Ep. 12: Bruises

Dark as Dawn, Bright as Night, a novel

DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AS NIGHT is a dark fantasy novel serialized in seventeen episodes. This is Episode Twelve.

New to the story? START HERE.

Previously: Ten learns the possibilities and pitfalls of his newfound power, while Mae fights to escape Hesper and discovers a vulnerability.

Up ahead: Hesper remembers her life before becoming a shademaker and the events that inspired her to leave her mortality behind.

Excited for the adventure to continue? Let me know with a like, comment, or restack.

HESPER

I watch Mae until she disappears into the haze of the Sluagh border world, wrapped in the arms of a winged stranger.

Until the last moment, her gaze is rebellious. Her young face is hollowed out with fatigue, but no trace of fear creases her brow. Just a child, really, and already so confident.

But maybe that’s what it takes to face down annihilation at the hands of a shademaker with centuries of ghosts at her beck and call: the brashness of youth. 

I’m glad to be rid of her just now, though. Much as I’m loath to admit it, what she did to me was more than just the random act of a guileless child.

And it rocked me.

I underestimated Mae. A stupid miscalculation. She was born a queen and the daughter of a warrior. Fierceness and grit are in her blood. 

But I was right about one thing: Mae will do anything to protect her father.

But now he, too, is lost. Snatched up under my nose and in my most sacred place. The humiliation of that is hard to swallow.

I must be more careful, remain vigilant. I’ve let my ambitions blind me to threats multiplying in plain sight.

I close my eyes, take a few deep breaths, try to steady myself and collect my thoughts. I’ve only just started to ease the shaking that rattles me to the core when a terrible thought wriggles out of the depths of my mind. I tear open my eyes, panic clutching my heart. My gaze finds my altar, where I fashioned Ten’s votary less than an hour ago.

The remnants of the process litter the stone surface. All of it is covered in dust and blood except for a perfect circle of clean rock. 

The votary.

It’s gone.

No.

But what if…

My fingers grasp the wall with white-knuckled intensity, and I tighten my grip so that my nails creak against the stones. My knees buckle as I take a few ungainly steps forward, seeking out fingerholds among the unforgiving onyx as I go.

It seems to take an eternity to reach the fold in the cavern wall. As I enter the narrow passage, I reach out both arms and brace myself as I force one foot in front of the other. 

Finally, I let go of the wall and step into the center of the space. With a twist of my fingers, the shadelight flickers into existence, filling the brazier in front of me.

I twist harder, and the shadelight intensifies, dissolving the darkness of the alcove where I keep Mae’s votary. No perfect curve is revealed, no face with preternaturally animated features, no magnetic blackness captured in clay.

It’s gone.

No.

No, no, no. 

Anger and shame rise like bile in my throat, thick and hot. I choke on the humiliation. My heart pounds, roused from its near-dormancy by the horror of it, this double violation. My inner and outer worlds defiled. 

A child finding and using to her advantage a long-lost part of myself, dead and buried for ages. And then a sworn enemy entering my most hallowed ground and stealing the crux of all my plans.

I want to tear myself apart, wash myself clean, scream the poison out. My hands form fists, my muscles tensing with a new kind of rage. Across the centuries, I’ve run on cold fusion, a deep well of pain fueling a slow-burning fire. But now I can feel the flames growing, changing.

From the embers, an inferno.

I raise my fist and smash it down. Where my hand strikes the rock, a deep fissure cracks open the floor, shaking the remaining votaries as they stare down on me. Their normally impassive faces seem twisted by scorn, their blank eyes animated by contempt.

So many of them.

Too many.

The feeling comes then, as it sometimes does, but this time it’s overwhelming: the urge to smash every last one, to set the shades free, to rid myself of my burden. 

I let myself revel in that terrible fantasy, let it chase away the hunter’s presence from this holy space. But still, there’s that ancient twinge of fear, and below that, buried in a secret corner of my psyche, the sharp stab of wretchedness.

