Page 4 of Reign of Stars and Fire

Calista’s profile pinched as she honed her glare on the rose. “Don’t like to be pushed.”

Who the hells was she talking to?

A shudder rippled through her bony body as she picked up the parchment she’d been using. An ink blot was on the corner, but she didn’t pay it much mind before she held the parchment over the candleflame.

Once the fire caught, the paper was seized in a plume of midnight blue before a sprinkle of ashes piled on the tabletop. Calista let out a loud, long breath, then dropped her forehead to the tops of her hands, as though too exhausted to stay upright.

“You gonna keep staring at me, Raven Queen, or come talk with me?”

The girl had eyes in the backside of her skull. Worse than Eryka, she bleeding knew everything.

I pulled back the quilt and strode across the flat in less than a dozen paces. The chair across from her wobbled when I sat.

Calista’s eyes were like glacier pools, a captivating blue with a touch of green. Almost familiar, almost comforting. Her hair reminded me too much of Ari’s. A golden autumn wheat, and like his, Calista’s never seemed to be anything but a tad messy. Rolls of corded braids were scattered amidst the shoulder-length waves and rounded ears poked through.

She was young, but not a child. More like Eryka or Gunnar.

“You wrote a fate path?”

Calista glanced at the pile of ashes. “Told you, we’re in a dark tale. Bits and pieces need to be written with care. Besides, we can’t expect the Golden King to just sit there while we do all the work.”

“Golden King?”

“That’s what I’m calling your chatty lover now. Stand-in King worked for a time, but now . . . I don’t know, Golden King came to me and I’m keeping it.”

The title, the name, something about it jabbed at shadows in my mind. More memories? A thought, a truth I couldn’t recall.

“Why write a tale for Ari when he’s—”

“Sleeping. I know.” Calista brushed the strange blue tinted ashes off the table. “But fae sleep isn’t normal, now is it? Us women do enough, we better make the men do something while they can.”

“What can he do?”

“I suppose that’ll be up to him to let go and find lost things.”

Lost things?

“Did you write a fate to cure him?” It couldn’t be so simple. She told me it wouldn’t be.

“The cure for that blood poison is on us, Raven Queen.”

“Then what was it you wrote?”

“One thing you ought to understand about me is when I get a feeling, I follow it. I’ve got a feeling there might be something, or someone, who can help guide him through whatever’s going on in his head.”

My stomach clenched. “What the hells do you mean ‘what’s going on his head’?”

Calista sighed. “There is something, some truth, you were meant to discover once you unlocked your curse. It feels as if your fate singer brother had some . . . destiny for you to reach as the queen. But this sleep feels as if it wasn’t meant to happen. Knowledge was meant to be gained before facing this old lover. Now, we must find a way back to the old story.”

Find a way back? Had Davorin’s power grown so strong it could unravel a fated path placed by Riot?

Panic rose, sharp and cruel. My blood was chilled, my skin too hot. Until Calista reached for my hand in a strange moment of affection.

“Look at me,” she whispered, and waited until our gazes locked. “I can do this. I don’t give a damn if some dark bastard is trying to ruin a fated love. I will find a way to twist his twist until you and your king learn what it is you must learn to win this war.”

She believed her power was enough to pull Ari through. But . . . “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Emotions tangled too fiercely in my heart, a reminder I had not been feeling long. I hardly knew how to manage the terror, the anger, the despair that struck one after the other in sharp, poison barbs.