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Nerissa’s features shifted, then, from panic to some twisted pride as she smiled maniacally. “Thendo it.”
Raana’s nostrils flared, and she called on her shadows to squeeze. Tighter,tighter.
Nerissa’s eyes widened as she sputtered a cough, her feet lifting off the ground, kicking against the glass. Raana’s lesser glamor had fallen away; she could feel it. Her fingertips burned with a power that rivaled the stars, her blood singing as it had before Deimos’s stained-glass window. It had only been a slight fissure, likely only visible if one knew where to look, but Raana could’ve sworn that darkness leaked from the space. A shadow come to greet her.
“When you were there,” Nerissa choked, her own blood from her still-bleeding nose dribbling over her lips, tracing Isla’s scar. “What did you see? What did you hear? Another—” a weak cough. “Another realm, perhaps?”
The shock was enough for Raana to lessen her hold.
Nerissa smiled, crimson staining her teeth. “Did you feel the world cleaving open during the storm?”
Answers. Nerissa had answers, so many answers, and Raana could only get them if she were alive.
Slowly, she lowered Nerissa to the leaf-littered floor but still held firm. “How?”
“During the Equinox, the veil is thinnest, and you are a child born of two worlds. Your blood, your essence, defies the barrier between them, between all.Thatis what makes you so powerful. That is why all will fear you, why the High Witch will hunt you to the ends of this world and the next to ensure your demise.” Nerissa scoffed. “Such an overinflation of her own importance. She is a worm to you and what you could be.”
Unfortunately, the useless attempts at flattery and bravado did nothing to stir her. Raana only wanted to understand. “I’ve been alive for plenty of Equinoxes. I’ve never felt or seen anything like that before.”
“That begs the question, doesn’t it? What’s different now?”
A little looser. Raana’s mind reeled through the options. “Does it have anything to do with the moon?”
“I can’t be certain.”
Raana bore her eyes into Nerissa’s, seeking the barrier between truth and lie, lie and truth. “What do you need Kai and Isla’s blood for?” A flicker of hesitation passed over her gaze. She retightened the shadow’s hold slightly. “I got it for you. I proved my loyalty. Now, tell me what it’s for.”
“There are pieces of themselves that they do not yet know.” She spat blood on the leaves beside them. “That they are yet to understand. Their blood will allow me to show them it.”
Raana narrowed her eyes. “Why can’t you just tell them?”
“Because even if I did, they would not listen to me anyway, and even I do not know the entire truth. Only their past holds the answers, and blood is the key.”
CHAPTER23
ISLA
After wanting to throw Isla into a Deimos safehouse to cloister her away while she and Kai tried to avoid their mating bond, it was ironic that Ezekiel had been dealt that very fate.
She observed the brambles where the former beta’s prison lay, the cottage marked by the faint scent of smoke on the wind as it billowed through the treetops from its stout stone chimney. It was one of five houses that Kai’s family had spread through the region’s hillscape,a quaint space accompanied by a gurgling stream peppered with colored leaves perfectly fallen for the season’s shift and mossy boulders slumbering beside it like small mountains.
When they reached the precipice of the narrow dirt path leading to the doorway, Kai muttered, “A fucking vacation house. He lied to us and put our pack in danger formonths, and I shoved him here.”
His punishment should’ve been worse—much worse. If anyone else had done what he had, if anyone else had the suspicion cast on him that he did, then they would’ve been rotting in the dungeons beneath the hall.
“You did it for Ameera,” Isla said softly, mapping the same path as the moonlight spread over his shoulder blades, the night’s darkness pressing on them both.
She didn’t bother bringing up his father, who she wondered if healsodid it for because still, pieces of the former alpha lingered in the hall, Kai’s office, and the House like he was constantly on her mate’s mind. They may have fought, but whatever form of twisted respect lay between him and his ghost hadn’t disappeared.
As she and Kai drew closer, a set of guards emerged from the brush beside the front door, bowing deeply, silently. They acknowledged them before taking further steps back into the woods, still on patrol but giving enough space so they and Ezekiel had some privacy.
Despite that quiet, the worn porch steps creaked beneath their feet, undoubtedly signaling to Ezekiel that they were approaching. Isla hated that her heart beat just a little faster, hated that her dagger weighed heavier at her side. There was no battle here. Just a talk.Theyhad the upper hand. And this…this would be the first time she addressed the beta as his queen.
Seeming to master himself as if he, too, had plummeted into reeling thoughts, Kai pushed the door open.
Goddess, this place is a hot spring.
Sweat percolated on Isla’s brow as she followed Kai inside, able to take in the cottage’s living area and kitchenette with one sweep of her eyes. Kai could probably span the space with a few strong strides. A fire roared in the stone hearth while the earthy, gamey aroma of stew blended with the scent of burning wood as the pot steamed on the stovetop. No wonder it was so hot…and the soup actually smelled delicious.
