Page 105 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“I’d try to explain it, but it would not make much sense at all to you just how it doesn’t make any sense to me. I can see, just not how you can.”

“How is Eren doing? I haven’t seen him in a long while and he didn’t stay long after your sister’s first doomed marriage.”

Sister’s?

Had he lost his damn mind?

Lilith smiled at that. “He is…well. I think. Not that he says much about the state of his wellbeing.” She reached a hand to a pouch tied at her waist, pulling a letter out and handing in our direction. “I don’t want to hold up either of you. I’m sure you’re busy, so I’ll get to why I’m here. There was an eclipse in Heca two days ago. Macaria says her visions are the strongest that day as our realms align with the Otherworld at that moment. Mine are, too.”

Malik took the paper, unfolding it to reveal a charcoal drawing haphazardly sketched that scarily resembled his own drawings. A woman kneeling with her head down and a skeletal form holding a crown above her head.

“Macaria and Urinthia call it transcendence—my blessing. Not quite like seeing visions. Mine are clearer, sharper. Also, not my own,” Lilith explained. “I’m sometimes overtaken by memories of the future, but not of my own. Those belonging to others.” She pointed to the drawing. “That is why I could draw it. Because you can.”

“You had a vision of my future?”

She quickly shook her head. “No, I saw the future as you. The dead crowning Thora. According to what knowledge is gifted by our God, there are a few meanings when death crowns someone.”

“If you are here to tell me that I will die, save it,” I snipped.

Lilith sat up a little straighter and frantically waved her hands. “It is not that. When I say that I felt the essence of death, I didn’t mean the creature crowning you. I meant death—death of all.”

“And that is something I should worry about because?”

“Would you want the death of all?” she carefully asked. “Eren says you’d—”

“Is that all?” I interrupted.

She swallowed, nervously interlinking her fingers. “It is.”

“Then I mustn’t delay your journey back. Your brother, if he is the least of what he was when he was my brother, he would worry. I don’t want him gallivanting into my kingdom searching for you. That would make us all uneasy, not just me and you.”

Malik’s hand slipped over mine. “You’ll stay here tonight,” he said to her, and we both tensed. “I’ll send word to Eren that you’re safe. It gets difficult to travel through Eldmoor at night.” He turned to me as he continued, “After all, you made it through all this journey to warn us. Right, my little bird?”

“You will have to start speaking to me again,” Malik said, bracing himself against the sink and caging me from behind as I washed my face, his body entirely too close to mine. “I talked to your sister. She knows Lilith is here.”

I spun to him so fast I knocked a few bottles behind me. “Why?”

“Because your sister is a big girl, and she can handle it like one. Cause no matter how harsh she is, never would she have let that girl go back to Eldmoor at night. And she’s a big meanie, so imagine what that says about you.”

“You didn’t just call Snow a big meanie.”

“Brace yourself, little bird. I think you’re becoming worse.”

“How can you say that when you know what it does to me to have her here?”

“She is a kid.”

“We both know she is more than that.”

“So were you. Do you deserve to be blamed for what your father was? Why does she?”

“You want me to forgive her?”

He frowned. “Forgive her for what, Thora? Being an innocent kid who is born with the worst possible luck and living what little years she has left knowing that? Or for stealing your brother away? If Eren had not stepped up to take care of her, Snow would have. He did it knowing that Snow wouldn’t have left that little girl to live as someone’s spare. Before Snow went to send Demir to hells, I saw them talking in the gardens. They’d already agreed on it. He would take her. He tried to spare one sister some pain and ended up causing it to the other.”

I swallowed hard, not liking the bitter taste of the truth he just fed me. The truth I’d been avoiding to hear. “Don’t make this Snow’s fault.”

“It is no one’s fault.”