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The world, the prophecies, the priestesses—they couldn’t have me. I wouldn’t allow it.
Parys stalked closer, his warm wind swirling around us. He was losing control as well. “Veyka, you have to see what is right before your eyes.”
I reached for my dagger without realizing it, the need to arm myself against the pain springing from somewhere visceral and primal within me. But a hand stilled the motion. Not Arran’s hard, calloused palm. Smaller, but warm and strong. Cyara.
“Veyka,” she said softly, with such gentleness it threatened to splinter my soul.
Then it did.
I splintered apart. It wasn’t Parys’ wind swirling around me; it was a rift. The void. Every inch of me ripped apart and reformed. Darkness punctuated with gleaming particles of being danced around me—maybe my own, maybe the very fabric of the world ripped to shreds.
Except this time, I wasn’t alone. Cyara’s hand was still on my arm.
Her screams filled my ears, my consciousness, my soul.
It was all wrong. It wasn’t possible. Arran had been holding my hand the first time, and still he’d remained behind. He was my mate, the connection between us unshakeable, unbreakable. If I couldn’t bring him, I couldn’t bring anyone--
“Veyka!” Arran’s roar filled the room, the demand unmistakable. This time, I felt the tether between us clearly. It was like a rope, so physical and real I could almost wrap my hands around it.
One second, I was in pieces, fragments of soul and being spinning through darkness. Then the next, I was reassembled, my feet firmly on the goldstone floor once more.
Except that Cyara truly was in fragments.
I stood on the other side of the room, the massive Round Table separating me from my friends. Cyara was at my side, her hand on my arm. It was all right, she was all right.
But her scream—I reached for her—oh Ancestors. No, no, no.
Her hand was on my arm, her fingers curled around me, but the rest of her wasn’t there. It was still on the other side of the room, where I’d stood only seconds before.
Before my power had overwhelmed me, before I’d given myself over to the void, plunging headfirst into my power with no thought to those around me.
Because it only affected me. I’d promised myself again and again, been thankful so many times that at least this uncontrollable power couldn’t harm those I cared about.
But I was so wrong. As I clasped Cyara’s hand in place so that it wouldn’t fall to the floor, as blood spurted from the end of her arm across the room, as Parys sprinted for a healer… as my friend’s screams of anguish filled my ears… I knew.
It was all my fault.
25
ARRAN
I followed the pull of the bond, the string that seemed to be wrapped around my heart and led to one place—Veyka.
But instead of down and out, I was pulled higher. Staircase after staircase, past the oldest parts of the goldstone palace where we’d once dined with Roksana and Elora. I’d seen the spires from the outside, knew that some of the airborne terrestrials now at court preferred the rooms up there even if they were much smaller than the luxurious apartments in the main body of the palace.
The desert wind was brutal. Now that it was autumn, the nights were turning cold. But when I found her, perched on the edge of a balcony, legs dangling over the edge as if the drop weren’t thousands and thousands of feet, she wore nothing but a wispy nightgown.
On any other night, I would have hardened at the sight. The moonlight silhouetted her body, outlining her glorious curves. The roundness of her hips, the soft flesh just above them that pillowed outward as she slouched… I wanted to melt myself into the softness of her.
But tonight, I would stand firm. Because that was what she needed.
“I expected to find you beyond the palace walls.”
“I don’t know how to untangle the wards,” she said.
Before, when she’d been powerless, they hadn’t recognized her. What would happen now, with this unseen, unheard of power pumping through her veins?
Except it wasn’t unheard of, though it had been unseen for the last seven thousand years. It was time we stopped pretending that Parys was stretching, that his talk of the Void Prophecy was nonsense. After what had happened to Cyara… it was anything but.