I am a demon of my own making now, but my body, spent and twisted on the cold stone floor, reminds me that it wasn’t always this way. Once, long ago, I was a servile, miserable girl, and I prostrated myself before Blythe and begged for her help.

The memory of it turns my stomach, and I wish I could rip the pathetic wretch I once was out of my past. Tear her out by the roots and finally free myself of that feeling.

But no.

There’s a reason I let her stay buried inside—a reason I let her remind me of my hateful past. Without it, without her, I wouldn’t be the Wright. I wouldn’t have an age’s worth of shades at my beck and call.

It rankles, though.

That memory of the girl I once was.

Scrawny. Ugly.

If it had only been that, I might have struggled on as the others did. After all, life was hard in those long-ago days. It seemed to leach the beauty and softness of childhood away before a babe was out of swaddling clothes.

But then there was the hair. Stark white, without a hint of gold to soften it. Yet even that could have been explained away—an unfortunate attribute and one that accentuated my homeliness.

It was the mark that sealed my fate.

It was a purple slash that ran from my forehead across my left eye. An ordinary birthmark I would learn much later. But in those days everything was a sign, a portent for good or ill. And my face marked me as an object of contempt.

I was lucky, if one could call it such, that the mark appeared slowly, darkening over time. My skin was as clear as milk when I was born, or my mother would have tossed me to the wolves, and she told me as much often and with gusto.

By the time it was really noticeable, I was the eldest, most capable daughter in a house overflowing with children to be fed and minded. I was less a sister to them than a servant. 

A servant and scapegoat for our penniless existence. And when my unfortunate presence wasn’t enough to distract from or explain away a life lived hand-to-mouth, there was always some other excuse.

But the list of justifications never seemed to include the money spent on drink instead of much-needed food and supplies or the incompetent way my parents managed the farm.

In the midst of a thriving, wealthy kingdom, we eked by, to be pitied by some, reviled by others.

Whatever embarrassment and revulsion my mother and father, sisters, and brothers experienced from our neighbors, they exorcised by passing the feelings down to me.

I was belittled and bullied mercilessly, slapped and kicked, worked to the bone, all for a little pallet in the barn loft and whatever scraps of food I could scavenge from the pigs.

The shame I felt for my face kept me there, for where could I go that would welcome a lone, lowly peasant girl marked for misfortune? This life, horrid as it was, felt better than a slow death alone on the moors, succumbing to exposure or devoured by wolves.

The night was my refuge.

After dark, I was left alone in the barn with nothing but the pigs below me and the stars above to keep me company. I welcomed the soft silence of those velvet hours.

I made friends with the night. 

The night and Niall. 

Thinking of the boy now after all these long, strange years reminds me of everything I lost because of him. But I would do it again, without hesitation, because Niall taught me things I had never known.

Joy and wonder.

Hope.

And love.

We met in my sixteenth year.

It was Sunday, and mother, father, and their brood were at the church listening to the word of God and hoping the rest of the congregation was feeling generous.

They bought their best ale with alms given to them by well-meaning parishoners, but only if they showed themselves at services, threadbare and God-fearing. The sermons were long, but so were the nights if they didn’t get their drink. It was a worthwhile trade-off. 

My face had no place in their holy charade, so it was a happy arrangement for me as well, for I was left alone. I spent much of my time on the wide, windy moors beyond the barn, until I knew every rise and hollow, every turn of the stream that ran into town.

In the spring, the soft pillows of heather cradled me. The summer sun warmed my work-knotted muscles. Autumn mist kissed my cheeks, and the chill of winter reminded me of the strength I carried within me, as not even the deepest snow could keep me away.

It was on just such a midwinter’s day that I met him for the first time.

The sky was heavy and gray-white, pregnant with the promise of snow, but none fell as I wrapped my feet in layers of rags and slipped on the boots that I had gratefully salvaged from the village trash heap.

They were too big, with holes in the sole and a tear in the thinning leather, but to me, they were a prize. Without them, the moor would have been impossible to visit, and winters were hard enough.

