Page 244 of Vasmora

My Zevander.

I shook my head. “It can’t be.”

“Everything you ever dreamed is possible here. You only need to will it.”

“I won’t live in a world where you don’t exist, moon witch. Come back to me,” the distant voice echoed again.

“Zevander,” I whispered, my eyes frantically searching the ceiling for the shadows.

“Please.” The imposter stepped toward me, holding out his hand. “There is nothing for you in that world. Stay with me.”

There. In the corner, where the moonlight from the window shouldn’t reach, was the shimmer. The sign I so desperately needed. I screwed my eyes shut and shook my head. “You’re not real. None of this is real.”

Searing heat gusted over my face, crackling over my skin, and when I opened my eyes, I was standing before the vein again. Zevander stood only a few steps away, but a strange hollow in my chest told me he was the imposter. The ghostly replica of the man I loved. My arms hung empty at my sides, the baby no longer tucked in the crook of my elbow. Instead, a bloodstone sat clutched in my palm.

Jaw hardening with resolve, I tossed it into the fire, and the flickers of violet roared to life, lashing out at the imposter Zevander standing alongside the vein.

“Maevyth!” he cried out, his voice distorted as the flames curled around him, before he faded into black smoke.

The sight of him vanishing stirred nothing inside of me. My Zevander wouldn’t have succumbed to the flames.

Violet flickered in my periphery, and my gaze dropped to where a glob of hot lava sank into the ground with a hiss, barely missing my foot.

I stepped back from the vein, my heart pounding in my throat as a fiery figure emerged from the flame, his charred skin covered in fine, purple fissures, eyes blazing orange. A figure I recognized from the puzzle book.

“Deimos?” I asked.

“Hello, Daughter.”

Daughter? I coughed, nearly choking on the thought alone.

Frowning, I shook my head. “That’s … no.” I backed further away. “You can’t be my father. It isn’t possible. My father was a Lyverian warrior. A mortal.”

“As was I. Once.”

From my understanding, he’d perished in the flames when Solassions attacked their village. Centuries before my time. “How? How is this possible?”

He stepped closer, leaving a trail of blackened footsteps in his wake. “I was summoned to possess the body of a Lyverian warrior. Your mother’s mate.” He lifted a tendril of my hair, and though the heat of the flames still glimmering across his skin warmed me, the fire didn’t catch. “The Priestess longed to prove your mother’s fate.”

Much like they had when I’d been in Lyveria, strapped down to a vein as they summoned the god.

“It was no burden to me, though. The moment I saw your mother, I wanted her.” He released my hair, his jaw hardening. “But a god cannot want without consequence.”

“And I am the consequence.”

“You are the fruit of my desires. Powerful in ways you don’t yet understand.”

“Zevander is your vessel. The reason Morsana cannot claim his soul.” I recalled her telling me he’d already been claimed by Deimos. “Are you the reason she can’t claim mine?”

“Yes. Your soul is tied to mine.”

“Surely, she must’ve known that.”

“Of course. She lured you here, knowing the longer you remained, the less likely you’d return.”

It’d certainly taken effort to follow my gut and resist, when the imposter had changed his appearance to look like my Zevander. “What would’ve happened to me, otherwise?”

“Your soul would’ve been banished to Nethyria, as she’s done countless times to vessels before you. And she would’ve ascended. Likely formed a bond with Zevander.”