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Reluctantly, I placed the jar on the bison furs. “I can’t.”

He reared back. “Why not?”

“Because both Solin and the fire have scolded me for using it. Most of the time, like you say, I’m unaware of speaking it. It’s just the language of my heart. Of Darro’s heart. Why we know it and where we’ve come from, I still don’t know, but I do know the fire has forbidden it. And Quelis rules this kingdom.”

“Solin called it Zenasha the night of your blood bind ceremony.”

I didn’t reply.

Olish tapped his chin in thought. “If it’s not Firenese and the flames forbid it, it must come from some other mighty power.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me,” he urged. “If you refuse to teach me all the words, just give me one.”

I studied him, recognising his eagerness as it mirrored mine to know Pallen’s secrets. The only problem was, I had no aptitude toward her skills. Perhaps Olish would have no memory to recall the language Darro and I shared.

“You already know one word. Zenasha.”

“Zenasha.” Olish rolled the letters on his tongue. “Yes, but what does that mean? It tastes ancient.”

“Does it?” I smoothed my dress. “I wouldn’t know. And I don’t know what it means either.”

“Teach me another.” He reached forward and grabbed my hands.

I froze but didn’t pull away. “I can’t.”

He smirked. “Just a few more.” His eyes danced around the lupic as if searching for a word to learn. Finally, he cocked his chin at the spider on his shoulder. “Spiders are my favourite creature, as you know. Their webs are magic, and their venom can be used in healing. Tell me that. Tell me the word for spider.”

I sucked in a breath.

What would Solin do if he knew?

What would Darro say if I shared our tongue with another?

Letting my hands go, Olish pressed the jar back into my palm. “Please?”

I made the mistake of catching his gaze.

My stomach churned.

Unlike Aktor, this Nhil male was good right to his core. The flickering bronze of his aura was loyal and true. Whatever I taught him would be our little secret.

“Lahasi,” I murmured.

“Lahasi?” he repeated. “That’s the Zenasha word for spider?”

I nodded. “In my tongue...in Zenasha, I would call you Lahasi.”

He leaned back, his eyes alight with wonder. “I like it.”

I laughed quietly. “I prefer Olish. It suits you.”

“Teach me another.” His face seemed younger. His aura glowed so bright, it glimmered like a burnished sun.

And somehow, I found myself obeying, all while clutching the jar to protect me from Aktor’s seed. Seed that he’d never put anywhere near me if I had any choice in the matter.

I slipped into an afternoon of friendship with a male who’d saved my life, giving me a reprieve from the one who’d captured my heart and ran away with it.

Firenese fled my mind as I welcomed the forbidden tongue, sinking deeply into what I was, preparing to teach a Nhil healer words he shouldn’t know.

Chapter Forty-Four

. Darro .

ANOTHER AWFUL WEEK OF WAITING, wishing, and wanting.

I despised not having the right kind of magic to break the blood bind between Runa and Aktor, just as much as I hated having the wrong kind of magic that only brought death.

“Be aware you don’t lose yourself to self-pity, Moon Master. Because when you do, that is the beginning of the end.”

I growled in frustration and rolled over, punching the rolled-up bundle of grass I used as my pillow. “Be gone. I’ve had enough of your riddles tonight.”

The moth danced by my nose, its bushy black feelers catching starlight. “You are far more than what you fear. You just have to remember.”

“I have remembered. I’m death.”

“You are wrong. That is a mere trifle to what you truly are.”

“It’s enough to destroy what I want.” I swatted at the moth, only for it to vanish and reappear above Zetas’s head.

It flew around her horns in a lazy loop. “You’re afraid.”

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore it.

“You’re afraid of truly remembering. Of walking the web, of claiming your rightful seat in the sky, of abandoning this foolhardy incarnation of mortality.”

“If you know so much, just tell me.” I glowered at the fluttering moth. “What am I?”

“You are one half of a whole.”

The words tickled a long-lost memory—of a time where there had been nothing. Nothing but dirt and emptiness. I groaned as fathomless power swelled inside me, answering the memory, scratching at my mind with images of Runa crying rivers and my rage tearing valleys through the earth.

The fleeting vision was too vast, too colossal to hold on to.

As quickly as I’d surged with unmeasurable potential, it was gone, leaving me as hollow as I had been when walking alone, searching for Runa.

I sighed heavily and tried to get comfortable. “Just...leave me alone.”

I didn’t want to speak to an annoying moth anymore.

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