I shut the door on the pigs, turned my back on the farm, and set off across the snowy upland, careful to avoid the drifts that would swallow my legs.

I had decided to follow one of the smaller of these to my favorite place. There, the land fell away in abrupt downward shifts so that the burn that flowed along placidly by my feet suddenly dropped, tier by tier, in little waterfalls to accumulate in pretty pools before continuing over the next edge.

It was a lengthy walk across difficult terrain, especially in the winter months. It was part of the appeal of that place: a secret, beautiful world just for me.

So I was surprised—dismayed even—when I reached the point where the burn made its first dip down the black rock, and I caught sight of him.

I almost turned to go, anxious not to be seen so far away from the relative safety of the barn. But there was something in his face—a similar sort of shock—that made me hesitate. We held each other’s gaze for a moment. His eyes were curious but not unkind. Still, my mind urged me to turn and run, even as something else held me to the spot.

“Who are you?”

The question wasn’t hostile, but wonder-filled. It was an agreeable sort of voice, I decided, clear and warm. Nothing like the harsh tones I was used to. But I couldn’t make myself respond. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, seeming to gather himself and managing a tentative smile. “That was impertinent. It’s just that I’ve never met anyone here before.”

He paused, and I realized he was waiting for me to say something. Instead, I studied him as a fine dusting of snow began to fall. He was tall and thin, with a long face and a head of copper hair pulled into a neat queue at the base of his neck.

A fine wool cape trimmed in fur rested across his broad shoulders, but I could see he was not just lean, but lanky, as though he was yet to grow into himself.

His hands were hidden inside black gloves, but I was sure they would be slender and free of callouses. No one from my village of farmers and laborers would wear such gloves, or such a cape and boots for that matter. They were much too fine.

A nobleman then. Any words I might have been about to force through my silence withered unsaid on my tongue. At the same time, my feet seemed to remember their ability to move, and I turned on my heel and followed my tracks back through the snow at a trot. 

“Don’t go,” he shouted at my back, but I didn’t turn.

I didn’t look back until I was at the barn door, the snow falling hard and fast. The moor was empty, and it was hard to imagine anyone out in that great, lonely expanse.

Maybe it had been a daydream. But no daydream had ever set my heart racing like that. 

He was never far from my mind that next week. I yearned to return to the pools, to prove to myself that the boy was real, that the strange feeling of longing I had wasn’t for some illusion my hungry mind had dreamt up to fill the emptiness that surrounded me.

Finally, as the church bells rang the next Sunday, I set off for the pools, the snow steadily falling. It was cold—colder than it had been all winter—but I walked quickly, and a kind of mad anticipation lit up my chest, taming the cruel bite of the wind.

When I reached the place where the burn threw itself over the edge of the moor, I slowed my steps and let the lowest and biggest pool slide slowly into view. 

It was empty.

I cast my eyes around, hoping he might be hidden in some shadowed alcove or behind the large rocks that crowded together at the water’s edge. But no.

It was just as it always had been. Beautiful. Magical even. But empty.

“You’re here.”

His voice was soft, and there was a definite note of pleasure in it. I took a few quick steps away from him, startled, as he came around the hillock of snow that had concealed him from view.

“Don’t go,” he said, throwing up his hands like he was trying to calm a nervous animal. “I’m sorry I startled you. I was hiding so it’s my fault. I just didn’t want you to leave like you did last time.” He dipped his head, suddenly bashful. “You can go if you want to, of course, but…”

He trailed off. I stayed silent, but I didn’t move.

Up close, I could see he had startlingly blue eyes rimmed by pale lashes. A smattering of freckles ran across the bridge of his nose and onto each cheek. There was a significant dimple in his chin. He smiled his small smile again, and it lifted his rosy cheeks and crinkled his eyes, giving him a puckish look. 

