Page 47 of Evermore

“Maybe you should turn into Paesha and try to talk some sense into Thorne. That seemsreasonable.”

She scanned me once before turning back to Tuck. “He’d never listen.”

“And yet here you sit,” I said, taking another drink as the shadows curled closer, “watching me make the same mistakes I’ve made for centuries. Some might call that madness.”

“I call it necessity.” The playfulness drained from her expression, replaced by that look she’d given me countless times before. “The shadows grow deeper by the day, Thorne. Even you must feel it.”

I didn’t answer. Of course I felt it. The hunger in the dark corners of this tavern was nothing compared to what stirred in the spaces between realms.

She shifted back into her normal form, taking my hand. A gesture I didn’t take lightly. She never touched others. “You listen or you fail. When it comes to Alastor,you’rethe target for him. She’s merely the bait to force your hand. Think logically.”

“Alastor doesn’t want power or control. He doesn’t even want Paesha, and that works in our favor. He wants a path to Irri. That’s all. Find a path that doesn’t involve you and you’re free of him. Both of you are.” Her eyes met mine and fell. She knew me too well, had spent too many centuries pulling me back from the edge of my own destruction. “You’re thinking of going to the Forgotten, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.

“You can’t,” she said, genuine fear creeping into her voice, the same fear she’d shown when I’d nearly gone during the War of the Realms. “If you don’t return, the prophecy is fulfilled. If what Ezarius has seen of the future comes to pass, we will all fall. Not just you. Not just the gods in this room pretending they cannot hear every word we say. All of us. You absolutely cannot go to the Forgotten.”

“Then what would you have me do? Let him destroy her?”

“I would have you think, for once in your endless existence.” She rose, her frail appearance contradicting the power that crackled around her like a mother’s protective embrace. “The magic is volatile across all realms now. If these hunting gods can take the Huntress’s stolen power?—”

“Can they?”

“Does it matter? They’ll kill her trying.” She gathered her shawl around her shoulders, a gesture so familiar it ached. “The question you should be asking is why this version of her? Why now? What makes her so special that gods who haven’t left Etherium in millennia are suddenly very interested in your little mortal?”

She walked away, leaving that question hanging in the air. The shadows in the corners retreated, the lurking gods slinking away now that the show was over. With a simple whip of power, the kind Minerva would scold me for using so carelessly, I wiped the entire conversation from their minds. They’d never know they missed it.

“Well,” Tuck said after a long moment, falling back into our usual rhythm. “That was horrifyingly unhelpful.”

“Was it? Or did she tell us exactly what we need to know?”

His eyes narrowed. “Boss…”

“They think she has power that belongs to them.” I met his gaze, seeing not only my most trusted friend, but the brother who’d stood beside me through thousands of years. “But what ifit’s the other way around? What if she has power that was always meant to be hers?”

“That’s a dangerous theory.”

“More dangerous than letting Alastor break her?” I stood, tossing a few coins on the table. “We need to find Ezra.”

“Your brother who wants to kill her? That Ezra?”

“Yes,” I said, heading for the door with Tuck falling into step beside me as he always had. “The brother who’s seen how this ends.”

17

Paesha

The burning had gone completely. No more summoning. No more freedom.

“Be still,” Alastor purred in my ear. “Don’t speak. Don’t move.”

I couldn’t breathe. That would have required moving.

He crossed his arms over his chest, standing feet away as he assessed me. “Oh right. Mortals. You may breathe and blink.”

Asshole.

Standing in the middle of the Vale, with absolutely no one at the merchant stalls, Alastor’s Remnants roared to life, given silent instruction by their master. They formed intricate patterns in the air before pressing against my skin with an icy touch that burned like frostbite. I felt them seek out the marks on my neck, the delicate snowflake and the rose. Their damn handy work. They paused at my back, drawn to a spot between my shoulder blades. The mark I’d been too afraid to look at, the one that had appeared when I’d learned the truth about Thorne.