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“How long has it been?”

He was growing a little uncomfortable talking about her death. She was a complete stranger, and though he knew some facts about what happened through Valeen, it wasn’t as if he could offer her comfort. “A few thousand years.”

“A fewthousand?” she repeated and put a hand over her mouth. She slowly dragged her delicate fingers down her chin and over her throat, coming to rest in a balled fist at her chest. “All Mother above,” she whispered. “My children, are they well? How is Valeen?”

It was strange she didn’t mention her husband Atlanta. “I can’t speak of your children because I don’t know. Valeen is—well, she’s been gone too. Exiled by the Council of the Gods.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, and she blinked several times. “I think I knew that. I think I have come to help her. She has not been in House of Night. She needs her home back.”

Thane smiled. “Yes. She was reborn as an elf in Adalon, but we’re here now.”

“Reborn? But she is a goddess.”

“When I said the council exiled her, I meant they took her immortality and killed her, forcing her to be reborn over and over, never remembering who she was… until now.”

She frowned at that. “My poor sister. She does not deserve that cruelty.” Her lavender eyes trailed over him from head to toe. “You are also an elf, but I sense something more.”

“I am the god of war, my name was War. The same thing happened to me as Valeen.”

“But you said your name is Thane.”

He chuckled. “I can see how that would be confusing. Twenty-nine years ago, I was reborn as an elf, the son of an Elf King. I was named Thane Athayel, and I am now the High Elf King in Palenor. I think I prefer that name. War is not all of who I am. The act of war itself is ugly and the more I think about it the more I don’t want to be called that anymore.”

“Thane,” she said and smiled, flashing pretty white teeth. “If you and Valeen were both exiled together—what is your relationship to her? What was your crime?”

Thane rubbed his lips together then let out a long slow breath. “Now, that is a question.”

She giggled and it sounded like bells. “I should think it is a fairly simple one.”

“It’s quite complicated actually.”

“A lover?”

“Once,” he replied.

“Ah,” she said as understanding dawned on her. “A story for another time.”

“A story Valeen can tell you.” He didn’t want to relive it again. It hurt too much. It hurt seeing her with someone else, even if he understood it, even if he’d let her go. All those months after Hel woke up, he’d waited for Layala to remember her past, holding out hope that she’d choose him. He should have known better.

Valeenwould always choose Hel, even if when she was simply Layala, she had been his.

“And the crime?”

“For the most part, taking her side when the council found out she stole the weapon Soulender. They want it back.”

She bobbed her head. “I think I knew that too. My memory of the place I was in is fuzzy. Like waking up from a dream and the details fade, lost to the aether.”

He glanced over his shoulder, back toward the way they’d come. He needed to return to the others, even if he trusted Hel and Valeen to be able to handle it. Something could go wrong. Synick was a primordial and as ruthless as anyone—he would know, Synick had mentored him. Then the moonlight caught something small and white dangling from the branches above. Thane furrowed his brows and realized an insect dropped onto Katana’s shoulder, a long-legged spindly thing.

So he wouldn’t alarm her, he said as calmly as he could. “There’s a spider on you.” Would it be rude to bat it off? He didn’t want to touch her without permission. It was not like they were friends, barely acquaintances.

Her eyes flashed and she started swatting randomly. “Where? Get it off me.”

It crawled over her shoulder. Shit. He quickly closed the distance between them and turned her, pushing her hair aside. It could be poisonous, and the last thing he needed was to carry her back to Valeen with a deadly bite.

Goosebumps peppered her skin with his touch. The spider skittered under the hem of the back of her dress just as he spotted it. Gods, was he going to—“It went under your dress, I?—”

“Get it! Get it!” She shook her body and squealed.