DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AS NIGHT is a dark fantasy novel serialized in seventeen episodes. This is Episode Seventeen.
Previously: Mae battles the she-wolf and receives unexpected assistance that allows her, Bram, and Ten to take on Hesper and her formidable array of defenses.
Up ahead: Hesper embraces oblivion, Ten embarks on a new mission, while Mae and Bram return to the realm of the Sluagh.
Excited for the adventure to continue? Let me know with a like, comment, or restack.
HESPER
I loved a boy once.
Long ago, in a place far from here.
And the miracle of it all was that he loved me too.
I hadn’t thought that was possible. But he did.
Niall.
Seeing the ribbon again, hearing my forgotten name. It all came back in a rush, like it only just happened. And the pain was like a fresh bruise, exquisitely tender, and so sharp I didn’t even feel the knife as it slid home.
I only realized I was bleeding when the hand I pressed to my chest came away slick with blood. Another impossibility. I hadn’t bled in centuries. But there it was, seeping into the ribbon.
Blood and silk. Both relics from my past.
I hardly remember rising from the dais, leaving the girl and her father standing there staring after me. Now, each step feels like waking from a dream, some demented reverie where I believed I’d rule a world of shadows.
But it hadn’t been my imagination. It was real. And with every footfall, the truth of what I’ve become, of what I've done, swims up from the pit that used to be my conscience and threatens to overwhelm me. Every callous cruelty, every promise made and broken, every stolen shade sewn into my dark world.
My knees give out for a moment, buckling under the terrible enormity of what I’ve built. I gather myself and continue on, finding the gap in the wall and sliding through, the ribbon clutched in my hand guiding the way.
My votaries stare at me with their unseeing eyes. Thousands and thousands of shades. The evidence of my monstrous existence laid out before me. Still, I can see their beauty, even if I made them for an ugly purpose.
What had it even been? Revenge against an indifferent god? Some egomaniacal scheme to bend this world and the next to my will? It all seems ridiculous now. The one thing I really wanted was lost long, long ago.
Niall was never coming back, no matter how powerful I became or how many worlds I conquered.
I reach out trembling fingers and take hold of the votary nearest to me. This one is an unremarkable ashy grey. I don’t remember whose earthbound third I used to craft its thin shape. Some desperate person, no doubt afraid of death and in possession of a material essence that made a votary hardly worth noticing. A single thread in a vast tapestry of shadows.
Pull it out, and I’d never miss it.
But pull them all…
I let the little statue slip from my fingers. It hits the floor and shatters, the sound of its destruction echoing in the small space. I stand and let my hand sweep across the nearest ledge. Votaries crash to the ground.
Threads pulled, a world unraveling.
I can feel it deep within me. A loosening. A release. I let my hand fall away from my chest. I want my blood to run free too.
I want to let it all go.
I climb up the rough ledges of rock, knocking votaries over with my clumsy movements. When I can go no further, I swing my arms and kick out with my legs.
Votaries rain down on the stone floor, exploding, each one a relief, each one an emancipation for the shades I’d harnessed to my dark project. The feeling drives me.
I climb the walls like a spider, skittering across every mantel and ridge, destroying votaries as fast as my fingers can find them. The walls begin to shake, helping me at my task. Figures fall in great crashing waves until the floor is covered in a thick layer of silver-black dust.
I reach for another outcropping, but my wild intensity makes me careless, and I miss, tumbling down the wall and landing hard in the wreckage of the votaries. I lie there, my world coming apart at the seams, and remember a night once upon a time. A night when I’d lain in the snow as I lay in the ashes of so many ghosts now. That night I made myself a monster.
Now, I set myself free.
The shaking grows stronger. Great cracks tear the walls apart revealing a yawning darkness beyond. I should be afraid, but I’ve come to know death well in my life. I wove a world from it, from pain and sorrow, from dread and the striving greed of those unwilling to lose their grip on life.
A world more full of weeping.