“I hoped I’d see you again.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized how bold they sounded, and I could feel the warmth of embarrassment spreading up my neck and over my face. But then his smile grew even more impish and delightful. 

“I’ve been here every day this week, hoping to meet you again,” he said. “After the first few days, I thought I must have imagined you. I told myself today would be my last try. If you didn’t show, I’d save myself miles in the snow and the ire of my minders and not visit here again. I’m so glad you came.” 

Relief flooded through me at that. Relief, and a little thrill of joy, a feeling so rare and wonderful that I almost couldn’t name it. I smiled back at him, not caring if it was too forward. I couldn’t help myself; it had been years and years since someone had looked at me without disgust or contempt, and just as long since someone sought out my company.

“I’m Niall,” he said, reaching out a hand.

I was so transfixed by his blue-eyed gaze that I didn’t realize he expected my hand in return. And probably a name.

I drew up my hand to my heart, uncertain, but then I put my wind-chilled fingers into his, and my name—my real name, not the horrible things they called me at home—slipped from my lips and into the air like a spell cast. 

I never believed in magic, having lived too long with cruel reality to allow for such nonsense. Now, though, in that moment, I understood there could be more to the world than brutality, hard labor, and loneliness. That, to me, was something akin to enchantment.

Niall raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. For the briefest of moments I felt the spell expand, fueled by the marvel of his touch. But like a bubble that grows too big too fast, the magic scattered, burst by the certainties of my life written in my coarse skin and ragged nails. I was suddenly painfully aware of the incredible softness of his gloves, the smoothness of his lips, and exactly how rough I appeared in comparison.

I tore my hand out of his grasp, and threw it over my mark, as if it was only now visible. Shame flooded me. What was I doing here? Someone like me was meant to clean the slop from the pigsties, not exchange names and pleasantries with a nobleman. I turned to leave, ready to run, but a steady hand caught my shoulder and gently turned me back.

“Don’t go,” he said, soft but firm. And he reached up and drew my hand away from my face. “Don’t go, and don’t hide.” 

I had been looking at my feet, too self-conscious to meet his eye, but he drew my chin up and I let my gaze meet his. Magic wrapped itself around my heart again, and I let it grow between us once more, slowly this time.

I lowered my hand, and he smiled, warmly and without judgment. 

It was that smile, I think, more than anything, that started it all, our fates sealed in the gentle curve of his lips.

I had forgotten the cold, but a sudden gust of wintry wind cut through my threadbare clothes, and I shivered. Seeing this, Niall swept the cape from his shoulders and draped it around my own with a smooth assurance that allowed no time for protest.

I gasped with equal parts pleasure and dismay. The material was like nothing I’d known—impossibly warm and impossibly fine at the same time. I wanted to sink into its soft folds and never leave. But I remembered how the dirt and smell clung to me no matter how much I tried to scrub them away. The thought of sullying such a wonderful thing was more than I could bear. I began to shrug the fabric from my shoulders, but he grabbed the edges and held them together.

“You needn’t worry,” he said with his soft voice, a simple phrase that put me at ease. I would soon realize he had a knack for knowing just the thing to say or do. He was perceptive, a keen observer of the world. Niall understood things without me ever having to say a word. Before him I was like an open book, and after keeping to myself for so long, this, too, was a welcome relief.

That day and for many Sundays after, we met and spoke of everything and nothing. He knew much about the world from books but had experienced little of it himself. He told me wonderful things about fantastic animals, new discoveries, and lands beyond our own where it was never cold.

At first, I felt there was nothing so interesting that I could contribute, but he quizzed me about the ways of the farm animals and the rhythms of planting, sowing, and harvesting, the customs of my village, even the coarse habits of my family. It was as exotic to him as his life was to me.

It was a harsh winter, but neither the snowdrifts nor the frigid temperatures stopped us. He insisted I keep his cape, and the next time we met he brought me a pair of proper boots. I was grateful, for although I would have risked frostbite for our conversations, it was a wonderful luxury to be protected so well from the cold. 

