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I shook my head, though I didn’t think he could see me in the darkness. “What it means to love, I think. And I’m pretty sure he’s learned enough to feel, if not brotherly love, then at least some muted kind of draconic obsession for Alexios.” Goran grunted. “That’s what he felt for Rada, you know. It might have been my fault. He’d read my thoughts for years, and I was more than a little obsessed with her myself.”

“Join the crowd,” Goran muttered. “We’re all insane for Rada. Now tell me, why did Edan fall in the battle?”

“I’d weakened him, I think. He didn’t possess me that last time. He tore a hole in his own chest and folded me into him. It was as painful for him as it was for me. He didn’t expect that, either.” I went on, telling Goran how Edan had been awkward in the sky for the first time in his existence. “His body was strong, but I’d never flown. I was able to force him down, low enough for the selkie to bind his wings. Our wings, I suppose.” The silence stretched between us. “Is she well?”

He snarled his answer. “Edan changed her. He did something to her. Her insides are as hot as fire. He infected her with his power.”

“Yes.” I suspected he’d done something like that. Left a splinter of fire inside her, to torment her and drive her into heat. My heart ached as I thought of her suffering, too far to reach. “Where… Where is she? Who is she with?”

Goran didn’t say anything more. I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t at all sure if it had been my questions or Edan’s, and what he might do if he knew where to find her.

After a few heartbeats, Goran asked, “If Alexios is injured, and Edan claims him as his friend, why doesn’t Edan heal him?”

“I would if I could. But he is not my priest. My power cannot reach him.”

“The Goddess holds him still,” he whispered. “We need to carry him out of here. The first night of the full moon is tonight. She’ll heal him.”

His confidence gave me strength to crawl faster down the tunnels to where the Beta lay. But as we drew near, a feeling of unease grew. Every sound in this part of the collapsed volcano traveled well. With no light and no other life here, Alexios’s breathing should be… Edan pushed me aside, reaching with his power to hear.

There was a heartbeat, sluggish, impossibly slow. Then a gasp of breath, but not the consistent pattern that indicated sleep. Edan dropped the food and surged forward, his power channeled into speed, until we were there, peering through the hole we’d dug near Alexios’s face.

He wasn’t breathing. When Edan shouted his name, he didn’t wake.

He’s dead, Edan. He’s… gone.

NO.

“Warlord, help me!” Edan demanded. I watched from deep within as he tore at the obsidian with his claws. “Damn that moon goddess, I cannot break through!”

Goran cursed as his knife clanged on the surface of the shell that encased Alexios almost completely. I’d heard Edan’s thoughts about the material She’d created. It was similar to the daggers of fate, which were obsidian quenched with the blood of sacrificed Omegas. The stone that had hardened almost completely around Alexios was made of obsidian hardened by Edan’s fire, and tempered with pure moonlight, though it seemed impossible. The only place in the carapace that had been weak enough to break was the one he’d punched through already, to feed him.

Goran is right, I thought to Edan. He needs to be taken above.

Yes, Edan agreed. He covered the small hole into Alexios’s shell with one hand, sealing it. Then, before I could sense what he planned, he drew in a huge breath.

“Goran, run!” I shouted, fighting him for control.

But there was no way I could win. He crushed my resistance in our shared consciousness, then exhaled. A blast of fire so hot it was blue turned the whole world into lava around us, melting everything save the golden-tinged bubble around the priest.

The last thing I heard before Edan shoved me so deep I couldn’t hear or see or even feel any more, were Goran’s screams of agony.

RADA

Skadi’s claws wrapped almost tenderly around me as he flew on wings made of what looked like clouds, ice crystals, and shards of the glacier itself. “The kraken is heavier than he looks,” he’d joked when he picked us up. Lusca and he had been trading barbs on the way, trying to distract us all from what lay ahead.

“I don’t think he’s making that up,” Kellin murmured in my ear. Lachlan, Kellin, and I were in Skadi’s right claws, with Lusca in the other. “Look how he’s listing to the left.” He murmured something about how easy it would be to map the world from dragonback, but I ignored him. I was barely hanging onto my sanity at what lay ahead.

I was also worried that Skadi wasn’t strong enough to keep level. I gripped the tears he’d given me more tightly in my fist. I didn’t have my cloak with all its clever hidden pockets, and I mourned it.

At least I had on real clothing now, thanks to Lachlan and an anonymous benefactor in Starvale. I wasn’t sure who had helped pack up the nesting materials and clothes, but they’d somehow managed to send things in my size, and in all black. Kellin and Lachlan had clothing and weapons, too. Lusca had been forced to use one of the extra deep blue sheets from the nest as a toga, though.

“He is listing,” I agreed when Skadi drooped even more to the left.

You insult me, little spy. Do you forget you are mated to a god? One of the eldest gods, at that?

One of the most annoying, I replied.

You did not think I was annoying when you begged me for my knots. When I filled you so full, your belly grew swollen⁠—