The ribbon in my hand glows with a steady light even as the space around me trembles with impending ruin. I press it to my lips and hold it there as the last votaries crumble and the walls crash down around me.
I loved a boy once.
And he loved me too.
MAE
Dad had wanted to follow Hesper, to make sure he finished what he started. But I put a hand on his arm.
I didn’t know Hesper, not really. I didn’t have a catalog of all the despicable things she’d done across the lifetimes she’s lived, nor did I wish for one. But I’d seen forgotten parts of her, moments that reminded me of her humanity. I thought she deserved to die on her terms.
I don’t say any of this to him, but he lowers the knife and stays by my side, the question in his eyes fading to acceptance.
Dad understands more than most how monsters are made.
I turn and focus my attention on Bram instead. He’s motionless, his burned side charred and blackened, his wings broken. I kneel beside him, knees soaked by the pool of his inky blood.
I’m not ready for him to be gone. And I don’t understand how it’s possible. Ghosts can’t die, but here, in Hesper’s world, it seems they can.
I reach out a hand to grasp his shoulder, wondering if I can rouse him, if he’s somehow just resting, gathering his strength. He doesn’t move, and the weight of what that means keeps me pressed to the floor even as the walls of the cavern begin to shake.
“We need to go,” Dad says, his tone gruff, urgent. I look up to see the cracks Bram made growing larger. Within them a dense void yawns, dangerous and hungry. The floor shakes, forming more fissures. If one opened up beneath us, there is no telling where we might go or if we would be able to escape.
“We can’t leave him,” I say.
Wordlessly, Dad bends down and scoops Bram up. Cradled there in his arms, Bram looks much more like the boy he must have been when he became a ghost. My chest aches at the sight of him.
“C’mon,” Dad growls, and I follow him out of the cavern as it breaks into pieces, swallowing itself.
We leave via the narrow passageway at a run. The whole house is shaking now. Not with the external force of an earthquake, but with some kind of internal tension, as though it’s ripping itself apart, thread by thread.
We sprint through the hall as glass and plaster rain down around us, then hurry across the yard to the rocky path and the beach beyond.
I pause for just a moment to collect myself, hands on my knees, and notice something shimmering and black slithering across the ground. I gasp and rear back, afraid it might be another of Hesper’s traps.
“Damn,” I breathe as I take in the hills and forests surrounding us. There must be a thousand black seams pulling away from the land and rushing back to the house, threatening to drag us along with them.
“It’s her,” says Dad. “Hesper. Her magic is unraveling. We need to get to clear ground. Somewhere that hasn’t been tainted by her touch.”
“The cabin,” I cry.
Dad’s eyes scan the distance we have left to travel, taking in the snaking twists of darkness that snatch at our ankles as they slip away. “It’s too far. Hesper will have infiltrated every inch of ground between her house and Blythe’s. If we aren’t careful, we’ll be dragged right back to where we started, and no good will come of that. I know a place.”
I don’t ask him where, just follow him as we turn away from the lake and head into the forest. A few steps in and a huge grinding crash tears through the air. We turn and see Hesper’s house and most of the mountain behind it disappearing into a giant rupture in the ground.
The dark strands slide in behind it as the hole slowly shrinks, its edges drawing together across that same ravenous abyss I’d glimpsed in the cavern wall. The sight is terrifying and satisfying all at once.
Dad pulls me on, and soon the waning hole is lost to sight amid the close-growing tree trunks. The farther in we go, the backrush of Hesper’s dark work eases and finally stops as we burst from the undergrowth at the edge of a swift-flowing stream.
“What is this place?” I ask.
“A mornrill. A crossing to the Dawn.”
I nod. His explanation is hardly enough, but I’m not sure I want to know more. “What happens now?” I venture, instead.
Dad’s shoulders rise as though he’s about to shrug when a familiar voice answers for him. “Now decisions must be made.”
Blythe.
