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The world fellinto an eerie stillness. As though everything—sound, air, movement—all of it ceased for a few breaths.
Calista let out a sharp gasp and slumped against my chest. During the song, we’d both lowered to the ground, too overtaken by the strength of seidr. Whatever we’d done, it reminded me too much of that night we’d found the Raven Queen tied to a bed, bloody and battered.
By attempting to be a beacon, or guide for other kingdoms, we’d once more done something drastic.
“Silas.” Calista lifted her head, her eyes fluttered open. “Do you feel strange?”
I nodded and tugged her body closer. “It feels like we’ve . . . unraveled something again.”
“Like a new path that wasn’t there before has opened.”
Exactly. My limbs were heavy, my pulse weak with exhaustion, but I managed to peer out the glossy window toward the main Row. “Dammit,” I hissed under my breath.
“What?” Calista said, keeping a hand on my chest but leveraging to her knees to look outside.
“The Rave,” I said. “The shield they created is weakening.”
Between the gilded swords on the shore, the flicker of their burning shield against the darkness beneath the waves was dying, like an ember in a rainstorm.
“Because of us?”
“It was the warning,” I said, a deep, wretched kind of foreboding gathered in my chest. “The tale ended, and the kingdom once more returned to the beginning. It is his land he is returning to. I think . . . this is a path that was destined to happen, but whatever alternate fate we just opened, we must find it. Quickly.”
Calista blinked, lips tight and bloodless. With a curt nod, she scrambled toward our discarded clothes. Gods, what I’d do to stay tangled in her limbs, peaceful, unburdened to the end of our days.
We dressed. My palms smoothed her wild braids. She helped secure the mask over my scar, as though she knew it caused a great deal of distress to be seen without it. Together, we abandoned Hus Rose through the front gates and sprinted down the newly restored cobbled stones of Raven Row.
“Hold,” Olaf barked, marching down the line of Rave warriors.
In the distance, a dark current over the surface of the sea bubbled. Like a pot slowly boiling, the water bubbled, gurgled, and hissed.
“Even the Chasm of Seas is different, more defined,” Calista whispered, gaze on the tides. “I . . . I remember it looking much the same as a girl.”
I slipped my fingers into hers. “Your daj always watched it, despite normally peaceful trade with sea fae, he always held a wariness about the Chasm.”
“Do you suppose he sensed this?” she asked, voice low. “Even then, do you suppose he sensed there was fate tangled with us and the fae of the sea?”
“It is always possible.” I didn’t truly understand the depth of Riot Ode’s power. The king had tutored me, guided me when my own song tangled with his child. But there was always a sense that the last king of fate could feel a great deal more than he let on.
“You brought us back,” Olaf shouted. “Now we fight for our land as we did long ago.”
“What is he going on about?” Calista asked.
“Cal!” The blood fae who guarded her appeared from behind one of the towering buildings, blade in hand.
“Cuyler.” She released my hand and went to the blood fae. “Did you see anything shift? We saw the land moving.”
“Anything shift?” His pale eyes widened. Cuyler pointed behind us. “Yes, I saw ashift. Look. Tell me that damn peak in the distance wasn’t there a few moments ago, for I’m convinced I’ve lost my mind.”
I spun around. True enough, frosted peaks took up the northern skies. Lusher forests filled the darkness of the night well beyond Hus Rose.
“Bleeding hells,” Calista said. “The kingdom . . . it’s grown.”
“No, it hasn’t grown. It’s restored,” I corrected. “Look at it, Little Rose. This is . . . home.”
“Home?” Cuyler forgot any trepidation for me and came to my side. “You mean the original kingdom? But the fae isles were split from the old kingdom of House Ode, right? Etta, even the regions of the East. I saw them break apart in King Ari’s dream—” He paused and glanced at me. “Well, I suppose you already know it since I’m quite certain you, Wraith, were the one leading Ari through it. Which, I have many questions about.”
He wanted answers. I doubted I’d be the one to give them. There was a strangling kind of panic that came when folk spoke to me. A panic I never truly knew was there until I stepped beyond the gates of Hus Rose.
