Page 73 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“Yes,” I admitted, some air returning to my lungs, my focus falling on her standing so closely to me. “Partly. Yes.”

Her hand slowly slipped a little lower and every limb in my body weakened. “Tell me.”

“I went to see Golgotha. To seek his help with finding something I couldn’t find for the past five years. Some damn answers.”

“Answers? Is that where you have been when you left? Looking for answers?”

“Yes.”

“Of what sort?”

“Kil and I…we’re not from here, from this realm. Our kind left another realm, Astra, and came to Numen back when gods remained here. They settled in Adriata with the permission of Henah, hiding under the guise of being her Aura. We aren’t Aura. We aren’t blessed by her either, but by her mother, Goddess Nihilia.” I rubbed a hand over my pounding head. “We aren’t blessed at all. We’re born with magic and by magic. Wherever her blood has been spilled, my kind would rise.”

“Godling,” she murmured to herself.

“You knew?”

“The God of Waters kept calling you and Kilian godlings.” She swallowed and whispered even lower, “I might have been curious and had a look through the locked Esmeray Diaries. But none mentioned godlings settling in Numen, so I didn't think much of it.”

“They had left Astra after the Demon Gods were imprisoned. My ancestors were obedient servants of Nihilia, they’d been the ones to capture them prisoner and only they could be the ones to free them. Nihilia had granted my ancestors permission to flee Astra and seek refuge somewhere followers of the Demon Gods wouldn’t be inclined to find them to use as a way to free them again.”

“Did you find Astra?”

“No. The gates to that realm were closed after the Demon Gods were imprisoned as a way to keep outsiders from finding the entry to where they were kept inside Astra. It would be suicide to return there.”

Her frown deepened a little. Turning from curious to confused. “Why did you wish to find it?”

“No other child beside me and Kilian will ever get to know what and who they are the way we did. If there was some other way to be taught to control what we are, I was going to find it.”

A small smile graced her lips and she drew her eyes shut. “You went for Rain and Sam,” she murmured, realising, carefully reaching her hand to me again, resting just the tips of her fingers on my chest, right where my heart was. “It’s better now.”

“Is it?”

“I hope it is,” she whispered.

She sucked a breath when I stepped closer, her eyes jumping around the darkness, and when she found no answer there, she reached for me, her hands resting on my waist. To hold me back or pull me closer, I didn’t know. It looked like she didn’t know either.

So I decided for us, wrapping my body around hers. I held her—I finally got to hold her again. “Just for a minute let me hold you. Hate me after all you want. Forever, if you must.”

Even though she said nothing, it really wasn’t silent at all. It was loud, the loudest it had ever been when she put her hands on me, her fingers tightly clutching to the thin material of my shirt. “I don’t think I hate you, Malik.”

“No?”

“No. But I hate that you left me. Forever, if I must. I’ll hate you forever for it.”

“So will I.”

“You shouldn’t have done it to begin with. Not just after you left for Rain and Sam.”

“You know how messed my mind was after the war, Thora. I did no one any favour staying. Especially you. I’d drag you down with me. I was already doing so.” She pushed from me, but I only held her tighter. “Three minutes left.”

“Did I ask you to leave?”

“I had to, little bird. I saw you lose your wings that day, and I wanted you to find them again. You’d never find them with me holding you back. Leaving you,” I confessed, “was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Quiet fell again. But then her body loosened in my hold, and she pressed her brow to my chest. “You smell like rain.”

One minute. Just a minute more, and she’d go back to telling me nothing.