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Folding my arms, I gave Niamh a look. “Tessa is going with you and the others.”
Tessa held up the blade and slid the dagger from the sheath. The orange light glinted along the steel. “I’m going with you. It’s my decision.” She cut her eyes my way. “Are you going to tell me it’s not?”
I exhaled, and despite my concern, I could not stop the pride from swelling my chest. She would not be Tessa if she didn’t want to risk her life—again—to stop Oberon. She would never give up. It was stubborn, maybe, but I couldn’t help but respect it. Besides, I’d be with her, and I would never let him touch her again.
“I’ll agree to it,” I finally said. “As long as you swear to listen to me. Don’t do anything reckless.”
She smiled. “Me? Reckless?”
Niamh just chuckled and wandered back to the human crowd.
“I mean it. We don’t know what we’ll find up there. Swear that you’ll stay beside me and not rush into danger.”
She hooked the dagger onto her belt. “I promise. But I won’t make a binding vow. Not like before.”
“Deal.” I held out a hand.
Gazing up into my eyes, she slid her palm into mine. Her fingers squeezed tight, steady and strong. “Deal.”
Twenty-Two
Tessa
When the others set off for the bridge, Kalen and I held back. We watched them vanish into the dense mist, their forms blurring before us. I whispered goodbye to Val and Nellie, but I avoided my mother. I knew how she’d react if I told her what we planned to do. It was going to take her a long time to accept Kalen’s words as truth. Longer than it had taken even me.
“She won’t be happy when she realizes you aren’t with them,” he said as we turned our sights on the burning city up the hill.
“Val and Nellie are with her. She’ll listen to them.” I checked my dagger at my belt, just to make sure I’d attached it properly, and then nodded. “Let’s go.”
“Tessa,” he said in a deep voice that felt like a fist around my heart. “You don’t know how relieved I am to know you’re all right.”
I glanced up. He smiled and rubbed his thumb against my jaw. Heat filled my neck, and as I leaned into his touch, I wished the world could fall away. We would climb on the wings of dreams and fly far away from here. Away from death and destruction. Away from lies and betrayal. And far, far away from the threat of prophecies and annihilation.
For all my life, I’d expected an average existence. Less than average, really. I would grow up, toil in the fields, keep my head down, and do nothing remarkable at all. The mortals of Teine lived and died just as the bugs in the forest did. No one remembered our names once we were gone. We were nothing. That was how I’d always seen our little slice of the world.
But I’d been wrong. Nameswereremembered. They’d been written in that book.
Mine was one of them.
I still hadn’t wrapped my mind around any of it. It seemed impossible that it could mean anything. My father had lost his grip on reality in the last few years of his life. That was the only logical explanation. And yet…I couldn’t help but think of Val’s words. I was stronger than most mortals. I’d survived several times when I shouldn’t have.
And the God of Death had called out to me more than once.
We are so alike, you and me,she’d said.
“Are you all right?” Kalen asked. “If you don’t want to do this, we can catch up to the others, and you can go to Endir with them.”
I pushed aside my unease. “I’m fine. I want to do this.”
Together, we climbed the dirt path up to Albyria. Smoke filled the air as we drew closer, and the stench of burning flesh clogged my throat. I pressed my hand to my mouth when we reached the open city gates. Kalen’s steps slowed to a stop, and he let out an audible gasp at the sight before us. Through the ominous mists, he stood like a beacon in the darkness.
“There is so much death,” he said grimly.
We walked through the gates. The fires were easing, just a little, having burned through some of the buildings already. Crooked black beams rained down ash. Soot covered the ground like snow. The streets and castle courtyard were abandoned, other than a scattering of charred bodies. If any light fae had survived, they were either in hiding or they’d fled. Albyria would never again be the same.
Grief weighed heavy on my shoulders as we passed the castle entrance. The stone here had fared better, though the fire still raged inside. All these homes, gone. All that life, gone. I should not feel bad for them, but I did. Many of the fae were cruel and complicit in Oberon’s monstrous acts, but if Kalen and the other shadow fae had taught me anything, it was that I couldn’t judge all fae by the few who had wronged me.
They were not all Oberon. Some were ordinary people, just like the rest of us. Even if they were not perfect, they were trying. And they had died here this day.
