Page 188 of The Reaping Rose

All around, Fae gasp for air, including Wilder.

Atlas erected a shield to protect us, but ribbons of shadow found their way through the cracks of flame. Dark teeth latched on, searching for something to drain.

Wilder’s palm flattens on the ground as he catches his breath. Then, slowly, he lifts his head to his armies, to the decimation before us. He’s slow to stand, which Atlas seems to note out of the corner of his eye. But he doesn’t offer Wilder help for the same reason I haven’t asked my mate how he is feeling when his magic is mostly drained.

Wilder’s people are dead or dying on the beach. They’re fighting through the fading wisps of shadowy death that Hazel unleashed. He can’t risk them seeing their king struggling—not now.

Malachi might have fallen, but a steady hum whispers on the wind, and I fear in the pit of my bones this is not over.

Wilder holds out a hand, his palm clammy as I place mine in it, and he helps me stand. Silence takes hold, and then a hum from a far-off place begins.

A feminine voice sings words I cannot understand. The chorus of a song I’ve heard before. The first time was on the beach with my father when I was but a child. Then again, as I wandered through the prison.

I know this song. I know this voice.

My mother.

Before us, the orb lifts from Malachi’s motionless hand. Blood drips from the glassy surface as it begins to float.

“Do you hear that?” I ask when the song gets louder.

I expect Wilder to say no, but he nods.

“She’s the one who led us to the void.” I look up at him. “She’s the one who led us here.”

Without my mother’s words, Malachi’s would have meant nothing. If we hadn’t found the void, we would not have sought him out. Now, as blood drips from the orb and a crescent moon appears on its glassy surface, I consider the fact that she wielded it once. That she might have had another reason for sending us on this mission.

“What did she have us do?”

Wilder shakes his head as a beam of light streams from the necklace. Her song grows louder in the night, somehow echoing against the sky. She’s not here, but her song is around us. It’s within us. She’s everywhere, sending her lullaby on the breeze.

She calls for something.

We suspected, walking in, that this was a trap. But was it Malachi’s making or hers?

The orb pauses, looming as it hangs chest level before us. Static pricks the back of my neck, but it isn’t Wilder’s magic causing it. Aether shifts—it gathers. A bolt slices through the night, splitting through the orb with such intensity that I have to look away.

When I turn back, the orb is no longer floating. It hangs around the neck of a male with shiny black hair and light-umber skin.

But those eyes…

My gaze moves to Wilder, who hasn’t taken his attention off the male in front of us. Two golden gazes fix on each other. They’re the same, but different. Wilder’s crackle. They spark. This other male has gold eyes, but they swirl. Molten waves that crest and fall.

The male steps forward, dressed in simple leather pants and a shirt that is open in the front. No runes mark his skin, but where shadow should be in the lines of his carved muscle, he glows. My gaze lifts, and he grins at me.

The orb beams blue like it did before the void touched it. The male toys with the necklace, embers sparking.

“You wield my power.” Wilder’s gaze narrows.

“Do I?” The male’s head tilts. “Or do you wield mine?”

His grin stretches his gold-dusted cheeks. Everything about him glimmers, and yet, there is a darkness that surrounds him.

“Davorian.” Wilder’s voice is nearly a whisper, and my heart plummets at the mention of the god’s name.

God of aether.

God of endings.