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Lysander’s hand brushed hers, fingers intertwining briefly, an unspoken promise.

She crossed the threshold.

The door sealed behind her.

Chapter 37

She expected the chamber. Instead, the floor went out from under her.

The stone dissolved without warning. Her boots met nothing, and for a long second she fell, the dark whipping past her face, cold iron in her teeth. She didn't scream. She had time to think she should have.

Her feet struck ground that was not the chamber she'd been walking toward. This was not where she'd meant to go.

The cold hit her first, sharp as a blade pressed to the back of her neck. The air smelled of old smoke and something more. Above her there was no sky. A black so flat it pressed against her eyes, eating the fog from her breath before it rose.

Beneath her boots, the ground was cracked stone, weeping a faint dull glow where the cracks ran. Daemon-plane stone. She had only read about it. Walking on it was a thing she'd hoped never to do.

A figure stood ten paces ahead. Her mother's shape was unmistakable before the figure turned.

"You came," Nellith said.

The voice cut through the dark like a needle pulled through cloth. It didn't echo; there was nothing to echo against.

Idonea didn't move, her hands curling at her sides. The dagger at her hip was no comfort here.

"You left without a word."

Nellith tilted her head. The surrounding shadows shifted as she did — living shadows, the kind that watched. "Did I? Or did I leave the way I always intended to leave?"

"Father told me what you are."

A pause, then: "Father, now. Not Alcaeus."

"He's dying. Daemon poisoning."

Nellith's mouth flickered. "He should never have been the keeper of this place."

Idonea's jaw set. She didn't trust herself to answer.

Nellith took a step forward. Her boots made no sound on the cracked stone the way Idonea's had.

"I have been proud of you," Nellith said. "Can Alcaeus say the same?"

"Don't."

"I thought not." Nellith blinked. A fraction too slowly.

Idonea's hands shook. She forced them still. "I'm not here for your games."

"You are here because I called you. That is not a game. That is a homecoming."

Idonea had spent most of her life trying to find home. Nellith hadn't been it.

"I won't open the Nexis."

Nellith stopped three paces away. Up close, her eyes were not the obsidian Idonea remembered. They had something behind them now — a slow turning, like dark water moving over a deep current.

"Child," her mother said, soft. "You are the blood of dragons. The child of wyrm and Current. You think you can refuse the thing you were made for?"