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I bow my head and welcome her lustful heat curling around me. She ignites me with enough adrenaline to grant me consciousness despite how much I long to pass out. Pain thunders through my body, luring me to eternal sleep.
“But nothing comes without a price,” she warns, voice lowering to a deep smoke. “After what you have done here in Talahn-Feyal, the gods will desire you more than ever, Mallyach-Ender. War is coming. And you will need to prepare. If you wish me to save you, you will take my goddess mark, andwewill take a piece of you. A piece of your choosing.” She hints at the High Goddess of Love.
Mychoosing? I manage the strength to nudge her chest, a slight brushing of my brow for her to continue.
“The memories of your life in Talahn-Feyal, your very name here,” dictates Narcyssa. “Or your memories of your time in the gods’ realm from the Gates to the Trial. And yes, even your long night with Aryahn Kryach.”
“No,” I whimper to the last, knowing I cannot lose those. I cannot lose my moments with my parents, my conquering of the gods and their marks, of...Ary.
But I understand the deep weight of the sacrifice. I will loseallmemories of being Queen of the Underworld. I’ll lose my memories of wooing Ary. I’ll lose all my time with Allysteir. I’ll lose my given-family, of my...Franzy. I blink back bloody tears, remembering the vision of Franzy upon the throne with her daughter. My leyanyn for this brief existence in Talahn-Feyal. And if I am the Spirit Rose, while our union of mind and body will fade, my soul will welcome her someday.
Regardless, she does not need me. Perhaps she never truly needed me. No. All this time, all these years, it wasIwho needed her. The bittersweet weight of grief crashes over me, drying my mouth, burning my throat, and strangling my heart. But it would be a deeper weight to forget my true identity?to lose my glorious redoing in the womb before time.
This is my undoing.
I nod, I bow my head in acceptance.
Narcyssa plunges her fangs into my throat. Whatever sharp flicker of pain bows to a liquid warmth spreading into my blood, into my veins. Of her venom. It rewrites the doom transcribed upon this mortal husk. This other Goddess’ force of mind and body is stronger than mine. She reaps those memories I’d surrendered.
Triggered by the sense offorgetting, my mind returns to the oubliette. I shiver with bitter adrenaline bleeding onto my tongue. That fog of nothingness clouds my vision, and I tip my head back. Now, I choose to forget. I embrace the sensation of Narcyssa sucking away the memories of Talahn-Feyal. Of my past becomingnothing.
Bones repaired, muscles gaining strength, blood pumping in my veins quicker, I cling to Narcyssa, arch my neck, and print my lips to her jawline. It only feeds her thirst since she sucks harder, deeper.
Her venom engulfs my body in a heated flame to command my blood to flow, to kindle my heartbeat until it practically hammers against my rib cage. Renewed. Revitalized. Rebirthed.
I knot my brows. Because something is missing. A sense of loss plunders all my nerve-endings, but I hardly care. It bows to the thickening fire of lust as the chilled, supple lips fold mine back, her tongue imparting the taste of blood and iron. Bitter but not unwelcome. Her tongue flicks my teeth, lowers to stroke mine. I moan into her mouth.
Once she breaks from my lips, I squint, pinch my eyes to behold her captivating face. Her eyes are deep and dark as chasms pinpointed by blotted scarlet. Her cheekbones are sharper than uncut diamonds. Lips red as blood with bronze skin and fiery hair, she is quite possibly the most alluring and intoxicating creature I’ve ever laid eyes upon. When she smiles, revealing her fangs, I flinch, understanding she’s a...a?
“A vampyr,” she concludes, straightening, shoulders pushing back, lithe neck lifting regal high. “I am Narcyssa, Queen of Mortya-Tereyn. And you are coming with me, my pet.”
“Where?” I wonder, baffled. All my memories are hazy. Images of golden gates of hellfire glimmer in my mind. A boundless, whispering fog. I remember swimming inside a host of stars. A beautiful tree and an aged throne. Roses shatter my thoughts. The memories are too overwhelming, I can’t piece them together.
Narcyssa pulls me to my feet and binds a hand around my waist, so her claws needle me when she responds, “To Orys a Crypta. The City of Crypts.”
* * *
Ifrynna pounds her paws upon the ground, her spirit form traveling the hidden passages of Nathyan Ghyeal. Vitalized and renewed by our victory over the Sleeping Stallion, we press onward. And hope expands in my chest. True, unbridled hope for the first time.
When Betha alerted me how Isla passed into the god realms, I laughed. Laughter rippled through my chest and up my airway. Not out of disbelief but from my sheer idiocy not to recognize the essence of her blood, why it was new and exquisite every time?the essence of the gods.
And why she was drawn to Kryach more than any bride in history.
It’s how I may release her with pride, relief, and jubilation. Well, jubilation came the moment Betha informed me of the great tidings from the spirit realm. Of rebirth and resurrection. While hope swelled in my chest for the first time, Ifrynna beckoned me to ride her.
Now, she carries me through the web of tunnels and to the secret passage only I know of with its keyhole in the molded shape of my wishbone. A wishbone I’d vowed to only ever break with my truest bride. Breaths deep, my heart jolts in my chest, prompting me into the back passage. I lick my lips, cautious, fearful of hope, fearful after five hundred years of waiting. Of my heart as ruined and rotted as my corpse body.
But I am whole now.
First and foremost, I hear the chains rattling.
As I step into the dome-like cavern nudging the Cryth shoreline, she tosses golden hair like streams from the sun onto the curve of her delicate shoulder?bare on account of the flimsy and ragged lace dress I’d clothed her in. My balled hands open to awed palms. All my tense muscles liquefy at the sight ofher.
She turns to me, rolls her perfect midwinter blue eyes, her heart-shaped lips grinning mischievously as she says, “Really, Ally, I know I teased you about using chains in our relationship, but this was hardly what I expected.”
Oh, gods!Heat radiates inside me, thoughts so elated, so scattered. I lose my breath even as I barrel to her side to gather her in my arms. I trace the warm, raw tears streaming down her cheeks. They mirror the ones glistening in my eyes. Once sunken in, her angular cheekbones have returned. The once ashen skin from its corpse state has renewed to warm gold.
Heart thundering in my chest, adrenaline like a shooting star in my blood, I speak my first, mytruestbride’s name, “Finleigh.”
