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“First,” she said without a moment’s pause, “you’ll have to take me out of this vault. My magic cannot work inside of it.”

I frowned. That was what I’d been afraid of.

“Second, I assume your lost love is a fae?”

I nodded, though I wondered if she could see me or just hear me. That was answered soon enough.

“You only have half of me, and I’m stuck inside of a stone. My power is muted. I cannot do a thing without you willing it. I’m effectively your slave. Do you understand what that means?”

“You won’t be able to destroy the world.”

“It means there’s only so much I can do. I cannot bring your love’s body back from the dead. I’ll have to transfer her soul into another living body, and it will have to be a mortal one. Now, if I had access to my full power…I could transfer her into the body of another fae, but—”

“Wait,” I said, cutting her off. “You can’t give life?”

“I can give life. Just not the way you want.”

I shook my head. “So, you’re saying I’d have to reunite you with the death half of your power. That’s the only way to really bring Bellicent back, her body included?”

“How long has she been dead?”

“A few days,” I said quietly.

“I’m afraid my power doesn’t work like that, even when fully combined. I am the God of Death, not life. I can kill at any time, but I cannot bring a body back unless it has recently died. The only way to save your lover is to transfer her soul into another body.”

For a moment, I did nothing but stand there and think. I should have known it wouldn’t be as easy as asking this god to return Bellicent to me. No one survived death. Every beautiful thing in the world came to an end. Fae had longer in this world than most, but even we could not avoid the great void forever.

At hearing those words, I should have walked away—should have closed the vault and never again visited this place. It should have been the end of everything.

But a broken heart can lead a desperate man to do terrible things.

“Tell me about the soul transfer,” I said to the God of Death.

I could hear the smile in her voice. “You will choose a mortal, and you will carve a mark into her skin to tie her to me.”

“Tie her to you?”

“Well, yes. There must be a way to channel my magic through her, or it will never work. Now will you stay quiet and listen to my instructions?”

I pressed my lips together, despite the warning bells clanging in my mind.

“You’ll give her a tattoo with my mark, the one-eyed dragon. You’ll need to use Comet Dust, which means you’ll need to journey to the human kingdoms to find some. They won’t much like you taking it, so you’ll need to be quiet and careful. Once that’s done, you will need to wait for a night when the moon is full in the Kingdom of Shadow’s sky. You won’t need to leave your borders to check when that is. I can tell you. Then I can do the transfer.”

My heart pounded. “And you’ll put her soul into another’s body. It will really be Bellicent inside?”

“Every glorious aspect of her,” the god said. “And with my power channeling through her, she will remain young, never aging, just like you.”

My bones shook as I stumbled away from the pedestal to lean against the nearest wall. I couldn’t do this, could I? The gods were terrible beings. I’d been warned of them all my life, and I’d been tasked with protecting the world from their return. How could I go against everything I’d always believed?

But how could I not? Bellicent Denare was dead because of me. I’d do anything for her, even risk fucking up the whole world. It wouldn’t come to that, though. The solution was simple. I would use the gemstone just this once to bring Bellicent back. And then I would never touch it again. I’d lock it back up in the vault.

Besides, this was only half of the god’s power. The other half was stuck in a stone deep beneath the castle in Itchen, and it was fully protected by my soldiers stationed there.

“All right,” I said with a nod. “I’ll do it.”

* * *

Bellicent blinked up at me, but the stars had vanished from her eyes. Deep brown eyes looked back at me instead. It was such a human color, but I hadn’t grown to hate it just yet. I was too relieved to see her again. Her eyes could have been the color of piss and I would have been happy.