Alistair laughs. “Neither you nor your feral pet have the faintest idea how deep the current runs.” His eyes gleam as he tilts his head toward Mael. “But I’m sure his Highness would agree that curiosity has always been such a dangerous little habit.”
Mael doesn’t so much as glance his way. He stands motionless, the Consul’s words apparently beneath his attention. Instead, his gaze settles on me, touched with a faint, infuriating pity. As if to say this is all out of his hands now. As if he regrets watching it happen.
But Alistair isn’t finished. He raises the notebook again, holding it aloft like a trophy. “She left something behind,” he says, the words slow and sharp, “and I must admit, it’s quite… illuminating.”
“I want to go to Rust Hollow’s pole,” I say, my voice hard.
One more sentence from him, one more smug little grin, and I’ll snap. Shadows rise at my feet, swallowing the air around us.
But just before we vanish, Alistair lifts the first page of the notebook.
My mind freezes as he tilts the notebook just enough for me to see what’s written there in a delicate cursive.
A dedication.
To Raylane and Peonica.
My beautiful daughters.
Istumble out of the Shadow Realm, dazed. But the pain of the crossing doesn’t reach my mind. It’s like my brain detached from my body, floating somewhere far away.
Whatever words of encouragement Kaelzar might’ve murmured, I don’t hear them.
Raylane and Peonica. My beautiful daughters. Is that what the page said? Daughters?
No. That can’t be right. Daughters. That word doesn't belong to me. It belongs to someone else. Someone whole, not me, not the girl who’s given herself to a forsaken goddess.
Peonica, the girl who clung to me like a thorn without reason, always too close, too loyal. I told myself she was lonely. That she had no family and was just reaching for someone, anyone, to fill that emptiness. But she had someone, hadn’t she?
My mind fights it, twisting the meaning, searching for another explanation. A metaphor? A title? A mistake?
But the ache in my chest is too sharp to be imaginary. The wordsisteris already sinking into the marrow of my bones.
“Raylane.” Kaelzar’s voice cuts through the fog, sharp and urgent. He said my name before, this isn’t the first time.
I force my eyes to focus on him, on his harsh, familiar face looming above me. But it’s not cruel now. It’s broken and panicked. His eyes—those cold, storm-gray eyes—aren’t cold at all. They’re wild withfear.
It’s the same look he had when I fell from the cliff onto the broken glass below, the same flicker of desperate fear of a man who’s lost too much to bear another body in his arms.
That expression slams my senses back into place, pulls my body and mind into one coherent whole.
And then I see her.
Peonica.
She’s slumped against the pole, bloodied and unconscious, chained at the top like some offering. A multitude of fresh, wide lacerations score her back, blood pulsing from each wound. My sister.
I rush to her, heart tearing, and lift her limp body. Gods, she’s still so light.
“Break the chains!” I shout, frantic. “Break them!”
Two massive shadowy swords materialize in his hands. He slams them down on the chains, and they snap.
She falls. I catch her.
Kaelzar watches us as I cradle her in my arms, carefully lowering her to the ground. Did Mael do this? Did he kill her? Just like my mother was taken from me?
I hold her tighter, my breath ragged. This can’t be how it ends, not when I just found her. Not when there’s still so much I don’t understand.
