“No! Don’t say that!” Alex sounded panicky, a tone alien to his deep baritone. “You’re going to be fine. Look! The Tornas are here! Lyon too!”
Ayla and Sana fell to their knees next to me. A second later Lyon knelt next to Alex.
“What can we do?” Ayla asked.
“Odie said she needs you. Something about the aether.”
“You didn’t try healing her?” Sana’s eyes scanned my face, which had to look horrible.
“I did, but it’s not working, and I don’t understand why. I’ve healed her before, this same way. I think Ishtar’s magic is stopping me.”
“Aether won’t heal her either,” Ayla said. “Unless she’s one of us—aether-blessed—it won’t do a thing. It—”
I lifted my fingers.
Catching the motion, Ayla slammed her lips shut.
As best I could, I pointed to myself. “Not fae, godling.”
“Godling?!” Sana’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute, Odie, are you—” She twisted mid-sentence and shot a blast of fire at something. “Sorry about that, the bastards keep trying to attack you. Are you sayingyou’rea godling?”
I nodded once.
My friends stared down at me, stunned and silent, until a piercing wail pulled them out of their stupor.
“That can’t be right,” Lyon said.
“And if it is . . . how?” Ayla asked. “They’re supposed to all be dead! How did you find out?”
“Ishtar.”As soon as I said the queen’s name, my stomach began twisting into deep and vicious knots.I moaned, low and soft.
“She’s fading!” Alex said. Only then did I become aware that one of his hands remained on my stomach. He’d been scanning me the whole time. “What can you do for her?”
“I’m not sure . . .” Ayla said, her tone hesitant. “I think she believes that if we fill her with aether, like we would an aether-blessed fae who was mortally wounded, she can come back.”
“Yes,” I croaked, my eyelids drifting closed again.
“Then do it!” Alex cried out.
“Okay, okay! Stand back, and take your hands off of her,” Ayla replied. “Lyon help me. Sana keep guard.” The older twin’s green eyes locked with mine, and she lowered her voice. “Odette, this might hurt. Especially if you’renotwhat you say you are. Aether is healing for those of us who can handle it, but at first, it’s always . . . unpleasant. And there might be side effects.”
My eyes closed, but I managed a faint hum of acceptance.
Another pair of hands, smaller and more fine-boned than Alex’s, landed on me.Then another pair belonging to Lyon.
“Together,” Ayla said, presumably to Lyon. “Sana, you’ll have to take over if one of us can’t give any more.”
“Hurry,” her sister urged. “She looks terrible.”
Without so much as a warning, the magic I’d felt when walking through wards or just by being too close to Ayla when she was using aether, filled me. At first it was nice, pleasant as it had been before.
And then the burn set in.
I whimpered. Inside my head, Tabitha screamed, and I caught a vision of her curling into a ball.
Ayla responded to my cries by pressing her hands down harder. “We’re so sorry! It’ll hurt, but if you’re sure of what you said,” she sounded like she didn’t quite believe me, “this could be the only way.”
“Hold tight, Odette,” Lyon urged. He hadn’t let up in filling me with aether for a second.
