Page 73 of The Edge of Darkness

I thought on his words while I listened to the water flowing out from the mountain.

I knew I was capable, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was still a bit lost. Yes, I now knew my purpose, and it was going to amount to something greater than I’d ever imagined it could be, but the sacrifices I might face along the way were starting to become an ever-present worry.

“You have a lot on your mind,” Remic said, looking down at me. His long hair fluttered on the chilled breeze.

“Can you sense it?” I asked, fighting a shiver.

“I can. It feels like . . . pain, worry . . . perhaps doubt.”

I sighed again. “Pain, yes. Worry, definitely. Doubt . . . I don’t doubt anyone but myself.”

“Self-doubt can be our worst enemy . . . or so I’ve learned.”

“It’s odd because I’ve never struggled with doubting myself before. I’ve always been so sure of what I was capable of. Now, I’m more worried about those around me who might be affected.”

“That means you have something worth fighting for,” he said.

I held his stare for a moment before he looked back up at the night sky.

“I do not doubt you, Auren. I never have.”

Just knowing that he believed in me eased my worry. His mere presence was like a balm to an open wound, comforting and relieving. He gave me a sense of reassurance and solidarity, something I’d felt from my first moments around him.

I continued to look at him, searching for the tells of his age, just like I’d done before. Again, I found nothing but the depths of millennia that were set into his gray eyes. And the more I looked, the more pain and heartache I saw.

The time difference that Morah and Fallon and I had discussed earlier . . . it was bothering me. It had changed my entire perspective of the lives everyone lived. Especially my own, and how little I’d experienced in the meager thirty years I’d been alive. How insignificant thirty years actually was compared to centuries and millennia.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” he replied.

“You once told me that you hadn’t flown for ‘fun’ in over two thousand years . . .”

“You want to know how old I really am,” he concluded.

I gave him a nod.

He stayed quiet for a long moment, then he placed his hands on the railing beside me. His fingers found groves in the stone, tracing them as he said, “I am nearing eight thousand years.”

I let the number sink in. It was a staggering leap from the ages of the fae. An age I simply could not fathom.

“So, eight thousand years as a Dionach, and you still look like you could be around my age. How is that even possible?”

He set his sights on the mountains once more, letting a gentle smile grace his face. “We age differently. Just like the fae do. And if I’m calculating this correctly . . . I’m probably about ten years older than you—in human terms.”

“You’re the equivalent of thirty-nine human years old?”

“I think so.”

“Okay. That’s not so bad.”

He cleared his throat. “Thank you?”

My cheeks flushed. “I just meant it’s easier to comprehend. And I don’t feel like you’re so . . . ancient.”

His wings shook as he let out an actual laugh—the first I’d ever heard from him. I committed the sound of it to memory as it echoed across the mountain valley.

“By all means, I am ancient, according to my kind,” he said, his grin beginning to fade. “Dionachs pass on when their purpose is fulfilled, or their Dionam’s life is over. I have neither to tether my lifespan to, so time just continues on for me.” There was a sadness to his voice, but he was quick to straighten his shoulders and lift his chin, as if he was silently pushing back sorrowful thoughts in an effort to save face.