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“That’s why I’m here, to help you make sense. Do you want to take a walk? We can get some air and untangle that mess of yours.”

“Sure.” I dragged myself out of the chair and followed him out of the library. As we crossed the lobby, I looked across the space and met eyes with a fae I’d just seen while waiting outside the King’s office. He’d eyed me with suspicion, then disappeared into another office. Now he was here, watching me. What if he’d heard what I said about Kol and Nyx?

“You coming?” Kol called.

I shook it off and caught up with him. I didn’t know where we were headed, but it didn’t matter. I needed to get some air and stop being paranoid.

We walked along familiar corridors until we reached fresh air, and then Kol steered us along a walkway I’d never been down.

“I think I’m stuck on a different path to Nyx, and that’s the problem,” I admitted after I sensed Kol was waiting for me to speak.

“How so?”

“My life was so different before. It was controlled for me. It was a prison of sorts, and I see that now. The elders kept us confined, cut off from the outside, working for their cause. Then, aside from that betrayal, we know they were also poisoning me to keep my bond to Nyx cut off. It’s a lot to come to terms with.”

“Of course it is,” Kol soothed. “No one expects you to move on overnight. You are grieving many different losses.”

“That’s the thing—it’s the moving on. I know how to process the deaths. We were raised to face death, and our rituals were the closure we had to move on. That’s missing for me. I have no closure. It’s an open wound. And it’s not mourning for the fae themselves, although that sounds heartless and terrible. I have a lot more work to do on understanding and forgiving their actions before I can grieve their loss.”

“So, what is it?”

I thought about how to put it into words. “When I came here, all I wanted to do was get back. Even once I started to accept there was nothing to go back to, I still needed to go, because I was raised to think that a soul could not go to the Goddess without the ceremonial rites. I see now that other kingdoms have their own traditions. We all have them. So, I think I’m not moving on because, in my heart, I know those fae, not just my family, all of them, are just out there. Dead and forgotten. And I can’t live with it. I can’t just forget and move on knowing that.”

“You want to go back to perform the rites?”

“I think I have to. I think that is what’s in the way of our meld. I can’t give myself fully to this new path when I still have one foot on the other, and I can’t think of another way to let it go.”

“Then, make Nyx understand.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

ZARIA

Itossed and turned in my bed. No position was comfortable, and the weight of my thoughts was too heavy to carry into sleep. I couldn’t settle. I wanted to be what Nyx needed me to be, but I couldn’t find a way to make it happen.

I didn’t know how to resign myself to this life, even if it was the one I now wanted. Everyone was growing tired of waiting for our meld, and every day that passed made me want to leave. It was getting exhausting, and the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced the only way forward was to go back. To see if putting that part of my life to rest would unburden me enough to complete our bonding.

I’d tried to bring it up with Nyx, but he kept shutting it down.

I needed to bury the dead. Even though I carried an insurmountable amount of anger for my parents. My siblings didn’t deserve to wander as ghosts forbidden from joining the Goddess. Luka didn’t deserve to have his bones picked clean by ravens and to be a lost soul.

I often thought of how much he’d have enjoyed life at the palace, or even just life outside of our village. He would have thrived here, but because of the choices of our parents, he was dead. I hated being the only one left alive. I didn’t feel like I deserved it.

All of it felt like a block on my soul.

And I would never move forward with the weight of their deaths holding me back.

I couldn’t lay in my bed any longer. I needed some air.

I forced myself out and dug through my wardrobe for something to pull over my night clothes. I cracked my door to make sure no one was in the hall and startled at the sleeping form in my doorway.

The torchlight dotted along the walls gave enough light to see it was Nyx curled on the floor facing my door.

“Nyx?” I bent and nudged him, keeping my voice low. He didn’t stir. “Nyx…”

Nothing.

I toed him with my boot, and he rolled slightly, opening one eye.