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CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Oralia

I woke to the light of a muted dawn rising over the tops of the Tylith Mountains.

For a few moments, I lay gazing up at the brightening sky. The mist was heavy around my shoulders before I rolled to a seat. I gave my head an experimental shake, trying to quantify the strange feeling thrumming through my bones. My hands flexed, then relaxed, the wounds angry and raw upon my wrists and throat. Somehow, I was here. I was alive.

And yet, I knew what I had seen was more than a simple dream. The god’s hand on my arm had been too real. The scents of the city—Yesinda, he called it, in the country of Mycelna—were too clear. My magic had taken my consciousness there for a purpose. Now I had to understand why.

It took me a little longer to make my way to my feet, sluggish from the kratus resin working through my system. But I managed eventually to stand, reaching out a tentative hand to my power, which greeted me with relief before shepherding me home through the in-between.

I appeared in our chambers with a sigh that turned into a strangled groan. Ren was everywhere. His presence dripped from every surface, and each sight was a stab through the heart. A dark cloak thrown over one of the dark-winged chairs, a pair of scuffed boots beside the door, both physical reminders of what I had lost. The air thinned, hands clamped around my throat, and I could no longer find the space I needed to breathe.

My fingers are tangled in front of me, nails digging at my palms. A strange rustling in the room I realized a moment later was the sound of my breath scratching at my throat. Blood flaked off my skin when I twisted my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could hide from even the scent of him lingering here. My bones filled with lead. My knees weakened with the weight until I staggered, catching myself on one of the chairs and running my fingers over the soft fabric of his cloak.

How could I live and yet feel such agony? No, this feeling was beyond agony. It was despair without end, a great yawning ocean I did not know how to swim. Surely, I would die from this. Any moment now the darkness would take hold to send my magic back to the earth. And yet the darkness did not come, my magic did not rise, and his cloak merely bunched beneath my palms as any ordinary piece of clothing.

“Oralia.” Sidero’s voice was soft. Softer still was their hand pressed between my shoulders, turning me toward their wide chest.

They wrapped me tightly in their embrace, holding me as if it might prevent me from falling to pieces. I clung to them, even going so far as to wrap a hand around their braid as if it might keep me anchored here to this place.

“I wish I had your power…that I could offer you some semblance of the peace you have offered others.”

I did not reply. There was no need. Because until Ren was restored, I would never know peace, and Sidero knew it. We did not speak another word as we parted. In the same silence, they guided me into the bathing chamber, offering a hand into the steaming tub. Not even as they helped me cleanse my wounds did we fill the quiet with our usual chatter. The stinging pain of cleansing each cut was a mere wisp of a cloud passing over an endless sky in comparison to the storm raging through my heart.

It was not until the day had fully broken outside the tall windows that I spoke from my seat on the edge of Ren’s side of the bed. I pressed my hand to his pillow. His scent here was faint as if he had not slept in days. Timeless gods did not need sleep, though it helped to refresh them in times of great stress, or so Ren had explained. But I touched my pillow only to realize his scent was stronger here as if he’d chosen my side of the bed as I now chose his.

Sidero was puttering around the room, but all I wanted them to do was to sit with me, to breathe here in this empty space.

“Leave it,” I said, my voice a bit too harsh as they reached for Ren’s cloak.

They froze, hand only a hair’s breadth away from the cloak before it fell. I exhaled, shoulders slumping and chin dropping to my chest. I had slept the whole day and night at the base of the mountains, and yet I could sleep for another century.

“Tell me what you need.” They drifted toward the bed and covered my hand with theirs. “Give me a task, Oralia.”

Their voice broke on the last request, some of their grief cracking the words. I took a deep breath, shook my head to clear it, and squeezed their fingers once.

“Would you please gather Horace, Thorne, Aelestor, Mecrucio, Dimitri, and Drystan if it’s not too much trouble?” I traced the seam of the pillowcase with my free hand. “I would like to meet with them in the library.”

* * *

By the time I dressed and reached the library, everyone was assembled. Horace stood by the mantel with a hand resting on the dark wood as he stared into the flames with Mecrucio beside him. Thorne leaned over one of the tall chairs, speaking quietly to Dimitri, who stood on the other side with a hand wrapped around Drystan’s shoulder. But it was Aelestor who stood closest to the door as if waiting for my arrival. Sidero was beside him.

“Where were you?” Aelestor asked the moment I appeared, striding forward to assess the now-healing wounds with gray eyes.

My chin jutted higher. “At the base of the Tylith. I needed some…time.”

Something in Aelestor softened at the tight expression on my face. His arms dropped from his chest. But Drystan stepped between us, full brows furrowed. He paid no attention to the God of Storms at his back, who huffed quietly about how we were in the middle of something, as Drystan tentatively brushed the hair back from my cheek. I knew the action was strange for him, regardless of fact that the power to turn the living to ash only lived in my hands. For two and a half centuries, this sort of affection had been forbidden.

“ Burning Suns , Oralia, I was so worried,” he breathed, resting his hands on my shoulders.

For a moment, a muscle in his jaw ticked, and though I wanted to collapse within myself, I did not. Instead, I nodded once, moving into his embrace with a sigh.

“You are queen,” he murmured as if I alone could hear.

I nodded against his chest. “I am.”

Drystan’s sigh swirled the hair around my face and he drew back. “When you left Aethera the first time, was it of your own free will? Did you know of Renwick?”

Confusion played across his features, heavy brows drawing together. In his eyes—a demigod pushing a millennium, I now realized, if Dimitri was his brother—I was still a child of five he would sling up onto his shoulders. My time in Infernis for him had been merely a blink of an eye and yet also an eternity.

“No, I was not taken of my own free will. But throughout my time here, Ren and I were drawn to each other. Our magic is…kindred.”

My throat burned. I cleared it, squeezing my eyes shut as if it might stop the images rolling through my mind. A clearing. Asphodel flowers. The first time Ren said my name.

Drystan did not look angry, nor did he look concerned. Instead, there was merely a heavy sort of pain lingering in the corners of his eyes. Perhaps it was regret that I had not trusted him enough to keep my secret.

“Kindred,” he repeated. “And so Renwick is…”

“He is my mate. We soul-bonded a little over a week ago.”

A slight flush crept through his cheeks, eyes taking on a glassy quality before he sniffed. “I would have liked to see that.”

I did my best to give him a small smile. “I would have liked you there.”

Finally, I pulled away, squeezed his fabric-covered shoulder once, and stepped around him toward Ren’s inner circle. They all looked haggard as if the last few days had been agonizing—and stars, they probably had. I was unsure what would happen to Infernis if both Ren and I were gone.

But it was to Mecrucio and Aelestor I looked, holding each of their gazes for a long moment before I spoke the words I’d heard Ren say countless times.

“Tell me what you know.”