Page 10

CHAPTER

NINE

Renwick

Stars.

So many of them I could not keep count. They twinkled brightly all around me, even beneath my feet.

I ran a hand over my face and moved through this strange space. There was no pain here, no hollow throb within my chest. There was none of the coldness of resurrection. It was also not the strange place I usually found myself in while my soul waited for my body to revive. No bright colors or scent of spices on the air—no long-forgotten god I never spoke of there to share my pain with.

Though it was unfamiliar, I thought I recognized the magic flowing through the air, the hum of power vibrating against my skin. A star shot across the sky to my left, a beacon of light flaring across the dark before dying out. My feet carried me in slow steps toward the dying star as I tapped my chest, searching deep within my power for an echo of the bond.

It was there, but silent, a string hanging limp within eternity. I could not pluck the cord, nor follow it to Oralia. Instead, it was merely the acknowledgment of our bond, the understanding that should we be reunited, it too would live on.

Memories came back slowly through flashes of pain and bright light. The agony of the arrows piercing my skin. The last breath of my magic pushed out to carry Oralia through the mist along with her guard, who I knew would protect her with his life. Mecrucio and Aelestor would need to stay hidden within Aethera so they could pass information to Oralia and the others.

Her face swam behind my lids, the blood splattered across her cheeks, pale lips drawn back as she screamed my name. But I did not want to carry the horrible memory. Not when so much of my existence was nothing but ice and violence and blood. I would not allow Typhon to destroy this too.

And so, instead, I remembered the look on her face as she’d strode into my rooms, hair wild and skin flushed. Her sapphire dress had clung to the curve of her waist, her bitten lips were pink, and her fingers tangled in front of her skirts.

I want you, Ren , she had said. Her first admission of her feelings for me.

That was the memory I would carry, not her horror as her mate was wrenched limb from limb.

Soft grass appeared beneath me. The sweet scent of it heavy on the air with each step. The night was dark, casting the grass and the forest beyond into shadow. These woods were unlike any I’d seen in millennia—a forest so thick one could not walk in a straight line. I slipped through the trunks, learning their rough texture and trailing my fingers across the soft spines dripping from branches.

I thought perhaps I knew this place from my childhood if one could call it such a thing when time had not yet been created. It was an era of my existence I struggled to quantify as events did not move in a linear fashion but merely overlapped one on top of the other. It was a sense of being and an acknowledgment of those around me—gods who had survived after the Great Mothers created the first moment and others who had been lost to us through creation, never to be seen again.

The dense forest lightened as I walked, untouched by thirst or fatigue, as it had been before time. I stepped between two thick trunks, finding a wide clearing with a single fallen tree cast within as if its fellows were in mourning. The bark was rough beneath my palm and dry save for the moss climbing up one side.

Was this to be my existence now: an endless wandering through this forest until I grew mad with grief? I sighed, squatting down to observe the decay rotting through the bark against the grass. Relief swam through my veins.

Decay meant time. I was not beyond it. Though I was somewhere else, I still was . Which meant, perhaps, there was a way out.

“I do not know if there is a way out,” a voice murmured.

I jolted to my feet. My heartbeat hammered in my veins while I spun toward the voice. My throat clenched and I stumbled toward a woman with long black hair waving around her face, a gentle smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. Silvery wings flared behind her, each flutter sending shimmering light into the sky. She held out her luminous pale arms, fingers spread wide as stars dripped from her palms.

And though I was taller than she, I fell into her embrace as a boy might while she cradled the back of my head tenderly. She made a comforting sound, rocking me from side to side. I gripped her tightly for another heartbeat before pulling back to touch her cheeks and gaze into her eyes—the same size and shape as mine. She did the same, pushing back my hair as she drank me up as greedily as I did her.

“ Maelith ,” I breathed.

The smile on her face was sad as she touched the space between my brows.

“Oh, my son…what ruin you and your brother have wrought.”