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CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

Oralia

I woke with a gasp, shooting upright in bed.

My hands clawed at my chest, the pounding of my heart sickening beneath my ribs. The room was dark. Only small threads of morning light slipped through the heavy curtains. Every time I blinked, I saw Ren’s face and felt his mouth on mine.

I am sorry, love , he’d said.

Real. It had been so real. The way it had standing beneath the baking sun on the docks of the human realm with the scarred god. Yet it could not have been real. Ren was gone, his magic waiting in some space beyond us for a body to return to. My mind was merely grasping for comfort, tired from our journey and the battle we’d fought.

But for a moment, right before I’d woken, I’d hoped. But the hope shattered with the realization that it was merely a dream. A sob slipped through my lips. I fisted the sheets, bowing forward until the fabric muffled my scream.

I wanted Ren—no, I needed him. It did not matter how much power lay within me or how the others believed we might win this war without him. I could not do this without him. Each breath hurt as I gasped for air, allowing the pain to leach from my body like poison from a wound.

As the light brightened in the room with the rays of dawn spilling through the cracks in the curtain, I quieted. The tears dried in tracks across my cheeks and left in their wake merely a hollow numbness.

My brilliant mate. Ren’s voice was a mere memory in my ears. I love you.

The memory was enough to pull me from our bed and usher me out into the grounds below.

* * *

The maze stood sentinel between Rathyra and Pyralis, forming from the branches of a great tree growing on its side, gnarled and strengthened by time.

“Have you spoken with him before?” I asked Sidero, who had kept me company once I’d eventually made my way out of bed.

When Sidero had arrived with a tray of food, it was a relief to settle near the window in the sitting room and watch Infernis out the window. We’d spoken of mindless things, from the weather to what I would wear, and for a moment, I could pretend it was any other morning. I could pretend Ren was down with Horace and Dimitri seeing to the souls, and soon, he would crash through the door, throw his baldric to the floor, and tug me into his arms.

Eshara, he would purr before his mouth would cover mine.

“I have not spoken with Zayne,” Sidero answered, breaking through my reverie. They were gazing at the entrance of the maze with its monstrous walls made of tangled branches and rotted leaves.

I rolled my lips together, wringing my fingers in front of my gown before releasing them. My gloves were tucked into one of my pockets, and I savored the feel of the mist on my palms, the fabric of my skirts beneath my hands. The maze itself was unknown as most did not venture through it. There had been a purpose long ago, but it was rarely used now. Even Thorne had difficulty recalling the last time Horace had sent a soul there. I got the impression it was similar to the caves within the Tylith mountains where souls went to face their fears.

“Would you like me to go with you?” Sidero offered, gesturing toward the looming archway.

Shaking my head, I managed a small smile for my friend. Already my magic was prickling at the back of my neck, speaking to me without words. “No, thank you.”

They nodded, squeezing my arm before they placed a palm over their heart. “I will find you before dinner, yes?”

“Of course,” I answered. Aelestor, Drystan, and I had decided to leave the next morning. I’d begrudgingly agreed to wait a day to gather supplies, as this piece felt farther than the others and…stranger. Though I could not have quantified what made me feel so.

They had all insisted upon dinner that evening, convincing me it was best for the morale of our people to see a bit of normalcy within the kingdom. I did not know if I would be able to stomach a single bite at the table—the table where I’d first realized the growing desire between Ren and me.

My first step through the entrance of my maze shot a shiver down my spine, shadows instinctively sliding over my shoulders like a shield. Over the threshold, the world went quiet. Morning light dimmed until it could have been twilight. The scent of earth and decay overpowered any other sense until I was choking.

I turned right at an intersection before pausing, a sense of wrongness curling my gut and dewing on the back of my neck until I backtracked and took the opposite path. Relief washed away the discomfort as I took another left, traveling deeper into the maze, passing through courtyards of perfect circles, some bare and others with pits deeper than I could see or sense. Each wrong turn I took was another wave of sickness, pushing me toward… somewhere .

Ahead there was break in the maze. The center, I was sure of it. Seated in the middle, legs dangling over another pit, sat a god.

He did not appear surprised to see me as I stepped from one of the many paths and tugged on my gloves. With a languid confidence, he pushed to his feet, hand covering his heart. This was the god I’d spotted only a few times within the castle: once at my coronation, and another when our inner circle had first sworn fealty to me before I’d left the kingdom, and then the morning I’d arrived back in Infernis.

Citrine eyes stared back at me, and I could have sworn I saw them flare with power the way Horace’s did. Some recognition sparked in his gaze. His heavy black brows furrowed as his hand dropped, head tilting to the side. The skin across my face prickled with his inspection, and I took a step forward, offering my hand.

“Oralia.”

His lips flattened into a suppressed smile, and he nodded as if to say, Yes, of course I know who you are . Skin rasped against the fabric of my glove, but it was not the callouses of warriors but scars—deep burns crisscrossing over his palms.

