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“Until death at crimson night.” My fists curled. Panic grew, hot and cruel in my chest. “I wrote those words for months before the battle in the South. My daj said those words . . . the night he died.”

Silas lifted his head. “If you had no true lifeline, the battle lord could not find you.”

No. This was impossible. It couldn’t keep happening this way. I dug my fingers in my hair. “Live and live again. Idiedin those . . . dreams, those memories. Are you . . . are you telling me I’ve . . . died before, only t-t-to live again?”

My voice was shrill, not out of rage, but it had Silas recoiling like I might reach out and strike him. He was unaccustomed to others, that was clear, and he seemed wholly locked in despair when tears dripped onto my cheeks.

“Is that what you’re saying, Silas?” I softened my tone. “That I keep dying only to live again?”

He nodded, but kept his gaze trained away.

“But . . . it’s not possible. There aren’t multiple lifetimes. The Norns have one string, one path, for us all.”

“Yes,” he said. “The reason the king’s final song was against a natural order of fate.”

My pulse quickened. “This is why he died, isn’t it? To lose the magic of his blood, it would destroy him physically. And my mother! She could write simple twists of destiny, did she offer her strength only to succumb to a weak body and die with an arrow in her throat?”

Silas barred his body away from me and covered his face with his palms. “Ihateit, Little Rose. I hate that this was the way to save you. Do-Do you know what it’s like?” He shook his head, muttering, “She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know the truth.”

His voice was laden in pain, a sorrow so agonizing I felt the ache to my soul. Tears lined his eyes, a wildness was taking hold, a sense of being lost in his countenance, as though the shadows in which he’d lived were pulling him back.

“Silas, we should stop. You don’t need to relive this again,” I said, a crack in my voice.

Whatever these visions were, they were breaking him. A fierce need to shield him, to touch him, to bleeding protect him, clung to my chest like a boulder crushing my ribs.

“It is too late to stop it,” he said in a dark whisper.

I scrambled toward him, reached out my hand, and before I could touch him, fell into nothingness.

Chapter16

The Storyteller

“Greta,I don’t know if I can do this.”

I blinked my gaze into focus. A tower room perhaps. Near the window, a woman with long, pale hair looked to the stars.

“I’ve told you, darkness comes at crimson night. There the true fight begins. A fury sleep does not end your battle,” I said. “Merely pauses it for a time. Give fate time to unravel, Lili.”

My heart jolted when the woman turned around. I knew her. I bleeding knew her well. Liliana Ferus, dressed in a simple gown, stared at me with tear stains on her pale cheeks.

“How can I leave my children? What if . . . what if Arvad and I don’t wake?”

“I will do all I can to see to it your path is set. Your children have grand roles to play in these final tales. They will not be alone, I swear to you.”

Lilianna took my hands. “Eli will kill you.”

I smiled and cupped the side of her face. All hells my hands were . . . they were frail and old. “He can try.”

Lilianna blinked; her chin quivered. “Our armies, they’ll be cursed, but hidden? Is that true?”

“The Ettan warriors will rise when the blood of the heirs restores this fight. I have seen armies be concealed before. You folk will rise when battles rage again.”

The hidden Rave. The twist of fate when the Ettan warriors rose from those horrid shadow guardians at the tomb came from some instinct, some forgotten lifetime where Rave warriors were hidden in the dregs of the West.

My head was spinning.

“You’ll look out for my children?”