I had to be careful though.

I was sure to return in good time to the barn to hide his gifts in the straw and wrap myself in poverty once more. It was a transformation each time.

A girl out on the moor, no more than a beast of burden on the farm.

The contrast between the harsh reality of my life and those fond moments by the burn heightened with each passing week. A sharp slap might reddened my cheek, only to be erased by the flush that crept up my face when Niall’s soft hands brushed against my own.

Long hours of drudgery bent my back and dulled my brain so that I thought I might actually be nothing more than an animal, only for the fresh air of the moor and the sparkle of Niall’s conversation and his warm attention to bring me back to myself. 

I began to sleep beneath the cape he had given me even though it was safer to keep it hidden. Wrapped in that impossibly fine wool it was easier to sleep, for I was warmed against the chill of the barn and the scent of him, lodged in those lovely folds, reminded me it was all real.

We kissed for the first time on a large, flat rock in the middle of the burn that was reachable only by careful maneuvering across smaller stones. Our own private island in our own private world. If I had wondered if our meetings were wrapped in a spell before, I knew it to be so then. 

“I love you,” Niall said once our lips had parted. 

I loved him too, and told him so. 

Magic. 

After that kiss, I was elated, too blissful to be cautious.

I returned to the barn with the cape around my shoulders. I thought I saw a ripple of motion in the window of the house, but the place was dark and quiet.

I brushed it off as a trick of the light, but something about it ate at the back of my mind so that when it next came time to meet Niall, I counted each sibling as they marched along after mother and father, making sure none stayed behind. Then I waited until I was sure no one would come back for a forgotten scarf or hat before setting off across the moor. 

But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. It stayed with me—a disconcerting uneasiness—until I wrapped myself in Niall’s warm embrace and gave myself over to the magic. The day was sparkling, the late winter sun gilding the snow with a golden glow, the promise of spring on the wind. 

“I have a plan,” Niall said, grabbing my hand. 

We would run away together. He had money and knew of a place even farther to the north where we could hide. We’d find passage on a ship. Find the land where it was never cold.

I thought of my life on the farm. There was nothing for me there—nothing I would miss, nothing to lose. Niall, on the other hand, lived the life of a noble with all the comforts and expectations that came along with it. He was a dreamer, a romantic. Smart in the bookish fashion, but practical considerations were not his strong suit. 

The money would run out. His family would surely pursue him. My mark and hair would make us easy to identify, easy to follow, easy to persecute. What then?

“It doesn’t matter as long as we’re together,” he said. And he was so earnest, so sure it would work, that I believed him.

He took a length of green ribbon from his pocket and wrapped our clasped hands together with it.

“You are mine,” he said, “and I am yours, from this moment until the end of time.”

We kissed.

“When do we go?” I said, and his face lit up with that wonderful smile.

He picked me up, spun me around, kissed me again. I laughed—really laughed—for maybe the last time in my long life. Next Sunday, we would meet here one last time to say goodbye to the place that had brought us together and then set off to start a new life.

The day grew late. We’d stayed too long, perhaps, and we were, as always, reluctant to go. But there would be a time, very soon, when we’d never need to leave each other again. The thought eased our parting. 

My heart was so full of our secret magic it took me a moment to realize the extra set of footprints in the snow. I followed them back, each step a sharp stab of dread that drained away the joy that had, only a few minutes ago, seemed immense enough to protect me from my wretched life. 

I tried to calm myself with other possibilities. It was a stray hunter, a villager with business in the next town, a wanderer like me. But the footprints had stopped at a stone that overlooked the falls, and then they had turned around, retreating in the same direction.

I had been followed.

I saw her from a distance as the barn came into view over the last crest of the moor.

My sister.

As I drew nearer, her face came into focus.

It was smug, triumphant, even, and I felt the remnants of hope disappear, blown away on the last gasp of winter wind. Maybe I should have turned then. Ran back to the pool, followed Niall’s footsteps like she had followed mine.