“Are you Zayne?”

The god gave another small smile, dipped his head in confirmation, and patted two fingers to his chest. I frowned, wondering why he did not speak, but he guided me toward the pit with the hand he held. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, and I dug my heels into the soft earth.

“No… no .” I was ashamed at the break in my voice even as my body shook.

But he shushed me in soft, crooning noises, let go, and settled himself on the edge as before. With one scarred hand, he gestured to the darkness below his feet, and the other patted the ground beside him. Magic tapped at my consciousness, like a hand on the back of my neck pushing me forward until I tentatively settled at the edge, feet tucked to my side instead of dangling off into the abyss.

I was not sure I liked this new form of my power if it wanted me to sit at the edge of a vast chasm.

Zayne did not comment on my trepidation, only giving another hum in the back of his throat. I blew out a breath, carefully peering over the edge before jerking back when my head swam and the world tilted.

“How can you stand it?” I asked, gesturing toward the pit.

With pursed lips, he tilted his head from side to side and pointed at the dark beneath his feet before settling his hand again behind him on the ground. All right. I could not say it was the most helpful response, and I was starting to understand what Thorne meant. Zayne did not appear inclined to speak, though every few minutes, he gestured toward the pit as if to remind me it was there.

I worried the edge of one of my gloves, trying my best not to look over the edge. “Thorne said you are a God of Fire…”

Zayne frowned, the deep golden skin of his cheeks drawing down. One hand rose, fingers curling into a relaxed fist before opening once more. A single flame danced across his palms, and he tilted his hand, sliding it to each fingertip before holding it out to me. When I did nothing, he sat forward, offering his palm a little more firmly.

I shook my head. “I do not understand.”

He sighed heavily, and my cheeks heated at his obvious disappointment. But then, he tapped two fingers to his chest before reaching forward to do the same motion over my heart and then offered me the flame.

Was he saying we were the same?

“That is why I am here,” I said, leaning away from the fire before it caught my hair. “I need you to teach me. I cannot control it.”

With a nod, he offered me his hand once more before slowly reaching for mine. I stiffened when he carefully took my wrist, vanishing the flame to tug off my black glove. There was an odd sort of reverence in the way he handled it, laying it on the ground between us before summoning the flame once more.

“It is not safe,” I murmured as he maneuvered my hand palm up before me by gently twisting my wrist.

Zayne only smiled before placing his fingertips barely a breadth from mine, flame dancing across his scarred flesh, and blew gently as one might upon an ember. Warmth tingled across my fingers, magic unfurling beneath my skin, prickling as it might in a lightning storm. He did not appear concerned when nothing happened, only smiled encouragingly, and squeezed my arm. I frowned but did not move as he took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and then tapped two fingers to my chest.

I copied the movement. Nodding, he breathed again, a hum of satisfaction low in his throat when I mirrored it. We breathed, slow and steady, and each exhale unwound another tendril of tension from my shoulders. My power sighed in relief before the unfamiliar heat sizzled beneath my palm, and with one final exhale, Zayne blew gently across the flame.

The fire danced across my fingers.

I wondered again how he’d come to attain the scars on his hands since this fire did not burn. It only lingered for a moment on my palm before sputtering and winking out with the breeze. Zayne chuckled, nodding again in approval before vanishing his own and picking up my glove. With careful movements, he wiped the dirt from the fabric before offering it to me, chin dipped respectfully.

“Will you teach me?”

The smile slipped from his lips, eyes tightening before he gestured again to my now-covered hand.

“I need someone to teach me like before with my shadows.”

Zayne blew out a breath, lips curled down in distaste as he gazed into the pit. His mouth tensed and relaxed, throat working with a swallow. The longer I observed him, the more power I could sense as if it was unfurling from him in waves. His magic was vast with power as deep as the pit below us. Eventually, he nodded, pushed to his feet, and wiped his hands on his trousers before offering me assistance.

But he did not let my hand go, only guided me slowly into the maze, winding a dizzying path with confident steps. Sometimes, he hummed, and I thought the sound was familiar, some echo of the song Asteria had taught me when I was young before my own song of creation had taken form when prime began. Yet nothing grew or changed as we walked, it was merely comfort in the quiet.

“Are you taking me somewhere to train?” I asked, squinting at the light ahead. Perhaps it was another courtyard, easier to maneuver through without a pit.

We stepped across the threshold, and I blinked in the afternoon light, the mist slithering around my shoulders and cheeks. Far off, the grasses of Pyralis waved in the breeze and the soft tinkle of laughter and clanking of metalwork from Rathyra filtered through the air. Gently, two fingers tapped my shoulder. A hand squeezed mine, and I turned back to him.

“I thought…” My voice trailed off as he bowed his head with a hand pressed to his heart.

He tapped his chest twice, then my own, gesturing to the maze, and I thought I understood.

“When I return?” I clarified.

Zayne nodded, dipped his chin low, and ambled over the threshold, the darkness swallowing him whole.