She’s a little way downstream on a small outcropping formed of boulders worn smooth by the constant flow of water. She’s soaked, but glowing, literally.
I’m about to stammer another question, but she cuts me off with a raised hand. Instead, she bends to pick up two objects at her feet that I had taken for smaller rocks. As she approaches, I realize they’re our votaries, mine and Dad’s, each one nestled in the crook of her arm like a doll.
“I believe these are yours,” she says, lifting her elbows slightly to emphasize the figures. Dad reaches for his weapons, but Blythe only shakes her head. “There’s no need for that. I promise.”
Dad lowers his hands, but I notice he remains tense, ready to fight at the least sign of aggression from Blythe.
“I thought you were dead,” I say, and I surprise myself with the hint of relief in my voice.
“Goddesses are hard to kill,” she says, setting the votaries down carefully. “Although if you’re going to do it, I would have thought waterwild straight to the heart would do the trick.” She raises an eyebrow in Dad’s direction, a playful smirk on her face.
She pauses and looks away, her gaze skimming the sparkling water to rest on some unseen point on the far shore. Dad sets Bram down carefully and rises, an unreadable look on his face.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice low and flat.
Blythe pauses, her eyes returning to us. She seems to be weighing what to say. When she finally speaks, all trace of sarcasm is gone.
“After you left, I was certain I was dying. And I didn’t want it to happen here, surrounded by a world that’s been my prison. I wanted to see the Dawn again.”
Blythe lifts her hands, indicating the far side of the mornrill, before letting them drop, her long fingers grazing its crystalline waters.
“When I finally made it to the water’s edge, it felt different. Where I used to recoil at the sight and sound of the water, now my heart beat faster and stronger in response to it. It pulled me, like a current through my core.”
Blythe looks up at us again, and this time I think I see the sparkle of tears in her eyes.
“This time,” she continues, “the heat of the mornrill didn’t burn me. It matched the fire in my veins. And I understood these waters are a part of me now. I came out whole, healed, and changed in a way I’m still trying to understand.”
Dad looks at her, his face hard to read. I can see distrust and lingering hostility. But there’s something gentler below those jagged emotions.
Blythe swipes at her eyes and clears her throat before speaking again.
“These are yours, I believe,” she says, raising her elbows to indicate the votaries. Her mouth twists into an impish grin. “I could hold on to them, I suppose, but controlling shades has been done before, hasn’t it?”
She nods her head in the general direction of Hesper’s home, or what’s left of it. “Seems like an awful mess, if you ask me. A lot of work and responsibility. I just got rid of one burden. I don’t need another. No offense.”
Her grin widens as she hands over our votaries. Dad takes them gently. They look fragile in his rough hands. He catches my eye, and I give a small nod, knowing without asking what he’s going to do.
I don’t flinch when they slip from his fingers and burst into a thousand glittering shards on the smooth rocks at the water’s edge. No tears come as I watch them float away. They sparkle like black diamonds in the current, bright but cold, the fossilized remains of a former life.
“Well,” Blythe says on a sigh, “with that bit of housekeeping out of the way, I’ll leave–”
“Is it all gone?” Dad’s question is quiet. He’s staring across the water, his brow furrowed. “Your world?”
“I can’t say,” Blythe says, her voice serious once again. She follows his gaze. “All I know is there’s nothing left for me there. But for you…” She shrugs.
I don’t understand what she means until I turn to my dad again and suddenly recognize the look on his face. He’s thinking of Mom.
“If she’s there…” he begins and then trails off.
Blythe clicks her tongue. “The only thing that I am certain lies beyond the mornrill’s edge is danger,” she says.
His eyes harden with resolve, and he takes a step toward the water, then stops and turns, doubt and determination at war on his face.
“I know we just found each other again,” he says to me. “But if there’s even a slim chance I can find her…” He pauses, his breath catching in his throat. “I can’t stand the thought of her spending an eternity lost and alone.”
