Page 6

Jude

To fear the darkness is to fear one’s own mind.

Asidian proverb

My cell reeked of decay and mold, and every lungful of air took effort.

My ribs were surely broken or at the very least bruised. A sharp stinging ran down my spine, and whenever I moved so much as an inch, the fragile skin of my back split. Blood gushed from the lacerations, warming my punished flesh.

And yet, even doubled over, my eyes prickling from the agony, I focused not on my back, but on her .

I saw Kiara. She’d been hazy at best, barely a flicker of a form, but I’d seen her.

Or I had been easily broken , I thought, though the sound of that didn’t ring true.

Magic had to have been involved, even with the peculiar manacles encircling my wrists. I didn’t recognize the blue-tinged metal, but the center gem reminded me of how the moon looked in the Mist when it had been ringed in blue.

Thankfully, they weren’t tied together at the moment. Not that it did me any good.

No matter how hard I tried to pry them off, they remained firmly in place. Whatever they were made of seemed to smother most of the divinity floating in my soul, making it impossible to escape. I rotated my hand, inspecting one of the cuffs.

There. Faint marks, like they’d been etched as an afterthought. They formed a crescent moon so miniscule, I’d overlooked it before. If I peered hard enough, I could even make out a triangle surrounding it.

Every god and goddess had their individual symbols and marks, much like signatures. This was the Moon God’s. Undoubtedly, enchanted.

And yet Kiara had been able to reach me.

Why? If the manacles dampened magic, how had she…

It hit me then—

Our scars. They bound us together, each of us touched by a blade crafted by a god or the magic of one. I’d healed her using a divine force, and she’d done the same for me.

Whatever the reason, her appearance had me thinking about what Cirian had said.

The prophecy.

I squeezed my eyes shut and brought my hands to my face. Maybe it was more than silly words uttered by sun priests. Raina had been killed by love, and maybe that was the tool we’d need to mend this mess.

Right now, my only hope rested in the hands of the young boy from Fortuna who hadn’t the faintest idea of the treasure in his possession.

If I had the energy to do so, I could’ve kicked myself thinking of how I trusted a child with the most dangerous weapon known to man.

It had been the riskiest thing I’d ever done, which wasn’t at all like me. But I’d grown more hopeful since meeting Kiara, even if I continued to fight such a foreign emotion.

Gods, I missed the days when I felt nothing. I felt too much now, and it was suffocating.

Lying on my side, I shut my eyes, my hand instinctively moving to rest above the raised wound beside my heart. In the consuming quiet, with only my mind as bittersweet company, I realized exactly how I felt about the woman who’d turned my world upside down.

The realization was more frightening than any curse or cure—

Because it had the power to both save and destroy the world.