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“I can see that.”
“It feels like—” Pressing the heel of the hand on my uninjured arm to my chest, I knead, trying like hell to ease the knot. “It feels like she’smine.” I speak the words I’ve been terrified to say out loud because voicing them means admitting the impossible.
And it also means the idea can be shot down. Ignored. Because the impossibility is clear.
Quietly she questions, “Like she’s your mate?” I nod.
“But it’s impossible. Ailis was my mate. I had my chance.” My thoughts darken at the thought of the woman who sold my baby sister to a dark fae. The same woman currently rotting away in the Veil.
“Maybe fate chose to give you another.”
“No. It’s not possible.” I reach for the towel in her hand, but she pulls it back and wraps my arm herself instead. The cloth is instantly soaked with blood, but it’s bright red now, whereas before, it had been near black.
I’m losing myself—far faster than I expected—and I don’t know if it’s because of the dark energy I accessed or my fear over Ember’s fate. Either way, I imagine I don’t have long before neither matters.
“Raffe!” The familiar voice echoes through the room moments before a fae I worried I’d never see again pops into the doorway. His familiar golden gaze narrows on me, and he rushes in, sinking to his knees beside me.
“Ridley?”
A tear slips down my younger brother’s cheek as he reaches forward and crushes me in a hug. It’s so unlike him, this affection, that it momentarily catches me off guard. And then I realize my brother—the one who never turned his back on me—is here.
I wrap my uninjured arm around him and return the embrace, emotion welling in my chest. And if he’s here—
“Where is Taranus?” Ridley demands, pulling back. His eyes gleam with rage. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“How are you here?” Adrenaline surges through my system, and I push to my feet. Ridley follows suit as Heelean stands beside me.
“Sheelin is dead,” he tells me. “Rainey Astor pulled the trigger.”
“Rainey.” My brows draw together as I try to recall why I know that name. And then it hits me. “The hunter. The one who came here for help from Fearghas the First.”
A sob rips from Heelean’s chest at the mention of her daughter. Sheelin was a monster in her own right, but she had been an innocent girl once, and I know it’s that young child Heelean grieves now. “Fearghas?” she chokes out her son’s name, tears spilling from her eyes. I wrap an arm around her, and she leans against me.
“He’s okay,” Ridley replies. “Though he is—it’s complicated.”
“Tell me,” she demands, cheeks red.
My brother hesitates, his attention shifting from her to me, then back to her. Finally, he sighs. “Fearghas absorbed the soul matter of a dark fae,” he explains.
Heelean stumbles back and covers her face.
A growl leaves my lips because I know what that means for him. Bloody hell, it’s been my reality for longer than I care to focus on. And if he’s used that power, the same way I have been— “Is he bleeding himself out? To control it? Did you tell him how?”
“There’s no need for it.” Ridley turns to me. “We have a cure.”
Hope burns in my chest. But then I see it, the hesitation on my brother’s face, and that hope bursts. “At what price?”
Ridley swallows hard. “Fearghas is mortal now. He’s human.”
Heelean gasps and covers her mouth with her hands. Tears stream down her face now, though I can sense that she’s trying to control it. “But he’s alive?” Her voice quivers with emotion.
Ridley nods. “And he’s married. To a siren who is also now a human.”
“Bloody hell,” I snarl. “Your world went to shit as ours did.”
“It did, for a time. And when Candice told me what happened to you, and I couldn’t get to you—” Ridley swallows hard again. “I thought you dead, Raffe. I thought Taranus had killed you, and I was coming here to return the favor.”
“You saw Candice? We’ve been searching for her.” The witch who lived in a cabin on the outskirts of my camp for decades went missing right after the attack that led to my wings being removed. I thought she was dead. That Lloren had her killed to avoid competition. It never occurred to me that she might have escaped.