Maybe I could have caught up with him, demanded to see him, or hidden away nearby until he was alone. I should have called for him as soon as I saw those extra footprints in the snow. We could have left right then. 

I should never have come back.

But like a dumb animal, I did go back to this terrible place, fulfilling the prophecy of the mark myself.

“I knew you were up to something,” she sneered when I drew near enough. “Waltzing around this place like a princess. But you’re not but a stupid sow. You can’t really believe the likes of him could ever feel anything for you but contempt.”

Her eyes were shining, the color high in her cheeks. She was reveling in her ridicule, savoring each insult. 

“When I saw you come back with that ridiculous cape around your shoulders, I thought perhaps you had stolen it. But you’re too docile to consider anything so brazen. So I started to wonder what you do out there on the moors. Turns out you’re more shameless than I thought, servicing the highborn for their scraps and castoffs.”

“No,” I said, the intensity of my denial startling me nearly as much as it did her. “It’s nothing like that.”

“What is it then?” she shot back.

I didn’t answer, but I said it all with my silence.

“You think it’s love, don’t you,” a note of genuine surprise undercutting her contempt.

“Please, sister,” I whispered, my voice hoarse with dread.

“You aren’t my sister,” she spat. “You aren’t anything, useless creature. Nothing but stupider than I thought.”

“But you may prove useful yet,” she continued. “It just so happens I could use a few new things myself, and surely that boy has finery to spare. Indeed, the whole family could benefit from such an arrangement.”

“There will be no such arrangement.”

My sister was playing the whole thing out in her mind, imagining herself in her newfound riches, basking in our parents’ future goodwill, and enjoying this new form of torment she could inflict upon me.

My response jolted her from her revelry. She was caught off guard momentarily, but recovered herself with the speed of a seasoned manipulator. 

“You will go to him and get everything I ask by whatever filthy means you have acquired his boots and cape.”

For a moment, I almost agreed, so used was I to ludicrous demands and their unquestioning fulfillment. But something had changed in me—something unalterable. It was real magic, what Niall and I had created, for with it I had been transformed, remade with a new strength I’d never known before. 

“You have no power over me, sister,” I said, my voice quiet but unwavering. “There is no reason I should meet your demands. I have no home or family to lose, no bonds to honor. All of you have made sure of that. There is no reason to stay, nothing I owe you. I’m leaving. And you will not stand in my way.”

I turned then and ran, fast and hard, away from that terrible place. My heart pounded in my chest and my lungs burned, but I felt like I could run forever. And I didn’t stop until I had returned to the falls.

I stepped to the edge of the tumbling burn and looked for Niall’s footprints. Spying the trail of his steps in the snow, I skipped with reckless abandon down the steep side of the hollow to the far edge of the lowest pool and began tracing his stride with my own.

I’d gone no more than a few minutes when I rounded the edge of a low hill and noticed something dark up ahead. At first, I took it for a log or rock, but I realized that either of those would have been blanketed in snow. Then I caught a flash of auburn amid the black. 

Niall. 

I broke out into a run again, stumbling over the drifted snow in my haste. As I drew nearer, I shouted his name, but he did not stir. I yelled again. And again. Finally, I reached him, collapsed in the snow, and took his head into my lap, cradling it with both hands. 

“Niall, wake up,” I pleaded. “Niall!” 

His eyes opened, but only just.

“You came,” he said, his voice hushed as though it hurt him to speak.

“I’m here, Niall, I’m here,” I said, trying not to panic, but failing. “What’s happened to you?”

“I’m sick, my love,” he breathed.

“What? Sick? Well, let’s get you up, get you home,” I said, desperation making my breath catch in my throat.

“No, not that kind of sick,” he said, and a smile, soft and sad, parted his pale lips. “I thought I had more time. I thought we had more time.”

I understood now. He had as little to lose as I did, my prince. He’d known he was dying.

