I blink and purse my lips. “I didn’t call you.”
“Didn’t you?” She tilts her head, rainwaterstreaming down her face like tears she isn’t shedding. “The veil is thin around you now, Nyssa. It whispers. It shows me things.”
“What things? What did you see?”
“I see you standing at a crossroads,” she murmurs, her pale eyes unfocused, looking through me rather than at me. “Three paths, three shadows, three choices. But only one leads to survival.”
“That’s not an answer.” My patience, already shredded by the day’s events, is wearing thinner by the second.
She blinks, her eyes regaining focus. “That is all I see.”
“So, this is a warning?”
“Of sorts. It’s what I do. For the Order. For you.”
I chew the inside of my lip. Guilt rears up as her dedication smacks me in the face. I lied to them today. I’m lying to her now by not telling her everything.
But for a reason I can’t quite figure out, I just don’t trust them with this. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The realisation sits like a stone in my gut, heavy and undeniable. The Order has been my anchor, my purpose, the structure that has defined my entire adult life. But something shifted the moment I stepped into that crypt. Or maybe it shifted when Dreven materialised in my garden. Or when Dastian appeared on my doorstep with his infuriating grin. Or when I wrapped my hand around a god’s cock and decided to see what would happen.
Fuck.
This isn’t me. It isn’t order. It’s chaos.
“Nyssa?” Taye’s voice cuts through my spiralling thoughts. “Are you listening?”
“Yeah,” I lie, refocusing on her pale, rain-soaked face. “Three paths, three shadows. Only one. Got it.”
Her expression doesn’t change, but she nods and thenturns to leave through the garden gate, letting it fall closed behind her.
I watch her go. The rain soaks through my shirt, cold and insistent, but I don’t move. Three paths. Three shadows. I don’t need a seer to tell me what that means. Dreven, Dastian, Voren. The unholy trinity that’s crashed into my life and turned everything I thought I knew upside down.
The problem is, I don’t know which path leads to survival. Or if any of them do.
I turn back to the house, my socks soggy and disgusting. I peel them off and walk inside. The silence is oppressive. I can still smell him. Sandalwood, shadows and something darker, something that makes my pulse quicken despite my better judgement.
“Get it together, Vale,” I mutter, stripping off my wet shirt as I head for the bathroom. A hot shower. That’s what I need. Scalding water to wash away the mud, the blood, the scent of a god I just fucked against my living room wall.
The water is almost painful when I step under it, but I welcome the sting. I brace my hands against the tiles and let it pound down on my shoulders, my neck, trying to wash away the memory of his hands pinning my wrists, his mouth on mine, the brutal fucking that I met with equal ferocity.
What the hell was I thinking?
I wasn’t. That’s the problem. I let Rynna get in my head. I was reacting, not thinking. The hot water beats against my skin, but it doesn’t wash away the feeling of him inside me, the way he looked at me like I was something precious and dangerous at the same time.
I press my forehead against the cool tiles, trying to anchor myself. This is a disaster. I’ve just fucked one of thevery beings I’m supposed to remove from this earth. One of the gods who was locked away by my ancestors for a reason.
“Fuck,” I whisper to the empty bathroom, the word swallowed by the sound of running water.
When I finally emerge, wrapped in a towel, I catch sight of myself in the mirror. My hair is plastered to my skull, my amber eyes bright with something I don’t want to name. I look feral. Wild. Like someone who just had the best and worst sex of her life and doesn’t know what to do about it.
I crawl into bed, suddenly cold. Shivering, I wrap the duvet around me and debate crawling back out to turn the central heating back on. But I’m too cold to emerge from under the warm and cosy duvet. I close my eyes, curling up into a trembling ball and promptly fall into a deep sleep.
I wake up after dark,sweating profusely under the duvet. The heating has kicked in, and it feels like I’m in hell.
I turn over, and my head pounds as a wave of nausea washes over me.
“Blergh,” I groan. I’m sick.
All this fucking getting drenched in the rain has made me ill. I push myself upright, the room spinning slightly as I swing my legs out of bed. The digital clock on my bedside table blinks 6:47 PM. It’s not even real night yet. I feel like death warmed over, which is ironic considering how close I came to actual death earlier.
