I turn from her. From Reon. From the bed and drift toward the crib. My fingers graze its edge, and the chill of the wood startles me. The furs inside are just as cold, robbed of my daughter’s warmth.
“You ask questions I cannot answer,” I say quietly.
“They are questions that must be answered. Months, Rook. We have journeyed for months. We have bled and endured, and in that time our enemies have only multiplied. Their power has grown. And us? We have gained nothing. We have only lost more.” Her voice sharpens. “You must give us something if you wish to keep hope alive.”
I lift my gaze to hers at last, though my stare feels hollow. “If hope is what you seek, Solena, you’re looking for it in the most hopeless of places. I have none to give you.”
“Then what are we fighting for?” Her voice cracks on the words, and the moment they leave her lips, she flinches like they weren’t meant to be spoken.
My eyes find the crib again. Still empty.
“I fight for Amara. For my daughter. For my family.” My voice is low, steady. “That is the fire in me. The reason I will burn until nothing is left but ash. If you mean to stand beside me, then you must find your own fire. What would you burn for? What would you die for? I cannot give that to you, Solena. But if you choose to walk away. If you and Orios take to the skies to carve out your own peace, far from the torment I’ve brought upon you, I will not fault you. I would take that peace myself if I could.”
I hear Solena’s breath in the quiet, in the dark.
She has given so much to my cause. Inked sigils into my skin until her fingers bled. Transformed from a maid to a warrior, all for the human she once despised. From a servant to a trusted, beloved friend, both to Amara and to me.
I owe her everything. Granting her freedom is the least I can do.
“I stay for Amara, and for her daughter,” Solena says at last, and the weight of those words carries a freedom for me that she does not realize. “I fight for the peace you speak of. For Orios and me, for our eternity together. But we will not know happiness untilthis is finished. Whatever shape that may take. However it may end. But you must give us hope, Rook. Without it, we have already lost this battle.”
Her words drift on the wind, press against my skin, trap my breath. She demands something of me, something I have struggled to claim for my entire cursed life, let alone offer freely.
Then I notice, as my hand brushes over the crib, the absence of red. The ribbon. Arax’s ribbon. His daughter’s ribbon.
“Estra’s ribbon is missing,” I murmur.
Solena exhales, a note of frustration threaded with sadness. “Yes,” she says, voice catching. “I think… I remember… it is with your daughter. Amara must have…”
I nod, sparing her the weight of recollection.
“She loved Arax,” I say softly, my gaze settling on Amara, frozen in time. “She barely knew him, and yet her heart found a way, and I know Arax felt the same. He saw Estra in her, I do not doubt that for a second. Amara’s heart mourned Estra even though she was nothing more than a memory.”
A smile slips across my face, fragile and fleeting, yet it eases the ache just slightly. “Only Amara could carry such a heart.”
And then the truth settles in me, warm and solid as the gold threads of the Binds of Fate. Hope is not gone. Hope lives in her. In this child. In the promise that no matter the darkness, there is something worth fighting for.
I kneel beside the crib, pressing my hand gently over the empty furs. “If it is hope you want, Solena, then it will have a name,” I murmur, feeling the weight and the lightness all at once. “Our daughter… Estra. A name for hope. For love. For the pieces of us we refuse to lose. Estra will carry us forward. She will carry Amara, and she will carry all the light we have left. She is a new age for Fae and human. A binding. A reckoning. Estra.”
Solena’s eyes widen, and I can see the hope she’s been demanding finally take root, warming her from the inside out. “Estra,” she whispers, tasting it. “She is… our hope.”
“Yes,” I say, letting the word hang in the air, heavy with promise. “And if she is anything like her mother, she will never stop fighting. She is alive.”
Chapter 36
Daed
The night bleeds into dawn, an orange haze gnawing at the infinite dark, chasing shadows from the edges of the world. I step up from the cabin to find a modest company of Blades, those that survived the horrors of Modok, working the ship. Meanwhile, Orios hauls the ropes, sails snapping against the brisk wind, and beside him, muscles straining, burning with every ounce of effort, is a figure I am still unaccustomed to seeing unshackled and unmasked.
The Golden Son pulls in time with Orios, grunting in unison until a final, hard thump secures the sail. They tie off the rope, and Orios, silent as ever, gives only the sharpest nod, a wordless acknowledgment, the closest this human will come to thanks from a Reaper. Above, Zyphoro stands watchful in the crow’s nest, eyes fixed ahead, fingers weaving through the air as she summons smoke into waves that churn the water, joining the wind to carry us faster toward land.
I approach Orios, slapping him hard on the back. He straightens with a groan, towering, long hair matted and soaked with sweat, knotted atop his head.
“Solena is tired but refuses to sleep,” I say.
He grunts, a sound that says he understands exactly what I mean.
“I’ll take care of it,” he murmurs. One last nod to the Golden Son, then he wipes the sweat from his neck and heads for the cabin.