I wanted to shout, to cry out, curse him and hold him and hit him, and run my fingers through his hair. I wanted to live the life we would never lead together right there—a lifetime of emotion played out in what little time was left. But all I could do was cry, my feelings catching in my throat and keeping me silent. 

“Here,” he breathed, and his hand pressed against mine for a moment, something smooth brushing my fingertips. It was the green ribbon. “You are mine. Always.”

Niall’s eyes lost focus, no puff of misty breath clouded the air near his lips. His fingers slipped away from mine and lay still on the snow. He was gone.

Silent tears slipped from my eyes, falling onto his cold cheeks as I rocked back and forth with his head in my lap. I don’t know how long I would have stayed there like that, numb with cold and grief, but a sharp intake of breath behind me made me turn.

It was my sister, a kind of thrilled horror animating her sharp face. And then, a sudden jangling of reins and a man in armor, one of Niall’s minders, I assumed, appeared out of a copse of trees nearby. His expression was stern until he realized what he was seeing, and then it was horrified. Murderous.

“What have you done?” he cried, dismounting. 

I stood, backing away, until I felt hard hands grab my wrists, twisting my arms violently behind my back.

“It was her, my liege,” my sister said. “A dangerous vagrant, cursed by the look of that mark. I saw her mutter something to the lord, and he dropped dead.”

The man’s brow furrowed, and he reached for the sword at his hip. My sister tightened her grip. I felt her hot breath on my cheek, heard the cruel, quiet laugh at the back of her throat.

I was smaller than her, but strong from hard days on the farm. I tore my arms from her grasp and sprinted away, faster than my sister and faster than the man in his heavy armor, making him clumsy in the deep snow. I slipped into the trees, heart hammering, tears still in my eyes, and I ran, leaving it all behind me: the guardsman, my sister. 

And Niall. 

***

In our out-of-the-way part of the land, there were still a good number that remembered the old ways and rituals. The changing of the seasons were marked and celebrated. Solstices remained important days. Little prayers and promises were whispered to old stones.

And small children were frightened into good behavior by tales of souls that had wandered too far from the righteous path in life only to be captured and devoured by monsters. 

Monsters that had once been gods.

I gravitated to the whispers and hints that filtered down to me about these traditions. And I built my own understanding of the old ways—a belief in the terrible beauty of life.

So in the days following Niall’s death, when I found myself betrayed by my blood, hunted by the powerful, and devastated by loss, I turned to the Dawn.

I spoke the words I had learned, performed the rituals I’d pieced together, and finished off with flourishes of my own invention.

Even as I did so, I wondered if the cold and hunger had finally broken me; part of my heart was beyond believing. But I lifted my eyes from the small fire I’d rubbed my fingers raw lighting, and the hunter was there. 

She was glorious, lit from within by the sun’s own glow; her skin and eyes and hair a masterpiece of warmth in olive and chestnut. But there was something cold in her gaze, belying a callousness at her core.

I would need to be careful.

She was receptive at first. Charmed, I think, to not only be remembered but summoned with ceremony, to be addressed with respect, to be given a chance to exercise her power.

But when she learned I wished for her to spare Niall her gossamer, to return him to me from the hands of death, as I had heard the old gods might once have been able to do, I could tell I’d made a terrible mistake.

“The boy is gone,” she said, turning as if to go. “Forget him. He was just a bit of dust and bone. No reason to weep. The world is too full of tears as it is. And love…” She paused, her face half-lost in the shadow created by the fire. “Love is nothing more than a trick of the heart. A survival mechanism. Otherwise, no human would make it out of infancy.”

“There are tales told still,” I said, anxious to keep her talking. “That you are powerful enough to bring back the dead. To make them better than they were before. To make them as you are, strong and powerful. Show me your true self, Goddess. Show me this power. Save this boy, a prince among men.”

She remained half-turned, one foot on the path that would take her away. But she paused, refocused her gaze on me. Hers was a predator’s stare, full of hunger. I swallowed back my fear and met her eyes, and we stayed that way for a breath or two.

