Page 25

Twenty-Five

Myron

Bright light takes my sight as I struggle to rise to my feet where Shaelak knocked me on my ass. My skull is near bursting from the blood-seeping bump on the side of my head, and my legs threaten to buckle as I pull myself up against the altar with my free hand, summoning both my silver power and that godsforsaken darkness to my other hand, ready to wield them at the god who created me only to destroy me.

“Myron.” Her thin voice weaves through the chill air settling over me as I stare at the spot where Shaelak stood a moment ago, but there is no deity. Not even a wall where that relief of him once graced the stone.

I whirl toward the voice, stabilizing myself against the altar that seems to be the only piece of this temple still intact.

It’s not Kaira’s slumped form at the foot of the altar where she must have fallen when Ayna’s power blasted everything to rubble, slow breaths indicating she’s unconscious but all right; my gaze snags on the snow-pale skin peeking from between rocks and dust where Ayna is kneeling in her human form—her human form. My vision blurs, tears burning in my eyes at the sight of my mate no longer trapped in her bird body.

“Ayna—”

“Myron,” she repeats, her voice brittle from disuse, and unsure, like she can’t believe she’s actually speaking my name aloud, like she wonders if I’ll hear her across the short distance separating us. But I hear her. Even through the roaring pain in my head, I hear her. And I see her. Skin aglow like the light of a thousand stars has been trapped there.

Staggering across the room, I fall to my knees at her side, not feeling the rocks digging into my kneecaps as I behold the glimmering stars in her eyes.

“How—” I shake my head. It doesn’t matter how she turned back into her human form as long as she did.

Ayna’s ash blonde waves glowing near-silver spill over her shoulders down to her waist, covering her breasts. Swaying, she sits back on her heels like her strength is leaving her, and I reach for her on instinct, catching her before she tilts to the side and nearly topples over, instead gathering her in my arms. With one hand, I fumble my cloak from my shoulders and wrap it around her, a weak protection against the icy cold slowly eating away the warm air once trapped within the now-crumbled temple walls.

Ayna stares up at me like she wants to say something but can’t find her voice—is no longer used to having a voice, and with Kaira down, her mind link has dropped as well.

“I’m here,” I breathe, anxious to break the silence, and Ayna nods, starlight spilling from between the folds of the fabric covering her. Raw emotion floods me as her lids flutter like a pair of delicate wings and she rests her head against my chest. My mate. Human. Yet not, I realize when I brush a strand of hair from her cheek and reveal her ear. I need to blink away the tears before taking a second look at the elegantly pointed tip.

Fae. This is a fae ear, its point less sharp than that of an Askarean fairy. A Crow ear.

My chest heaves at the sob threatening to break from my throat as I grasp that Shaelak made true on his words. Immortal. My mate is immortal. A true Crow?—

And Shaelak’s descendant.

No. I can’t think about that right now. Won’t allow myself to think about any of it until I am ready to believe this isn’t a dream I’ll wake from to the bleak reality of Ayna still trapped, still distant with all the restrictions coming with being contained in the small form of a bird.

Like feathers, Ayna’s fingers graze my cheek, my neck, eyes remaining closed like from exhaustion.

“Where’s Kaira?” her voice is stronger, but her lids don’t open as I say her sister is mere feet away.

“Can you hear the beating of her heart?” I ask, the pain in my head forgotten even when I have trouble focusing my vision longer than a few moments. Listening to the steady thuds of Kaira’s heart, I wait for Ayna to indicate she hears it too.

Ayna nods, cheek sliding along my leathers, and I feel it like she’d be touching my bare skin. Pulling her more securely onto my lap, I slide the few feet separating us from Kaira on my knees.

“Kaira,” I call her name, not yet ready to let go of this solitary moment with my mate, but not ready for the guilt of not checking up on my sister-in-law when she’s not coming around on her own.

A groan is all the response I get, but it’s enough to make Ayna’s eyes blink open and her body to twist toward the sound.

“Kaira,” she croaks, and this time, the Flame rolls over, nearly plopping off the single stair at the foot of the altar, and grimaces at Ayna, eyes going wide as she takes in not the human face—the fae face—but the starlight radiating from Ayna’s outreached arm. “Are you all right?”

Kaira rolls to her knees, studying her sister for a heartbeat, a ghost of a grin on her features. “I knew you’d come around, Ayna,” she coughs, scrambling to get to her feet. But the momentary relief fades as the Flame takes in the destruction surrounding us, the dark houses behind where the walls once shielded this sacred place. “We need to get her back to the palace before we draw attention.”

She’s on her feet, swaying and rubbing her elbow, but with her other hand, she’s already wedging free her dagger from where it’s stuck between two pieces of fallen wall a few feet away.

A godsdamned miracle. It’s a godsdamned miracle we weren’t crushed by the tumbling stone, most of it having pulverized at the impact of Ayna’s power, but there is time to say a prayer later. Kaira is right. This district might now be a district of ghosts, but we can’t risk anyone spotting star-torch Ayna. Whether Ephegos knew she was stuck in her bird form or not, him knowing she has turned full-Crow, ears and all, is a risk I’m not ready to take. Who knows what he’ll do with it, considering what he did today.

White-hot anger boils in my throat, but I swallow it down, pulling the hood of my cloak onto Ayna’s head with a gentle hand, and slowly push to my feet.

My legs remain steady, the shrieking pain in my head reduced to a dull pounding, a small blessing. Ayna doesn’t object when I keep her hefted in my arm, her eyelids already drooping again and her breathing easing into the rhythm of slumber.

When I turn toward what was once the door and find a heap of rocks blocking my path, Kaira waves me in the other direction, behind the altar where I’d prayed to the God of Darkness to give me back my mate, and I wonder if I should be grateful or hateful for how he chose to return her to me—and his threat of handing her to my enemy.