“I just watched you offer yourself asbait,” I grind out, feeling Rygun’s flame licking at the underside of my skin again. Like that small part of him that never leaves me—the gift that bound us as one—wants to show herexactlyhow well we can look after ourselves. “Though I may seem relaxed, I feel it’s important to say I’m straddling a fine line between maintaining my composure and losing my ever-lovingmind.”
Her gaze hardens. “How do you think I felt watching you row straight for a fuckinganthe—”
“If you two are done bickering, we have a rapidly evolving problem up here,” Pyrok calls down from farther up the stairway, his voice oddly strained.
I sigh.
Way I see it, we havemanyrapidly evolving problems. Like all the moons about to shake from the sky. That, and I haven’t heard from my sister in cycles, Raeve’s still bloodlusting, and above all, she doesn’t know she has a daughter. Or a kingdom. Or that her entire family was poisoned to death by my deceased pah.
“We can finish this later,” I murmur, gesturing for Raeve to move up the stairway first.
She frowns, mimicking me. Standing her ground.
I grind my back molars.
Creators, give me strength not to toss her over my shoulder and carry her there myself.
“I’m not moving up those stairs before you, Raeve. Not after everything I just witnessed. Iwillwatch you walk away from this alive. So please,” I growl, gesturing again, “be my guest.”
She opens her mouth, snaps it shut. Something flickers in her eyes before she clears her throat and stalks up the stairs.
I don’t celebrate the win despite knowing it’ll probably be the last I have for a very long while.
Pretty sure that’sexactlywhy she gave it to me.
Istuff my iron ring back on my finger, moving up the twisting staircase toward the thickening light, three words echoing in my head to the beat of Kaan’s following footsteps.
Keep him alive.
Keep him alive.
Keep him alive.
Suddenly, everything else feels insignificant, the notion so blaring I know in my heart it’s been there for longer than I want to admit.
Since …before.
Now that I’ve noticed it, I can’t believe I ever saw another path forward. That I ever believeddistancingmyself from Kaan was the right choice.
No. I must guard him; do everything in my power to protect him from falling into the same fate that took my Fallon.
My Essi.
Savage determination simmers in my chest like an icy ember, and deep inside, something rumbles—awake and watching.
Keep him alive.
Keep him alive.
Keep him alive.
I step through an arched opening that meets with a giant hole in the ground, as if Bulder staked a spear in the world, then ripped it right out again, the opening capped with a rusty grate that does nothing to catch the sprinkling sleet.
Peering over the edge of the ice-crusted stairway coiled around the circumference, I’m buffeted by a wind that smells like sulfur, failing to see the bottom …
Wonder how many folk have lost their footing and fallen to their doom, left to tumble for eternity.
I look at Pyrok, arms crossed while he chews the inside of his cheek, his hair resembling a frayed mop—every one of his piercings gone, leaving only the holes. Probably in the hopes of being discreet.