“Go,” I say, without hesitation.
“But, how can I leave you like this,” his searching gaze takes in Bram, still and broken on the ground. “I won’t leave you to fend for yourself.”
“For herself?” Blythe scoffs. “The Sluagh never abandon one of their own, least of all their queen. Even now, they only wait for her call. Say the word,” she says, arching an eyebrow at me, “and they’ll be here to take you home.”
“And Bram?” I ask. “Will the Sluagh be able to take him home too?”
Blythe’s eyes sparkle, animated by mischief.
“You only need to ask, Your Majesty.”
She says these last words through a sardonic smile, as she slowly backs away in a mock bow before turning toward the trees.
“Where will you go?” I ask.
“I’m free for the first time in centuries,” she throws back over her shoulder, not bothering to stop. “I plan to enjoy myself. I have a name to live up to, after all.”
I watch her go, slipping away from death and calamity with easy indifference. Only a psychopath could leave like that, a trail of destruction in her wake.
A psychopath. Or a goddess.
I shake my head at the little pang of longing that tightens my chest, surprised and a little ashamed to feel it hanging there heavy over my heart. Part of me will miss her, I realize, like the night misses the day. And part of me longs for Blythe’s confidence, her belief in herself even after learning that everything she’s taken for granted is gone.
When I finally turn around, Dad’s still staring across the water. He seems wary, but there’s hope in his eyes.
“Go,” I say.
He looks at me, a rueful smile on his face.
“I’ll be fine, Dad,” I tell him.
And this time we both know it’s true.
He nods and steps into the mornrill, the water flowing around his ankles, when a sudden movement makes us both startle. A beautiful woman, her skin a lustrous green and her dark eyes glittering, rises from the surface of the stream.
“I thought you might come,” Dad says, and I realize he knows her, was expecting her.
“Who is this?” I ask, panic making my voice tight. “What does she–”
“It’s okay.” Dad interrupts my line of questioning. His voice is soft, calm. “We’ve met before. She won’t harm us.”
But I’m not so sure. There’s no hint of warmth in her face. Her eyes remain cold, even cruel.
“You cannot cross without me,” she says. Her voice is strange and echoing, like it belongs below the surface of the rill. “And I will not cross you unless you give me your word.”
“My word?” Dad says, turning it into a question.
“The Wright is gone,” she continues. “And so, it seems, are the shades that made up her world, the shades that paired with many of the souls that now choke my mornrill. Blythe is gone too. It shouldn’t surprise me that those demons of night and day left the mess they made for others to clean up.”
She pauses as her voice grows raw, her beauty ragged around the edges so that something wilder can be seen just below the surface. Then she closes her eyes, collecting herself, and returns her gaze to us, the black depths of her eyes burning despite the water all around her.
“My burden is here, all around me, swimming in my depths. The water of the mornrill flows away, but the souls inside it stay. I am their anchor. And I want to cut the chain.”
“What do you want from me?” Dad asks.
“Take me home,” she says, and for a moment it seems the water making her skin glisten is made of her own tears. “Whatever lies beyond the far shore is preferable to this half-life I’ve lived for far too long. I deserve freedom. And so do they.”
She lifts a hand, and I follow her elegant fingers across the surface of the rill to its center where the water runs deep and swift. I catch sight of a figure. She’s barely more than a scintillating sketch in the golden light of the fading day. But I know who she is.
“What will happen to them, all these souls tied to this mornrill, when you’re gone?” I ask.
“There are some things even the eldest among us do not know, child,” she says. “But this watery world is a prison. Souls and shades are things of light and night. They are air. They are ether. It’s time for them to fly.”
“Why do you need me?” Dad’s eyes are fixed on the figure in the mornrill, too. A girl who looks a lot like me.
“I cannot cross on my own, empty handed. I must bring a soul and a shade. Hesper and Blythe have taken much from you. But your diessence still twines around a third that is no longer tied to this world.” Her eyes burn bright as she says this. “We need each other, you see.”
