I shuddered in the chill, too unnerved to look over my shoulder at the shuffle of steps across damp stones. I clenched my eyes for one breath, two, then shook out my hands and tried to continue stitching the golden thread into Damir.

The small shard gleamed like a polished gold coin, half inside Damir’s aura, but a different shade. In truth, I could make out endless shades of gold on the king. All different shapes and sizes.

“Come to take more souls, Melder?”

Ten paces away, the harsh glow of the phantom’s eyes held mine. His cloak billowed like mists of the night around broad shoulders. This time he was not towering over me; he’d perched atop a blackened stone that dripped in rotted moss and vines.

The golden rope keeping the creature tethered around his waist seemed weaker, more frayed, almost ready to split.

Tricks of the mind, that’s all this was.

“I’m not here to disturb anything.” I turned back to the king’s bones. The threads had faded and what was left was a molten glow around the edges of the sliver, melted down into Damir.

The phantom drifted to my side, the brilliant rope shifted with him, going slack when he stopped at my shoulder.

“What is it that has brought you here?” He tilted his cowled head.

“The command of the king.”

The phantom merely hummed, gaze sliding across my throat, almost as though he were hungry to cut it out. My eyes clenched when he leaned close enough the cool mist of his darkness brushed along my cheeks.

“Why are you seen here?” He spoke like he was asking the question to himself more than to me.

“This is simply in my mind.”

A heavy, strained sort of laugh grumbled from the spectral. “You don’t really believe that. Learn this now, Melder—not everything is as it seems. Those who seem trustworthy might be enemies. Those who seem enemies, well, they might be the fiercest allies.”

“What are you?”

Another hum. The phantom billowed, almost iridescent, like he was fading. “Take a soul, Melder, and I will take one in its place.”

The memory of the screaming figure when I melded Kael’s body would not leave me. A soul for a soul.

The world spun and the same suffocating fog began to fill my head, until I was flung back.

Warmth from an open hearth stung my skin, and my cheek was pressed against something hard, something sturdy.

Gods. My knees must’ve buckled, and I fell against Roark’s damn chest. His strong arms held me around the waist, my face buried into the embroidered wolf head over his heart. For a moment, I didn’t mind.

For a moment, he was my strength.