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Taly awoke for the second time that day not knowing where she was, her mind swimming in a haze of confusion and unfamiliar sensations.

She was back in the tent, laid out on the same velvet-lined cot, this time with much more care. Someone had dressed her in a gown woven from starlight and gossamer. It fell around her in white, floating waves as she rose to sit.

Jewels adorned her wrists and neck. There was a crown on her head. She could feel the weight of it.

Why?Taly thought.

To her surprise, something answered.

A vessel of divine power should be properly adorned, the goddess crooned into her head.You are the bridge between worlds now.Even that brute knows to pay his respects.

“Thank the Shards, you’re awake,” Aimee said, jumping up from the cot beside her. It was déjà vu all over again. “You screamed so much, and your body was writhing. I was so afraid.”

Taly felt weightless, detached. As if her very essence had been plucked from her body, ground into a fine dust, and cast adrift in the vastness of the cosmos.

She registered vaguely the hand that Aimee held between hers, that she kissed, pressing her brow to it. She experienced it all from somewhere far away.

“Thank you,” Aimee said tearfully. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for saving him.”

Taly didn’t remember giving the command to rise. She tried to reach out, to reclaim herself, but it was like grasping at smoke.

Her limbs moved of their own accord, guided by an unseen force.

She pushed past Aimee. Approached a gilded mirror. There was… something wrong with her eyes.

Usually a molten steely gray, they’d become… fractured. Marred by web-like cracks of gold that spread through the irises.

Her lips smiled, but they were not her own. Her hands caressed her face and body. They straightened the sunburst crown—the same one from the cistern. Taly didn’t know how it had come to be here, but here it was, waiting for her.

Then those lips turned down as her fingers brushed across the collar around her neck.

Aneirin scoffed, pausing inside the entrance to the tent. When Taly looked at him, it was still Aiden’s face, but it flickered with all the faces that came before it. Old and young, beautiful and ugly, too many to count.

“Did you truly think I was just going to unleash you into the world?” He tsked his tongue. “Come now, Lachesis. You’re smarter than that.”

“Husband—”

But he was across the room in an eyeblink. A grip like iron closed around her throat. “You lost the right to call me that the moment you invited Tenebros into your bed.”

Like a fist, his power strangled the goddess. Forced her back down so that Taly could rise.

“Be seen and not heard,” Aneirin hissed. “That was your curse, for corrupting the powers of creation, and you will bear it.”

Taly came back into her body with a gasp, as if surfacing after spending a lifetime underwater. Her skin felt too tight, and there was a tension that buzzed beneath it, an energy that bled into the air around her, thick and heavy.

The collar around her neck was a cold weight. A barrier to the enormity of the goddess’ power. But Taly could still feel her there, like the hum of an earthquake beneath her feet.

“There now,” he said. “How are we feeling? In the future, I would appreciate it if you could keep the hag in check.”

Shakily, Aimee rose to her feet. “Taly did what you asked. Now get out of him.”

Aneirin laughed. “Sorry, butno. Though, if it really bothers you, I can use you as leverage for this next part.” He snapped his fingers. “Bring her.”

Two guards clad in dark robes stepped forward, seizing her. Aimee screamed as she was carried off.

Aneirin said to Taly, “It’s time to go to work now.”

Taly nodded and followed. She knew exactly what came next.