Page 21

CHAPTER

TWENTY

Renwick

Had it been days or hours? Weeks or centuries? I could not tell as we wandered through the in-between. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw Oralia, her face contorted with grief, her cries echoing through my ears. It was not the memory I wanted to hold of my mate, and yet it was what burned the brightest when we stopped to rest, when my mother stretched her wings and took to the skies for brief flights, leaving me stranded on the ground. I had not known such a sight could hurt so much.

A tall mountain loomed beside us, its jagged black peak visible from our vantage point. I groaned, frustration itching through my veins as Asteria perched beneath a gnarled tree, its bark black in the ever-present night.

“What is the point of this wandering?” The words slipped through my clenched teeth, nails biting into my palms.

Asteria looked at me sadly, hands clasped around her knees, gray robe untouched by the miles we had traveled, the wild woods we traversed. Time was different here. I could feel it with each breath I took, though I could not understand the disparity. But we moved through space strangely, one vista melting into the next like space folding upon itself.

“I know you wish me to tell you there is some reasoning to my wandering,” she murmured, reaching out to stroke the trunk beside her. “But I have none.”

“Then why do we walk? Where are we going?” My tone was sharp, much too sharp.

Her expression only melted into one of a sad sort of acceptance. “I have walked this realm for millennia, Son, and it is for no other purpose than to stave off the sorrow that creeps in when I rest. To run from the madness lingering like a shadow from so much time alone.”

The fire of my frustration blazed into an inferno. Typhon had done this, a co-conspirator with our father, and had subjected my mother to this… torment. I roared, turning my fury on the tree before us. I slammed my fists into its sharp bark, screaming as the wood splintered beneath my hands, as pain blossomed across my knuckles.

Oralia flashed behind my lids, her frightened face another gash within my heart. I roared again. Each blow did nothing to stem the raging tide. The pain, instead, increased, multiplied, until I was heaving in the night, my screams echoing off the mountainside.

“Quiet,” Asteria soothed, brushing back the hair from my face as I knelt before the destroyed tree with my skin throbbing.

My breath whistled through my lungs, and I looked down at my hands, brows furrowed. It was not blood dripping from my knuckles, but an odd, shimmering substance.

“A kratus tree…”

My mother gave a noise of agreement, reaching forward to sift the pieces of wood and leaves through her hands. “Yes, it was.”

Power unfurled through my veins with my heightening senses. I took a deep inhale, then another. Strange, it was as if I could smell the mist of Infernis—the mist that I hoped was clinging to Infernis in my absence. And when I turned, I thought someone had been speaking, there was a flicker of light within the mountains.

The Tylith Mountains.

“Mother…” I breathed, rising to my feet.

Asteria turned, frowning and following my line of sight. “What is it?”

With a shaking hand, I pointed at the mountains, at the caves carved into the sides, the strange shimmering liquid dripping from the deep cuts within my hands onto the ground that now turned bright green beneath my feet. “Do you see?”

But my mother only shook her head, stepping closer to examine the wounds. The luminescent fluid smeared across her palms as she pulled a few splinters free and stiffened, breathing deep. “What is that?”

My heart gave an unsteady lurch. “It is the mist I created to separate Infernis from Aethera.” I spun her, pointing again to the light within the mountains. “And those are the Tylith Mountains, where souls go to face their deepest fears.”

Her jaw slackened, hands flying to cover her mouth. “How have you done this?”

I tugged her hands from her face, looking at the silver smeared across our skin. “This must be my blood, only I do not recognize it.”

“But this is not your body. It cannot be blood,” Asteria murmured, turning over my hands and observing the slow-healing wounds before closing her eyes and breathing deep. Her connection to this place was strong after millennia trapped here, and I knew she’d found ways of communing for brief moments with the waking world, though only through those who dreamed or were fevered, as Oralia had been as a girl. “It is the essence of your magic, I believe. The purest form of your power.”

