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“Nix?” Auri asked, her eyes still closed. She pressed her hand to her heart. “Are you here? It hurts everywhere without you. Come back to me. I’m sorry I pushed you away.”
A disjointed shadow hovered around Auri, not Nix, not anything really, but whatever was in Auri’s dream. Brinna watched it float, undulating above her sister like a specter. Waiting.
When suddenly, the dark thing dove into her chest, and Auri screamed.
Brinna scrambled onto her knees and tried to reach for her screaming sister, Auri’s back arched horribly in the sand, but Brinna’s hands bumped up against the invisible shield between them. “Auri!” She hit the wall over and over. “Let me in!”
The shadow emerged from Auri’s core, dragging golden threads connected to Auri’s chest and pulling them taut as Auri screamed. They reminded Brinna of the red ribbons, only they were golden and bright. Like Lucian.
Godlight?
Brinna pressed her hand over her heart and squeezed her eyes shut.
There’s a missing piece in my heart when I’m not with you.
Auri’s screaming stopped.
When Brinna opened her eyes, she was in a room. “Auri,” she called even knowing Auri couldn’t answer. The room was beautiful, decorated in green hues with a fireplace—the fire frozen in time in the hearth—a chair and sofa on which to lounge, a window framing the inky night beyond, and central to the whole room, a giant, four-poster bed.
She looked closer and saw there was one occupant, Nix, shrouded inside the bedding. He looked wrong, as if he was a flat, two-dimensional version of himself. Auri stood bedside pounding at a transparent barrier between them. She looked wrong too.
“Come back to me,” Auri was crying, hitting the glass wall. She pressed her forehead to the barrier, then screamed a horrible sound of grief mixed with frustration and terror. “Nix!” She slammed her hands against the wall. “I want the yoke. With you. I want it. Please, Nix. Don’t leave me.”
The god-yoke.
The fading.
“Auri?” Brinna called, but dream Auri sobbed against the barrier.
Brinna pulled herself from Auri’s dream and smoothed the dark hair from her sister’s forehead, then wiped the tears flowing from her eyes. “I’m here, Auri. I’ll do everything I can,” she said, even as she felt the gray tug against her mind. “I love you.” Brinna leaned over and kissed Auri’s forehead, then leaned back to see Auri’s eyelids flutter, then still once more.
Brinna pressed her hand against her chest, feeling that discomfort, and she imagined Auri doing the same thing when she’d been without Nix.
Brinna’s heart tripped inside her chest, and she blinked. Wait. Her mind drifted backward, thinking. She’d been with Lucian. She turned in a circle in the room, and though nothing changed, she tried to recall where they’d been.
Sol.
Talking about Auri and Nixus. When?
Before she’d gone back to the cottage. The night of the dream.
She’d been facing Lucian in the bed, trying to keep her mind focused on the story he’d been telling her about Auri and Nix. He’d been so beautiful that it was almost difficult to look at him, but she’d managed somehow to keep hold of the story. “You’re telling me Auri saved the whole world?”
“Humbling, I know,” he’d said with a grin, his head propped on his hand. “But yes.”
“And you were there?”
He nodded. “It was terrifying. This massive, pitch-black cavern–”
Brinna had been there in Auri’s dreams. She was sure of it. But what did it mean?
“Then suddenly she’s there, glowing with this bright, golden light, and Lexa—my sister—and I are freaking out a touch. Just a touch, mind you.”
“Glowing?”
“Yes. With godlight.”
“How, though? How is that possible? Auri isn’t a god.”