Dad is still staring at the girl in the water. He seems frozen. Lost. I move to his side, and he turns. His eyes refocusing on me. “I don’t–”
“Go,” I say, not waiting for him to finish his thought. “Go find Mom.” I swallow a sob, but keep my gaze steady. He needs to see the resolve in my eyes or he won’t believe it.
Dad raises his hand as if to run his thumb down my cheek, and I close my eyes grateful to feel the gentle brush of his fingers on my cheek.
“It’s okay to let me go,” I whisper.
I open my eyes again, and he nods, his eyes shining, but it takes him a moment longer to drop his hand and turn once more to the water and the creature waiting there for him.
She reaches out a pale green hand to him, and he grasps it tightly with his own, following her deeper into the rill. We watch him go, that shimmer of a girl and I. He only turns back once, a small smile on his lips.
I raise my hand, then let it fall, my fingers curling over my heart. Dad turns back as mist envelops him. He sinks into it, his solid form slowly dissolving until there’s nothing left but the trees on the other side of the water.
“Goodbye, Dad,” I breathe.
Suddenly, the air above the water gleams as though studded with gems. Escaping souls. Each one a radiant facet lit by the sun.
The girl in the water looks to me, the ghost of a smile on her lips. Her eyes slide from mine to the glistening air, sparkling with souls. For a moment I think she’ll join them. Instead, she crosses the water and reaches out to me.
I pause, hesitant, but then put my hand out to hers, palm to palm, until she gently wraps her fingers around mine.
Soul and shade. Light and dark.
Whole once more.
***
The effervescence of souls slows and finally stops. I’m amazed by how long it takes. So many committed to the river in Hesper and Blythe’s long, ruthless game. The rill looks no different once it’s over, but I can feel the change. There’s a lightness to the place now. A lightness and loneliness.
I sink down to the moss-covered bank next to where Bram lies, and watch the place where Dad disappeared, sending him a silent prayer. Then I close my eyes and let the sound of the rill soothe the knots from my muscles, let it carry away what remains of my fear and worry. I let the coming dark wash over me, let it wrap itself around me like a blanket.
No, not a blanket.
A mantle made of twilight and stars.
“Take me home,” I say to the darkness.
They come then, slipping through the sky like slivers of moonlight, a dark mosaic flickering across the indigo sky.
The Sluagh.
I open my eyes wide, suddenly hungry for the sight of them and their terrible beauty as they swoop toward us on silent wings. Then they’re surrounding us, a thousand velvet wings creating their own susurrant stream, a shadowy mirror of the rill. I stand, surrounded by Sluagh, and let myself enjoy the feel of it.
They gather Bram up in an eddy of night, lifting him gently, his face a pale dot against the sky. My own ragged wings unfurl. I’m anxious to follow, but the evening air slips through the tattered holes.
I think for one awful moment that I may be left behind, a ghost in the deep of the woods, but the brush of fingers against my skin startles the thought from my mind. They’ve lifted me too, and I soar through the gloaming leaving the rill, Blythe’s meadow, and Hesper’s lake far below.
The air around us shifts, first to deepest black, then, slowly, to the strange orange glow of a sun that never sinks below the horizon. Around us, the pewter clouds of the storm that never breaks sit expectant in the sky. Waiting.
The Sluagh descend and, with infinite care, deposit us on the cracked stone floor of the throne room. They settle around us like a murder of crows, damp and solemn in this ruin by the sea.
I kneel next to Bram, unsure of what to do next, distracted by the intensity of the eyes upon me. Everywhere I look they’re waiting, watching. I cast my gaze about for some reprieve from their expectant stares.
I see the throne, my throne, solid and shining on its dais. Even there, the ravens look back at me with unblinking eyes, and I want to turn away, wrap my shredded wings around me, and sink into the floor.
But then I remember.
The eye of the raven jagged against my palm.
