust to the thing beside her so unbearable.
"It's okay now."
Ecludia's voice projected that same confidence
"My sister—she's better than me. At everything. Always has been. So you don't—Zerin."
Her fingers tightened around Ivan's—no, around her sister's hand. The illusion's hand.
"You don't have to carry it anymore. She's here. She is going to help."
Better than me.
You don't have to carry it anymore.
She's here.
She is going to help?
She was trying to comfort him. To unburden him. But, to hand the reins to someone as loathsome as that…
Zerin's eyes lifted to the one standing beside her.
He studied Ivan's face.
"Is that even your real face?"
For a moment, there was only silence.
Not the comfortable kind. The library itself seemed to contract around the words, the shelves felt as if they were leaning in, the carpet dampening even the idea of speaking.
The ambient hum that had been present before Zerin arrived ceased.
Then there was a reaction.
No startled flinch. No defensive grimace. Just a slow, spreading grin.
It started at one corner of Ivan's mouth—just a twitch. Then it grew. Bloom wasn't quite the word; bloom suggested something natural. This was more like a wound opening to reveal something beneath that had been waiting.
Pleasure.
Pure and unhurried. As though he had earned this moment. As though Zerin had just said something unexpectedly clever—the student exceeding the master's expectations.
Almost avian in nature, the once-thought-to-be-dead man tilted his head. He mirrored Ecludia's gesture from moments ago. Far too perfectly.
"You see..."
Light. Serpentine. Admiring.
As if Zerin had just presented him with a gift.
Zerin said nothing.
The silence stretched. Ivan's grin spread wider savoring the silence.
Ecludia looked between them, her brow furrowing. The confusion pulled at her features.
"See what?" she asked. "Zerin? what are you two—What are you talking about?"
Zerin's voice returned measured.
"I see the face of a liar wearing your sister's skin."
The fire reached his throat, then rose—sharpened into something unforgiving.
"Do you seriously think your sister would stumble upon you in this place? Just how gullible are you?"
Ecludia's brows lowered to a confused scrunch. She turned back to look at her sister. At the illusion. At the thing wearing a face that should have been beloved.
"I don't—I don't understand."
The confusion in her voice was real. The confidence she'd been forcing had evaporated, leaving something smaller beneath.
Zerin's sword rose, pointing toward them.
"Open your damn eyes, Ecludia!"
His voice was a command that rattled her very being.
Ecludia flinched.
Her whole body recoiled—hands flying back from Ivan's touch before her mind could catch up.
She stumbled back a step. Then another.
Her fingers curled into fists at her sides—empty now, no longer interlaced with the false.
Then she saw it.
It came all at once—like a curtain ripped from a window
To her horror—she saw Ivan standing there.
Not her sister.
Not her other half.
The man Zerin claimed was a traitor. The one who had sided with Nightmare Creatures.
Her breath caught in her throat—a wounded sound that she couldn't suppress.
She glanced at Zerin quickly, her eyes wide, searching for that confirmation that was lost, for that grounding, for something to hold onto. She found his crimson gaze locked with Ivan's. If only she could see the darkness in Ivan's eyes—she never would have stood so close.
But Zerin could see it.
For him, Ivan was fully exposed.
"I thought your growth would take longer."
Ivan's voice was calm. As if Zerin hadn't just shattered his illusion, as if the entire dynamic in the room hadn't just been upended.
"Seems like your progress isn't something you could quite see on the surface."
A pause.
"Beast."