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My fingers fumbled with the blood-and-wine-soaked dress, peeling it over my head with a sickening pull as dried blood surrendered its grip on my skin.

My eyes travelled back to the mirror despite myself.

A trembling breath escaped me, relief loosening the knot in my chest when I found nothing there.

The mirror reflected the bath chamber exactly as it should.

Shaking my head, I turned back towards the bath⁠—

A startled gasp ripped from my lungs and I scrambled backwards until the basin bit into my tailbone.

My reflection wasn't in the mirror anymore.

She was standing inches away from me.

Her turquoise eyes glimmered with an iridescent sheen, and her silver hair clung to her body, drenched as if she had just crawled from the sea.

“Drown them all,” she whispered into my mind, sea water pouring from her lips as they parted on the words.

It was my voice, yet it did not feel like mine. It was colder. Filled with a wrath I didn’t understand.

Maraveth.

“I want to remember,” I whispered to myself, almost begging. “Please.”

“Save him. Save Rythos and kill them all.”

“How do I save him?” I yelled, but she vanished as if she had never been there at all.

I turned back towards the mirror, only to meet my own frantic eyes, helpless and filled with fear.

“Come back!” I screamed, a small crack shattering through the glass.

A frustrated noise left me when she didn’t respond.

“Drown them all,” I breathed into the silence, repeating her words.

The words tasted like a vengeance I didn’t know I wanted, as if they promised the freedom I had always longed for.

The words spilled from my lips over and over, the mirror only reflecting my own desperation and panic.

She wasn’t coming back.

A shattered sob finally escaped, the sound so broken I barely recognised it as my own.

Helion's warmth reached for me through the bond, refusing to let me drown alone.

But I needed to drown.

My eyes shone with power, head tipping back as I let it take me.

I repeated the words, my voice splintering into a thousand layered echoes until I could no longer tell which one belonged to me.

Blood thundered through my ears. Heat licked through my veins, turning them into rivers of molten gold that burned with every frantic beat of my heart.

I distantly heard a knock on the door and Helion calling my name, but the sound drifted to me as if I were underwater.

My eyes blazed, iridescent light spilling through my pupils until the whites disappeared entirely.