The arm of the throne a pile of rubble on the floor.
The fine web of gold binding the shining black rock together once more.
And all because I had willed it to happen in this place where magic is real and death is the beginning, not the end.
I turn to Bram and fall to my knees by his side. The sharp features of his face have softened in the warm light of the perpetual sunset so that he once again seems young, too young, to be a ghost.
I look at his dark lashes, a delicate fringe against his cheek, and find myself longing to see his clear, grey eyes again. I want to hear his voice, make him laugh, let him speak his truths. I need someone that knows this place, that knows the Sluagh, that knows me.
I put my hands out to his chest, afraid, for a moment, that they’ll slide right through. But they meet the smooth fabric of his lapels and stop. I pause, wondering what to do next, trying to remember what I did when I’d mended the arm of the throne.
I close my eyes to fight back the tears that threaten to come. I don’t know how to do this. Any of it. To be a queen, to use whatever magic is inside me. I’ve been powerless for so long, at the mercy of a world that wanted me dead, of parents that so desperately wanted me to live, of warring goddesses that hardly cared either way.
I snatch my hands away, press my fists to my face. The Sluagh around me are silent. No breeze stirs their quiet forms. They’re still watching, still waiting. I want to scream, but instead I press harder with my fists, squeezing my eyes shut until I see stars and the echo of veins in the blackness, a web of lines holding together the dark.
I’ve been broken. Over and over. And each time I’ve remade myself stronger.
“Mine is a magic I make myself,” I whisper, and then I throw my hands from my face and press them against Bram once more.
This time I can feel it, a knitting together that extends bone deep, a belief that I can do for Bram what I’ve done for myself so many times. My touch sings through him mending the tears, healing the wounds. I keep my hands on his chest until I’m sure it’s done, until there’s nothing left untouched by my magic.
Then I open my eyes, and find his own staring back at me. A network of fine golden lines stretches across his skin. It’s thicker in places where the damage was greatest and his skin shines, burnished and bright in the half-light. I smile, touch his cheek, and he grins back at me.
“My queen,” Bram says.
I laugh and draw him into a tight embrace before helping him slowly to his feet.
Two Sluagh come forward and offer him their arms for support, but he waves them away. Drawing himself up, he inclines his head toward the dais. “Your throne,” he says.
I nod and walk toward the front of the room, the Sluagh parting around me like waves before the prow of a ship. I step up to the throne and gaze intently at my reflection in its mirrored surface. The girl I see there doesn’t seem trapped anymore.
She looks ready.
I turn and sit, place both my hands on the ravens, and let my power go. It sweeps through the space, surging up walls and over broken battlements, rebuilding as it goes until the castle is whole once again. The Sluagh break their silence as a roof closes over our heads, chanting in an ancient language I can’t understand. But their joy needs no translation.
Just as the last shingle clicks into place, a shout goes up. A crowd has gathered at the window, but I can’t see what the excitement is about. I rise from my throne and stride across to the archway through which I had once imagined making my escape.
It now features a set of doors in gold and glass. As I draw near someone opens them, and I step out onto a balcony.
The sun has slipped below the ocean, its final rays illuminating the bottom of the bank of storm clouds, painting them in dramatic reds and purples. I feel the splash of something wet against my skin.
It’s raining.
As always, it’s a privilege to share my work with you! Thank you for taking the time to read the last episode of DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AT NIGHT.
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I kind of knew your ending would be wonderful and I wasn't wrong! All of it was such great writing and I enjoyed every minute of it.
Your ending was really satisfying too. Not just all the strands tied up but new beginnings, and I am glad Blythe survived. I was getting quite fond of her by the end. It was all very liberating - for all the characters.
I'm so hoping there is more where this came from because I think you've created a beautiful world here.
Thank you very, very much for this story. I loved it. Then again you kind of knew that by now, eh!
Thank you for sharing this story, Garen! I loved the escape from reality. You have such an amazing talent! 💗