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CHAPTER

FORTY-ONE

Oralia

By the time I was back in Infernis, it was as if I’d been gone for a century.

The timeless gods we’d brought with us gazed at the bones lining the castle walls with tears standing in their eyes. Felix stepped forward to place their hand over one, whispering in the old language. I could only pick out a few words— brother, love, rest .

Horace and Thorne appeared only moments later, mouths falling open in shock at the gods they had not seen in thousands of years. It was Kahliya who bridged the gap, pulling Horace into her arms and kissing his cheeks as if he were merely a boy.

“Maelith,” he murmured. “Mother…”

Petra and Cato approached Thorne. He gathered them up into one embrace, his booming laugh echoing off the stone. It was joy as I had not seen it in so long. Even Morana drifted toward us from Isthil, gazing impassively over the group before she was swept up into Harleena’s arms and kissed soundly.

I cradled the last piece of Ren as I skirted around the reunion and climbed the steps to the castle. Sidero waited inside, a beaming smile on their face I so rarely saw. They did not offer to take the bundle from me, but joined me on the walk down the corridor toward Thorne’s rooms, linking their arm through mine.

“The last piece was in Iapetos then?” Sidero asked, eyeing the dark fabric covering Ren’s head.

I nodded, pushing my magic forward to open the doors.

“What was it like?”

Blowing out a breath, I paused before the threshold. “It was what I sometimes imagined the tunnels to be before Ren destroyed them. Horrible and strange and yet…beautiful?”

Sidero hummed their understanding. “It was both a haven and a prison for them, I expect.”

“Yes, exactly,” I agreed before stepping into the room.

Thorne had laid Ren’s body out on the large table, a sheet covering most of it. I swallowed the lump forming, circling the granite slab to place the bundle in my arms down above the shoulders and neck.

“Are you ready, myhn lathira?” Thorne’s resonant voice was quiet for once as he stepped into the room and shut the door behind him.

I swallowed again, unable to find the words, and nodded instead.

“At each break, I have repaired the damage,” he explained, drawing back the sheet to show the faintly raised scars on Ren’s shoulders. “But without his heart…”

Without his heart, he would not rise. I nodded, stepping back as Thorne unwrapped his head. But I stared at my feet, at the mud caked on my boots, instead of at his work. This was an image I did not want seared into my mind. I was not sure if I could have survived it.

“Oralia…” Thorne murmured.

I looked up. There Ren was, lying upon the granite table as if he were merely sleeping. A thick red scar circled his throat. Where before there had been many silver threads drawing me toward each piece of him, there was only two now, one pulling me to the edge of the stone and the other to the beyond where the in-between lay. With shaking hands, I smoothed back his hair, combing through the tangles, blinking quickly each time my vision blurred. He was pale, as lifeless as a corpse, yet I could feel his magic within him and within me.

“Will you get me a knife,” I breathed. “One that will pierce my skin. And Samarah.”

Heavy silence followed my request until there was the clatter of a drawer opening, metal sliding against metal, and a dagger pressed into my palm. A few heartbeats later, the door swished open. The gentle click of bones announced Samarah’s presence. She did not touch me, but I caught her sweet earthy scent as she came closer.

Ren’s magic curled around me, the same strange tug now tapping at my skull, encouraging me to bring the dagger to my wrist.

“Oralia…” Sidero started.

“Quiet,” Samarah hushed.

I slashed the vein, blood blooming against my pale skin before I pressed it to Ren’s mouth. His throat did not work, but I used my free hand to massage the muscles, encouraging the blood down.

“Keep the wound open and my wrist at his mouth,” I instructed, unable to tear my attention away from Ren’s lifeless face. “Now, send me to the in-between.”

Her sickly sweet magic coated my tongue in the next breath, and the world went dark. I blinked. I was standing halfway up the mountain I’d seen whenever I shadow-walked while Ren stood a ways off at the base, staring up at me with furrowed brows.

“It is time to go, love,” I said, walking down the path to meet him.

His wings flared, pushing himself toward me as he gathered me up in his arms. “You did it.”

Not a question, only a confirmation of what he’d believed all along.

I breathed deep, nodding into his chest before moving back and keeping a hold of his hand. “We need to go. I do not have your wings, but—but soon, I promise.”

Ren touched his fingertips to the curve of my cheekbone. “It does not matter, eshara , as long as I am with you.”

Tilting my face to his, I rose to my tiptoes. He smiled, meeting me halfway to brush his lips against mine.

“Where is Asteria?” I asked as we parted, looking around for her silver wings.

Ren frowned. “She has returned to the tree she was imprisoned in. She said there was something she needed to see.”

There was more to the story. I could read it on his face. Guilt was swimming in his eyes, and his mouth firmed into a line. But I did not press him on it, only nodded and turned toward the mountain where a small, dark archway now waited. The silver cord connecting us tugged me through the arch and into the dark.

I took a step toward it, only for Ren to pull me back, his hand on my jaw as he pressed his lips to mine once more.

“I fear what I will become when I rise,” he breathed against my lips. “That I will be hollow and cold as I was when we first met.”

“Then I will recover those pieces as I did before.”

Those midnight eyes softened as they looked into mine. “And what of your lost pieces? Are they to be mended?”

Wrapping a hand around his wrist, I pressed a kiss to his palm. “I hope so.”

Our foreheads touched, and I longed for when this would be real, when his scent could surround me, and inhabit my world once more. We broke apart, our hands linking together before we stepped into the darkness beneath the mountain.

