I DIED IN A DEMON'S ARMS, NOW SHE CALLS ME MASTER

Chapter 11: The Message Signed With My Name

NOLAN POV

The last words burned across the page, and I stared at the signature beneath them. *Nolan Rhyse.* The name was mine, but the handwriting belonged to a stranger, sharp and slanted and pressed deep into the paper. Before I could study it again, the page crumbled into ash and slipped through my fingers.

Behind me, a blanket rustled. "What happened?"

Veyra sat up with her hand already on her sword, her hair loose and her eyes sharp despite sleep. I looked at the gray smudge where the message had been and realized that for the first time since I arrived in Veydran, the greatest threat to my survival might be the man whose body I was wearing.

I told her everything, including the line about coming alone. I handed her the surviving records, and her jaw tightened with every page she read.

"You are thinking of going," she said when she finished.

"I'm thinking about it."

"Alone."

"I haven't decided that part."

"That is not the reassurance you believe it is." She folded the pages with careful, angry fingers. "But I will not tell you to ignore it. If he is alive, you have a right to know."

By dawn the others had gathered around the dead fire. Orlisse turned a scorched page over in her gloved hands. "The Ashen Archive belonged to the original Sovereign network," she said. "Every official record claims it was sealed centuries ago, so a message that gives a current location should worry all of us."

"It could be a trap." Mireth crouched beside the ash and passed her violet lantern over it. "Or it could be exactly what it claims to be. Either way, someone wants you to find it."

Thessari sat with her knees drawn up and her eyes half closed. After a minute she drew a sharp breath. "I see you walking into the Archive alone and walking out changed," she said. "I see Veyra following you and setting off a disaster that brings half the structure down." She shook her head. "None of them tells me whether the message is genuine."

"Then I'll treat it as unproven," I said. "I'm going to the Archive, but I won't let the sender dictate every step. We travel separately and meet at a point outside the ruins, so nobody walks in blind."

"A sensible compromise," Orlisse said. "I approve."

Veyra waited until the others had started checking their gear, then stepped close enough that only I could hear. "You said you wanted to go alone. Why?"

I could have given her a clean answer. Instead I gave her the real one. "Part of me thinks the original soul could be dangerous to anyone near me. If he wants his body back, I don't know what he's willing to do to get it."

"So you would walk into that danger and tell no one how bad it might be."

"I'd be protecting you."

"You would be deciding for me." Her voice stayed quiet and level. "You would take the facts and keep them to yourself, and that is another form of control, Nolan. You of all people should recognize it."

The words landed harder than any blow. I thought about the inscription in the buried corridor and the promise I had made to everyone in this camp, and I realized I had nearly broken it without noticing. "You're right," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Do not apologize. Just do not do it again."

"Understood."

Mireth called us over before I could say more. She knelt beside the ashes with her palm hovering above a faint shimmer that still clung to the stone. "There's residue here, and it reacts to your resonance." She nudged the air toward me, and the shimmer pulsed in answer. "Someone built this message for you and for no one else. That makes a random trap less likely, though it doesn't make a trap impossible."

"That's one of the more terrifying things I've heard today," I said.

"It's been a long day."

Orlisse had stepped away to speak with a courier, and she returned with a grim set to her mouth. "Quiet Meridian agents have abandoned several outposts in the region," she said. "They pulled out their supplies and their people almost overnight."

"They're withdrawing?" Mireth frowned. "That doesn't match anything I know about them."

"Nor me." Orlisse folded the courier's report. "Something has changed their priorities, and I do not know what."

I turned that over in my head and did not like how neatly it fit with the burning page. The organization was retreating from the region at the exact moment a message urged me toward a sealed ruin. It might have been coincidence, but the Meridian had never struck me as a group that believed in them.

We packed in tense quiet. When the others had wandered to the edge of the camp, I found Veyra sharpening her sword on a flat stone, and I sat down a careful distance away.

"I've been thinking about what you said," I told her.

"Good."

"I won't ask you to come with me, and I won't try to talk you into it."

She stopped the whetstone and studied me for a long moment. "I will not follow you simply because our souls are tied together," she said. "If I come, it will be because I choose to."

"That's all I want."

"I know." She went back to the blade, though more slowly than before. "That is why I am still here."

I nodded without pressing, and something in my chest loosened. We sat together while the morning wind tugged at the ashes, and neither of us felt any need to fill the silence.

We left the ruins at midmorning and picked our way down a rocky track toward the open plain. The mountains stood far off on the horizon, blue and jagged against a pale sky. Halfway down the slope, the interface flickered at the edge of my vision, and my stomach dropped.

UNREGISTERED SOUL SIGNATURE DETECTED.

I stopped walking. A second message slid into place beneath the first.

ORIGINAL VESSEL: PROXIMITY INCREASING.

Then a third line appeared, plain and unhurried, as though it had been written to be read slowly.

WARNING: YOUR SOULS CANNOT BOTH REMAIN IN THE SAME BODY.

Veyra paused a few steps below me. "What is it?"

I looked toward the mountains. Somewhere out there, someone was waiting for me at the Ashen Archive, and the system had just told me that only one of us could survive.