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“There will be time for us to catch you up, darling.” Duncan ran his hands over my face, still utilising his touch to prove I was real, and not some figment of his deepest wishes. “For now, youmustrest. You’ve flirted with death and survived it. Your body is going to take some time to heal from what you’ve endured.”

That wasn’t true. Every second, I could feel myself gaining in strength. It was Duwar, filling me with power and possibility, stitching together the frayed threads that had weakened me.

“No,” I pleaded, pinching my eyes closed, wishing I could rejoice in this moment instead of fear it. “You must tell me what I’ve missed – please. I need to know everything.”

Duncan shared a look with Erix. I caught Erix’s subtle nod out the corner of my eye.

“Just time, darling. That is all that you have missed,” Duncan said, offering a smile that was void of any sadness. There was only relief across his face, disbelief and reprieve.

I didn’t believe him, and one look in my eyes told Duncan as much, so he continued.

“Cassial is dead. The Fallen have been stopped and the Game of Monsters prevented – all because of you, darling,” Duncan said.

“You… you knew this was going to happen,” I accused, drawing back as much as my body allowed. “Everything you told Gyah to do, the instructions you gave Seraphine… you knew.”

Duncan gritted his teeth, regret darkening his gaze, which refused to leave me. “I did. The Creator showed me an outcome, and the threads to pull to make it happen.”

“Seraphine died…” I choked, an image of her headless body flashing through my mind.

“Seraphine sacrificed herself to save Althea,” Duncan corrected. “However, those were not my orders. I would never have told her to do what she did… not knowing the outcome. Trust me.”

I did, one look in his eyes and I knew that Duncan was telling me the truth. He, like me, toyed with guilt as if it was an old friend.

“The realms are safe from Cassial,” Erix added. “That’s what matters. Seraphine did not die for nothing.”

How could the world be saved, when the crux of the danger lurked within me?

I didn’t know I was crying until Erix leaned over and swept a thumb across my cheek. “Eroan told us about the vial Seraphine left you. He was confused as to why she would leave you a store of Gardineum, so didn’t question it.”

Gardineum. Impossible.

“But it was gold,” I stammered, knowing neither Duncan nor Erix had seen the poison Seraphine used on the ship to Irobel. “It should’ve killed me.”

Both men shared a look, brows furrowed over confused eyes. “It was an intense dose, yes.”

It was never the poison I had expected. I ran my tongue over my lips, no longer feeling the torn skin that the broken vial had torn apart. “Seraphine tricked me over and over.”

Then I began to laugh, the sound rupturing from my belly and out of my dried lips. I told them both of the poison Seraphine had used in the ship, how she put the small vial between her teeth and spat out the gas-like liquid across the Nephilim. They listened in shock, reality sinking in that I really was prepared to end myself to save the world.

“Once an Asp, always an Asp. But her deceit saved you, and has given the realms a second chance,” Erix added as I lifted fingers to my ear, half expecting brain matter to have leaked out of them.

“I saw the path ahead,” Duncan echoed his earlier sentiment. “And you lived in it.Welived in it.”

Reality was not kind or careful – it hit me with the force of an exploding star. “She tricked me into believing I would take the poison. She knew I would do it–”

“Shesavedyou,” Erix answered before laying a kiss upon my crown. “Seraphine knew, on the chance that you ingested the poison, you’d not suffer. If you used it against Cassial, it would give us the chance required to end him–”

So that is what they believed had happened? I didn’t have it in me to tell them the truth, not yet.

Be selfish.

I couldn’t ruin this moment, not for them and not for me. In time I would have to tell them both how wrong they were. But that would come, just not yet.

“I heard you, both of you, calling for me,” I admitted, taking my time to look them both in the eyes.

“And you came back to us,” Duncan said, catching yet another tear as it spilled down my cheek. “Just in time.”

“We knew you would, little bird.”