That essence had created a rift within the in-between, a window into the waking world through which we walked as phantoms. I did not stop to think, only grabbed up a shard of wood and ran toward where I knew the castle would be. The landscape blurred as if I was caught in a gauzy curtain, the outline of the elm tree Oralia and I would sit beneath fading in and out of focus. A silver thread tugged through my chest, calling out. I ran faster, the flapping of Asteria’s wings at my back as she followed my progress.

I skittered to a stop, breaths heaving, as there before me a god with waving sunset hair walked toward the Athal. The water of the river was gentle, merely a bubbling, and my magic told me this was not truly Oralia, only her dreaming form I had seen before.

“ Eshara ,” I called softly as I would with one who walked while they slept.

Oralia stopped with the slowness of dreamers, turning with a dazed look on her face, a smile tipping up her lips. Cautiously, I approached, my hands now covered in the dried magic, and tugged her from the shores.

“I do not want…” her voice trailed off, attention wandering back to the river.

She did not want to remember. Pain sliced through my heart. Suffering was plain upon her face, the dark circles beneath her eyes and the heavy way her shoulders hung. I brushed back the hair from her cheeks, tilting her face up to mine.

“I do not blame you,” I answered, pressing a kiss to the space between her brows.

Awareness prickled at the back of my neck. She did not appear to truly hear me, as if the veil between us fluttered, filling her ears. I took a step back, her hands falling back to her sides when I let go. Perhaps…

“I am sorry, love.” The words were low as I brought the jagged piece of wood to my palms, slashing open the skin so magic poured between my fingertips.

Closing the distance, I pressed my hands to her face, the shimmering magic smearing across her freckles before I closed my mouth over hers. At first, her lips were slow, a mere approximation of a kiss. But as the seconds lengthened, a whimper slipped between us, her mouth firming and her fingers scrambling across my back and clutching me tighter.

“ Ren ,” she cried, drawing back with clear eyes before they filled with tears.

I stroked her cheek, the blood wet on her face, before kissing her again. “I do not know how long we have.”

She frowned, clutching me tighter, pressing her forehead to my chest. “This is a dream.”

I shushed her, my hands closing over her shoulders to push her back. “No, this is the space between dreams, the moment between sleeping and waking.”

Oralia shook her head, fingertips gliding over my jaw greedily, unable to tear her gaze from my face as I was hers. “I do not understand.”

“It does not matter right now. Tell me what is happening.”

My arms closed around her shoulders, unable to endure even a sliver of space between us. Her breaths came out jagged, and she fought the tears threatening as she told me in fits and bursts of Typhon and his plan, my heart sent to Infernis as a taunt. How she’d taken it into herself and strengthened our bond.

“My brilliant mate.” I kissed her hair, holding her tighter while she continued. Her story was a waterfall, unable to be contained: the threads of the bond between us, how she was following them to find the pieces of me, the plan she had to resurrect me from this realm.

But already her voice was slowing, the dreamlike quality taking over. I gripped the wood tighter in my grip before a hand covered my wrist.

“It might not be safe,” Asteria cautioned. “Her mind needs rest.”

Oralia blinked up at my mother with a dazed sort of warmth, murmuring her name with reverence. Asteria leaned forward, brushing a kiss across her brow.

“Keep going, little corvus,” she said to my mate before stepping back. “You are on the right path.”

I nodded, pressing another kiss to Oralia’s cheek. Her body grew limp in my arms.

“Ren…” Oralia’s voice was distant, fingers falling from my tunic.

“I love you,” I called as her body faded with the deepening mist, only catching the faint echo of her returning the sentiment.

She was finding the pieces, pulling me back together. I turned to look up at Asteria, her fingers twisted with worry in her robes as she gazed at the place where Oralia had stood, motherly affection and concern plain on her pale face. I would return to the world, and I would take my revenge—I was sure of it.

But what of my mother?