Pitch black. There was no other word for it. A blackness beyond darkness surrounded us as we walked. I could not see nor hear, and if Ren’s hand had not been in mine, I would have been sure I was alone. This could have been death. Perhaps if we lingered, it would have been. But Ren’s thumb brushed against mine, and I pushed forward with a confidence I could not truly feel.

I knew I should not look behind me. To look back at Ren would mean to resign us both to this darkness for an eternity. So we walked in silence, not even our breaths audible in my ears. The dark was thick, molding around my arms, my legs, and even the curves of my cheeks and lips.

Each step was the same as the last. I might have screamed, but if I did, the sound was swallowed by the dark before it ever reached my ears. After a while, however, there was the barest shimmer of light, like the sun reflecting on water high above. It brightened little by little, growing more vibrant until I was shielding my eyes from it, blindly walking into the light.

The scent of the sea hit me first. Spices. Wheels turning over cobblestones. I blinked, and color assaulted me from every angle. Mycelna. Standing a little to the side was the scarred god with the streak of white-blond in his hair. The half-skull mask was affixed to his face, ominous and bone-chilling.

“You are well?” he asked.

I nodded. “I am.”

He hummed, staring between us as if he could see through our skin and down to our bones. “You have found a way to restore him?”

“The blood is the key,” I answered.

The scarred god blinked a few times before nodding slowly.

Ren reached out a hand. “Talron, my old friend.”

But it was strange, though I heard the name Talron, it looked as if Ren had said another name entirely, and I’d sworn the other had been spoken beneath it at the same time.

The god, Talron, shook himself before clasping Ren’s with a familiarity that spoke of lifetimes. “It is a relief to see you and know the cycle begins again.”

Then he gestured for us to follow him up the winding path toward the temple he’d once taken me to. The streets were packed, and occasionally, we stopped to allow a cart to pass. Once, we stepped to the side as a procession of worshippers led by those with tinkling chains hanging around their faces wound their way up the mountain ahead, blue ash flicking from their fingertips. The midday sun beat against my bare shoulders, and as we waited, Ren’s fingertips slid across my upper back, touching the gold pins holding the strange dress in place.

“You look like a sacrifice,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to my shoulder.

Looking down at the pleated fabric, I frowned. I did look like a human maiden to be sacrificed. It was the same clothing from the other times I’d been here. Ren, too, was dressed in unfamiliar leathers, the same as the god who led us. His wings were gone, perhaps because I had not retrieved them. As we continued in the processional’s wake, with every step Ren took his face paled until he was breathing heavily, and I was supporting most of his weight.

“Come, friend.” Talron circled back and ducked beneath Ren’s other arm. “Your world awaits you.”

The heavy stone doors slid open, pulled by two women shrouded by gauzy fabric, delicate chains hanging over their faces to hold it in place—one of them was the same priestess who had led the group. They did not truly see us and, when I looked over my shoulder, it was to realize we had been leading another crowd of worshippers into the temple.

“Why are they following us?” I breathed, looking across Ren to the god.

He frowned, the movement pulling at the scars across his left cheek. “Many were lost this morning. Most of Mycelna is now in mourning.”

“It has begun?” Ren wheezed. Talron gave a soft noise of assent, and Ren gripped the god’s shoulder comfortingly. “Have you found her yet?”

We maneuvered around those gathered beneath the monstrously large statue in the middle of the temple, covered in a similar shroud to the ones the priestesses wore. Our companion guided us toward another small alcove before sighing heavily.

“Yes, though the fates have not deemed me ready. Another has been offered in her place.”

“Who? What is happening here?” I asked as we paused before an altar. A curtain swayed behind it with a phantom breeze.

The god ducked from beneath Ren’s arm, steadying him with a hand on his shoulder before moving around the altar to drag back the curtain. Darkness curled around the stone threshold like the shadows we knew all too well.

“What must happen for this world to right itself…or fall into ruin,” the god answered. “Go. Perhaps we will meet again in the future and all will be well.”

We stepped toward the darkness, but Ren paused and the two men gazed at one another. Ren lifted a shaking hand to curl around the god’s neck, pressing their brows together.

“You are ready,” Ren murmured. “She will accept you.”

Talron did not frown, but the heartbreak written across his features made my throat clench. I knew that look, had felt it when Ren had died. “I am afraid the price will be too high and her heart too cold.”

Ren shook his shoulder, and there was nothing either of us could say. We did not know this world or how it worked, and this god was bound by a power I could not understand. The fates , he’d said, as if they decided the path of the world. But he and Ren broke apart, and I slid beneath my mate’s arm once more.

“Thank you,” I murmured as I passed him, helping Ren through the threshold.

Talron nodded, pressing three fingers to his brow. “Open your heart, Oralia, it is the only way.”

The darkness swallowed us whole.

I blinked, the room coming back into focus, Samarah tapping my cheek with furrowed brows.

“Where did you go, darling?” Samarah was asking in a hushed voice, as if she wished not to wake the dead. “I could not find you.”

With a start, I jerked my arm toward my chest and cradled the wound on my wrist. But I could only look down at the god prone on the marble slab before reaching out to touch Ren’s face.

He had not woken.

“He is close, but he is waiting,” Samarah murmured, running a hand over Ren’s long hair.

Waiting for his heart to be returned. My pulse pounded in my ears—I had taken his heart, imbibed his power, and though the blood I’d given him had paved the way, he could not cross the final threshold.

“Take it,” I rasped.

She blinked up at me. Over her shoulder, Thorne wore a similar expression of confusion. My hand closed around the knife lying on the table, similar to the one Gunthar had used to send me to Mycelna.

“Open my chest and take half my heart. It is the only way.”