Page 105 of Three Dark Kings and the Gilded Serpent

From this viewpoint, I make out the golden liquid smudging the woman’s fingertips where she holds the crib, along with blood dripping from that hand.

The side of her palm has been cut.

My focus flies to the blade, assessing the way she’s holding it, a position that indicates she might have swiped it across her own hand.

Finally, everything begins to move.

With agonizing slowness, the woman lifts her left hand from the crib’s edge, extending her bleeding fist toward the baby’s nearest arm.

She pushes through the child’s fire, her skin instantly blistering as she begins drawing in blood, runes mingling with the golden paste

She’s crying.

“Goddess of Shadow and Blood.” She sobs. “Give me strength. Goddess of Shadow and Blood, shield me from pain. Goddess of⁠—”

The vision breaks.

The glowing threads extending from my heart snap.

I’m dizzied and confused as time jolts back into motion just as deadly flames burst across me.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Stellen

The moment Nara races down the far side of the mountain range and leaps into the dark channel, I can hear Thyra again.

But her whisper fills me with dread. “Goddess of Shadow and Blood, give me strength.”

At the same moment, the source of the terror in my heart becomes clear.

An icy-blue thread extends from my heart to Thyra’s distant location. I have no idea when the thread connected with me, only that I can feel Thyra’s pain through it.

Maybe her hurt was always within this thread; I just couldn’t sense it until she gave me back my heart.

Her emotions are terrifying. Dark. Bloody. Fearful.

In the air to my right, Antony flinches, the crimson thread connecting his heart to Thyra’s pulling taut.

In the distance, I make out the glowing amber thread between Thyra and Maxim, where they stand far too near each other for Thyra to be safe from Maxim’s fire.

A second later, we hit the circle of starlight surrounding Thyra and Maxim and a woman whose identity I don’t know, but this light…

I’ve experienced its blinding glow before; on the day I seized Thyra, when I was racing along the tunnel through the mountain in the bloodlands and Thyra was bleeding out in my arms…

But now⁠—

Antony gives a shout. He must have seen something I can’t see from this distance, but an instant later, I hear it.

Crackling flames.

Bursting fire.

Maxim’s body engulfs in fire and Thyra whispers, “Shield me from pain⁠—”

No.

“Stellen!” Antony roars, his voice flooded with panic. “Use your frost!”