My love.
CHAPTER 28
Magic calls to me like the night sky yearns for the shining glow of the moon. I slowly slip out from under Cal’s arm, careful not to disturb him. His deep steady breathing indicates the dreamless rest I covet that evades me yet again. The tug in my gut so intense that it pulls me outside before I even have shoes on.
I suck in a sharp breath at the first touch of wet snow on my exposed feet. With a sweeping motion of my hand, a clear path cuts through the snow, a runner of plush grass growing where I intend to step. The serpentine ditch I carved through the landscape earlier is overflowing now, rushing rain water threatening to spill over its shallow banks.
My skin is hot, sofuckinghot. Even my thin shirt is too thick for the heat that wafts off me. For a moment, I’m tempted to strip down and plunge into the icy stream for relief before I think better of it. I don’t know if hypothermia can kill a god, but I know they can die. They have to, otherwise my mother would still be here.
My mother.
I sit in the newly grown grass, the light of the full moon illuminating the fading crescent-shapesketched onto the firstpage of the worn leather journal that I slipped from my saddle bag, her piss poor attempt at an explanation.
Hold fast, my dark bloom, and destiny will come.
How was a scared, grieving eight year old supposed to understand her cryptic scrawling? Hell, I barely understand it now. Why couldn’t she find the time to tell me any of this to my face?
‘By the way, Ivy, if weird shit starts happening to you, it’s because we are goddesses’seems like a pretty easy way to start.
But all it does now is fuel the anger I’ve held onto for all these years. I’ve tried so many times to make sense of her words without success, tried so many times to will the answers to light. The edges of the journal are still charred from the last time I fished it out of the hearth before it could fully catch fire.
I’ve let that rage consume me so much that I barely remember her any other way. There’s only snippets, flashes of her singing, dancing, or painting. In every recollection, she is illuminated by a radiant light. Haloed in sunlight. Moonlight dancing on her porcelain skin. Firelight sparkling in her golden eyes.
I know I loved her before anger colored my memories, but I lost her and gained terrifying magic on the same day. And here I sit, eighteen years later. Another dead parent, another gift of power I never asked for.
Tears prick my eyes, threatening to spill onto the parchment pages. I knew I would likely never see my father again, but I thought I would feel him die. With my mother, it was as if we were a string being severed in two. I felt the moment her soul left this realm and crossed over.
But the man who raised me, the man who made me who I am, the man who gave power to a daughter where others would have cast her aside—that man slipped from this world days ago and I didn’t feel it.
Questions I’ll never get answers to race through my thoughts. Did he know what she was? Did he know whatIam? Is he even myrealfather?
No. That one I will not entertain tonight.
His death is still too fresh, the grief still too raw for me to sully his memory with traitorous thoughts. Regardless of my parentage, he gave me more than any mortal father could. He gave me a title, a purpose, and a training to back it up—more than any female child in Corinth has had before.
An icy wind blows through the clearing, but it does nothing to cool me. I pull on the blue threads of Cal’s magic again, eager to master the one element that still evades me. His magic filters into me slowly, my breath stilling as the image of my face pops into my mind.
I watch as silver rims my green eyes. Tan fingers grip my hand and splay it across the hammering heart that reverberates throughout this form. A haunted, pained look flits across my face as too sweet words flood my ears, a look that should have doused the fiery hope that burns in this chest, but doesn’t.
It’s easier to release his magic this time. Easier to let go of the emotions and memories that accompany it. I see how he looks at me, but to see it through his own eyes … his steely gaze that threatens to cut through the iron-clad box that guards my heart, the metal so thick that nothing has ever pierced it without my consent … that nearly breaks me.
Cal looks at me like he’s been wandering the Synalian desert for two decades and I’m his idyllic oasis. Not the first drink he’s found, but the only hydration he’ll ever need again. There is noend to his want, no limit to what he’ll do to have me. It’s a look most women would kill to receive.
Dawn is nearly here, and in the last cold rays of night, I know I’ve gone too far, entertained my own pleasure and whims for too long. Morning brings an end to the night I promised Cal. The end to the permission that I gave myself to give in to my own wants. Dawn brings me another day closer to the death that awaits me in Amale.
If the Dark God has any mercy at all for the man who has given him so many souls, he’ll take me before I completely destroy Cal.
The weather becomes warmer the further west we go, leaving the last remaining dregs of winter in our wake. We travel slowly, determined to make sure Marks and his soldiers have already crossed the watery divide between the Ruby and Diamond Regions before we arrive at the port city. We don’t leave camp until well into the morning hours, and when we ride, only the browns of the common folk adorn our bodies as we journey deeper into the heart of Corinth.
My magic hasn’t quieted since the tattooed serpent appeared on my belly. It knows exactly where Cal’s power is at all times. I can sense him without sight, without hearing. A mystical, infuriating sixth sense that I can’t shut off or drown out no matter how much I try. It blazes with every delicate graze of his tanned fingers, sears me with every seductive wink of his grayeyes. It consumes my waking and sleeping thoughts, demanding I give it the one thing it desires:him.
But I’m a stubborn bitch, and I deny it with a renewed vigor. I don’t let him get too close to me and don’t dare to give myself over to him again, no matter how futile my resistance may end up being.
Quiet hours on horseback sneaking through the Godswood give me more time to think than I care for. Thoughts that start with denial and always end up in a state ofwhat if.
What ifI don’t die in Amale?What ifwe have time?What ifIwantto have time with him?
But they’re pointless questions. My nightmares only increase the closer we get to the Diamond Region, dreams that now include more blood than should be possible and the face of the man who rides alongside me.
