Hazel
The training room was nothing like she expected. That was, she was beginning to suspect, going to be the theme of this entire arrangement.
She'd pictured something out of the Ashfall barracks—stone floors scarred with old blood, weapon racks, and the heavy smell of fear. Instead, Damon led her down two flights of stairs into a circular chamber carved from black stone. The walls were etched floor to ceiling with strange symbols she didn't recognize, yet somehow still understood.
In the center of the room, on an ancient pedestal, sat a book.
It wasn't large, bound in something that might once have been leather—or something with a heartbeat. Its cover was unmarked except for a single seam of gold that pulsed, slow and faint, like a banked coal.
Hazel's chest tightened. Recognition flared before her mind could supply a reason for it.
"That's the Resonance," Damon said, watching her reaction. "It's older than the Nine Courts. Older than the war that put my father in chains. It's cursed. Sentient, or close enough to it. It's killed three people who tried to open it without an invitation."
"Comforting."
"You're not most people." His eyes found hers, steady and unreadable. "Mordrek smelled what's inside you the moment you bled on him. So did the book, I'd wager, the second you walked into this room."
She felt it. The gold seam along the book's spine had brightened, subtle but unmistakable.
"What is it?" she demanded.
"I don't know yet. That's the point of this room." He gestured to the open expanse of dark stone between them. "Most half-bloods spend years on Metamorphosis—integrating their demon side properly instead of running from it. We're going to find out if what's under your skin matches what's bound in that book. If it does, half-blood, you're the reason this book exists at all."
"That's a lot of weight to put on someone you met yesterday bleeding out in a forest."
"I'm aware." Something flickered in his jaw. "Hold out your hand. The branded one."
She held it out reluctantly. Damon closed the distance between them in two steps, eating up the room. He didn't touch her—not yet. He just held his own hand a careful inch above hers, close enough that she felt the heat radiating off his palm.
"Reach for it," he said softly. "Not for me. For what's under the mark. It'll feel like reaching for something that's already reaching back."
She closed her eyes and reached.
For a long moment, there was nothing but her own loud pulse and his overwhelming presence. Then, deep behind her ribs, a coal she hadn't lit caught fire.
Heat raced up her arm, and the brand on her hand flared gold, throwing sharp shadows up the walls.
Damon's hand snapped down over hers—instinct overriding his caution. The moment skin met skin, the entire room answered.
The Resonance flared open on its pedestal. Gold light spilled across the black floor in pulsing waves.
Suddenly, Hazel wasn't standing in a training room anymore. She was somewhere else, in firelight that didn't belong to this century. She looked up into eyes that were the wrong color yet exactly right, hearing a strange voice say a name that wasn't hers like it was the only word that mattered.
Then it vanished. She was back on her knees on the cold stone, Damon's hand still locked around hers. Both of them were breathing hard, as if they had run a great distance.
"What," she managed, "was that?"
Damon didn't answer immediately. His face was stark, pale, and his purple eyes were wide with shock.
"I don't know," he said finally. It was the first time she'd heard him admit it like it cost him something. He released her hand as if it had burned him. "We're done for today."
"We just started."
"I'm aware." He was already turning away, putting the room's whole width between them. Whatever had just happened had frightened him considerably more than it had frightened her.
She watched him go, the heavy door sealing shut behind him. Hazel let herself sag against the wall, now that there was no one left to see her weakness.
Her hand was still burning with a deep, muscular ache. She turned the brand over in the dim light, tracing the shape with an unsteady finger.
It hadn't felt like a vision. Visions felt distant, like watching weather through a window. This had been *remembering*. She knew, with aching certainty, that she had loved whoever stood across that long-ago fire.
She thought of her mother—a woman she'd been told was dead since childhood. She wondered if the secrets her father kept were the kind that explained a fire-lit memory that wasn't hers, yet somehow was.
The Resonance sat quiet on its pedestal again, its gold seam back to a slow, patient pulse. Hazel had the distinct impression the book was waiting for her.
"Soon," she whispered to the empty room.
Damon
He made it three corridors away before he let himself stop walking to breathe.
*That,* Mordrek said, settling into his thoughts without his usual amusement, *was not Metamorphosis.*
"I know what it wasn't." Damon braced a hand against the wall, surprised to find it shaking. "Tell me what it was."
*I have a guess. You won't like it.*
"Try me."
*A memory.* The dragon's presence went uncharacteristically careful. *Not hers. Not entirely. I felt it too, hatchling. That wasn't the Resonance showing her power. That was the Resonance showing you both something you've already lived."
Damon closed his eyes. The firelight sat behind his eyelids still. He could still hear a voice that wasn't his saying an unfamiliar name. Underneath the confusion was a bone-deep feeling he had no language for.
Longing. For something returned.
"That's not possible," he said, the words sounding more like a plea than an argument.
*Most things aren't, until they are.* Mordrek's voice softened. *You've carried that scar on your collarbone since before you had words for your own name, and no healer has ever explained it. I'd start there.*
Damon didn't answer. Down the corridor, he could faintly hear Eva's voice through the walls, followed by Hazel's low, unsteady reply. The half-blood didn't sound like the fierce woman who had held a dagger to his throat in the rain.
He should go to her. He recognized the correct instinct, but he had absolutely no intention of following it. Not until he understood what had nearly undone him.
*You're going to stand in this hallway a while, aren't you?* Mordrek asked.
"I'm going to stand in this hallway a while," Damon agreed.
He pressed two fingers to the scar at his collarbone, just as he had a thousand times before. Except tonight, for the first time in his life, the skin felt warm.