Looking back on it now, I wonder what she saw in me then. Did she have any inkling of what I would become? I think not; otherwise, she would have killed me and been done with it. But there was some hesitation, some acknowledgement of a kindred spirit.

“What you ask for is impossible,” she said, finally. She turned her back to me once more and strode away, her glow diminishing as her form grew less distinct. A setting sun.

“Please,” I shouted, my voice cracking with desperation. I threw myself on the ground, the hoarfrost splintering beneath my knees. 

“Disturb me no more, girl,” she growled, her clear voice suddenly ragged. Her lips were pulled back in a sneer, exposing sharp teeth, a long tongue. She was terrifying, but there was nothing then, as now, that could have frightened my broken heart enough to stop.

“I beg you,” I whisper.

When she struck me, it was with the back of her hand, and with such speed, all I saw was a flash, brighter than the sun, and then a darkness pierced only by stars of my body’s own making.

I could already feel one eye swelling shut. I blinked the other open and she stood over me aglow with fire. My cheeks were wet, blood and tears forming a steady, silent flow that swallowed the brightness and the pain, my misery and my fear.

“Bleed, girl,” she said, her voice now so throaty and deep that I felt her words more than heard them. “Weep. Drown yourself in tears. There is nothing for you here. In this world or the next.”

I lay for a long time in the snow after she left.

A wolf howled somewhere in the distance, and as night fell, it grew increasingly cold.

Death seemed near and I beckoned it closer. Blood seeped steadily into the snow, streaming from the open wound that had once been my mark. I imagined the ruby and violet mixing into one wine-dark pool, one whose depths touched the deepest parts of me with a searing, rending pain. 

Gone. 

My thoughts were falling stars in the darkness. 

Niall.

Dust and bone. Dust and bone. Dust and bone. 

I let go of the ribbon I still held clutched in my icy fingers. A gust of wind caught it and swung it up into the sky.

“I’m Niall,” I heard his voice whisper in my ear. He was waiting for my hand. And my name. I spoke it to the sky.

I felt a great loosening inside me. A giving in. The last of me waiting to surrender. 

Gone.

My love. My only love.

Swept away like wishes on the wind.

My blood on the snow. My name in the sky. What more was there to give to the world?

Dust and bone. Soul and shade.

An impossible pain reached my heart, filled the break there with hurt and sadness.

For a moment, I thought I would let go of the last pieces of me. I was tired of fighting the world, but a lifetime of struggle had taught me how to survive. I breathed, and breathed again. And from one breath to the next, I felt a shift—small at first, but significant. My heart no longer felt as though it might shatter. The same pain that filled it, mended it and made it whole.  

With each beat, that feeling spread, suffusing my chest, my core, my legs and arms, my head. It suffused the bone and muscle, mending as it went across my cheek, my eye, my brow. When finally my skin knit itself together, I reached a tentative finger up to the place where my mark had been. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me it was gone. 

I slid my hands into the snow, pushed myself up out of the pool of my blood, and stood on legs that no longer felt cold. A howl sounded nearby, and I caught the eerie flashes of eyes staring at me from the surrounding brush. The wolves had caught the scent of carnage.

But as they emerged from the shadows into the moonlight, something seemed to halt them in their tracks. They circled the patch of glowing snow where I stood, but they came no closer. I tilted my head back and let the pale light shine on me. No cloud of frosted breath obscured my view of the sky.

Inside me, I felt unbound, released from the burdens of the world.

One wolf had come a step closer than the others. She was black, with a great mane of fur around her neck and yellow eyes that knew something of survival and of power. I gazed at her, unafraid, and then she bounded away, the others following her path. 

That night in the snow, under the stars, the moon as my witness, I gave myself a new name.

A new name that allowed a new kind of life force to flow through my veins.

Hesper Wright.

Magic.

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It’s a privilege to share my work with you! Thank you for taking the time to read the twelfth episode of DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AT NIGHT.

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ONWARD TO EPISODE 13 ===>

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