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CHAPTER

SIX

Renwick

This was a trap.

My power pulled me from the castle to the river, from Vakarys’s boat to the shore. I shadow walked through the in-between to find myself at the line of Aethera, ready to shift, only to realize there was no tang of Typhon’s magic on my tongue. Only the sounds of clanking chains and ragged breath I knew all too well rang through the silence.

Unease curled within my gut, my instincts roaring to turn back, to find another way. But then I caught sight of Oralia kneeling before a gilded god, the scent of her blood on the wind flooding through my senses. Typhon questioned her worth within my heart and kingdom. Yes, this was absolutely a trap.

But there was no other choice. Not when Typhon raised Caston’s golden sword above his head, the dying light of the day glinting on the blade. Oralia did not look afraid, and it scared me more than my half brother wielding a sword above my mate. No, she merely looked resigned.

“You do not know who I am, do you?” Her voice in my ears after so many long days apart was a balm to the open wound of my heart.

Her hair was wild in the breeze, a few strands sticking to the blood sliding down her throat. Did she know I would come for her? I pulled the shadows to me, reappearing only a few paces away from them and, with a flick of my fingers, wrenched the sword from Typhon’s grasp, all but shouting her true title for Aethera to hear.

“ Lathira na Thurath —you remember our old language, do you not?” My voice was cold, an imitation of what it had been before Oralia’s power had stitched me back together. “ Myhn lathira na thurath: nat urhum rhyonath.”

Typhon’s lip curled in distaste, but I knew he understood the words even as he abhorred the old language we’d shared since before time. The language he’d turned his back on the moment he placed a golden crown upon his head and began ruling Aethera with a gilded fist.

“Not you?” he asked, a golden brow raised with the first words he’d spoken to me in centuries.

I shook my head. “Not me. Her.”

The wind blew through the field, her scent mixing with the wildflowers and other gods’. Only a glance, I told myself, but when our eyes met, I could not tear my gaze from hers. Blood was splattered across her cheeks, sliding down her throat beneath the collar digging into her skin and pooling in the thin fabric of her white gown as if she were the kind of sacrifice the humans in their realm offered to their gods. Fire ignited in my veins. My hand closed over the sword until the metal cracked within my grip.

They would all pay for this. I would raze this kingdom and allow a new one to rise from its ashes. My shadows flared, spooling out. Golden soldiers cried into the wind before falling to the ground.

“Ren,” she breathed, eyes wide.

I tore my gaze from her and back to Typhon. But his expression was not one of fear or uncertainty, merely satisfaction and amusement. I had played right into his hands. But if Oralia survived, I would not regret it—not for a single moment.

“What will you do when you destroy the only two gods who might rule Infernis, Brother?” I asked, rolling the sword over my wrist before catching it again.

Typhon smiled, the expression so akin to the one he’d worn when our father announced the murder of my mother it forced another tide of fire to burn beneath my skin. Once, we had fought as brothers did with playful boasting and competitions to prove who was worthy of the title of heir. I had even thought he loved my mother, revered and respected her as I did and it had made his betrayal all the more bitter. But our father had twisted Typhon and his insecurities, molding him in his image until the bond between us was as poisoned and tainted as daemoni venom.

It had been countless millennia since I had recognized the god before me as anything other than an enemy.

With a shrug, he gestured to Oralia at his feet. A glimmer of red flashed on his hand, there and gone before I could fully see it. Yet ice cracked through my veins. It couldn’t be, not after so many thousands of years. I blinked, inspecting the chains again, noting the way they ate the dying orange light in the sky. Oralia could not call her magic any more than she could move.

Those chains were the work of our father, Daeymon, who had thirsted for other gods’ powers to be his own—to possess all the power of the universe.

Typhon was truly smiling now, and the expression was nothing like the one he’d worn when we were children. His hands spread wide. “I have all I need right here. Her death is merely another step on the road to power.”

Behind him, soldiers shuffled. One fought against bonds that required four demigods to hold him. Aelestor placed his hand upon his sword, gray eyes fixed intently upon me, waiting for a signal. But I had none to give.

“And me? How will you destroy a timeless god who cannot die?”

Not truly. Typhon knew death would not take hold—I would merely rise again. Yet I dreaded the next death and what I might lose. Would it be my mercy, my hope, my ability to love? And would Oralia be there to put the pieces back together again? But perhaps I did not want those things if she was not in this world any longer.

My magic pressed against the barrier barring me from Oralia, searching for any cracks. But there was nothing, merely the empty shell where she should live within my heart. The only thing left was a mere shimmer of our soul bond connecting our hearts.

“I suppose you will have to wait and see,” Typhon answered, flicking his fingers.

A faint hiss slithered through the air.

I slid a foot back, knees bent and ready to spring. My shadows snapped out, catching the first arrow before it could hit its mark, crushing it into dust. I grinned, lips parting to tell Typhon he would have to do better.

Blinding pain exploded across my shoulder. My shadows flickered, but I grit my teeth, forcing my gaze to remain steady on him. One step, then another.

“Ren!” Oralia screamed.

Another shooting pain sliced through my abdomen this time. I wrapped my hand around the arrow only to find it would not budge. But I leaned forward, intent on my goal before my torso was wrenched backward, white light shooting into one thigh, then the other. My tongue thickened with the kratus resin bleeding into my veins, stifling my strength and my magic. I could remember so clearly the last time I’d experienced this numbing pain, two and a half centuries ago when Typhon had shot me through the heart with an arrow hewn from the tree in which my mother’s magic lived.

But I would not give in. I jerked, reaching for the arrow embedded in my skin before another shot through the air and into my hand. I staggered, falling to my knees, arms spread wide. My magic pulsed within my veins as I sought her out. Oralia was clawing at the earth, pulling against her shackles, blood pouring furiously from her throat and wrists.

How could we have gone so wrong?

According to my spies, Typhon had not known she was anything other than a prisoner. We had been reassured again and again that she would be welcome back into the kingdom with open arms. He could not penetrate the mist, though a few of his soldiers had slipped through. But we had dispatched them with quick efficiency—unless we had missed some in our haste to ready Oralia for this fool’s errand.

Typhon strode forward, another sword hanging loosely in his grip, but I did not spare him a moment’s notice. I leaned to the side, testing the strength of my bonds, unwilling to lose sight of Oralia for even a heartbeat while I drew up the last of my power. Pale lips, pale cheeks, wide green eyes, more beautiful than the clearest sunset or the brightest dawn.

She was as beautiful now as she had been when we knelt before our kingdom and placed the pomegranate seeds upon each other’s tongues. When we had spoken the words of the old language to bind our souls together. But it was not her beauty calling to my soul, it was her strength—her fire.

Oralia would survive this. I knew it. I did not believe anymore in the power of the Great Mothers or the universe, not the rightness of magic or the workings of the so-called fates from other realms.

No, the only thing I believed in was her.

“ Eshara ,” I breathed, sending out the last of my magic, slicing through the bonds at her throat and wrists—weak points in the chains I knew were there because I’d watched Daeymon craft them with his own hands.

Hot agony ate through my shoulder followed by a heavy, sickening wrench. Then the other, nausea rippling through my gut. But my eyes did not leave her. Her lips silently formed my name over and over. She was frozen to the ground, even as the collar and shackles fell around her.

“I lay my heart in your hands.” The words, the echo of our soul-bonding vows, rasped through my lips—the final thought I had before the golden sword caught the fiery light of the sun.

Then blackness.

Oblivion.

Mist and shadow.

And so many stars.