I swallow back the bile rising in my throat as I shove my way past wide-eyed onlookers, straight to the altar resting at the base of Immortal Solene’s statue.
My hand falls on the closest edible object—a pomegranate.
I break the thick peel with my thumb, then nudge the fruit toward her lips. “Sabine, here. Eat.”
As soon as the dark red juice drips onto her lips, her bleary eyes focus pinprick-sharp. Her tongue darts out to taste the drop.
She gasps as if lightning has struck her core.
She wriggles out of my arms like a spitfire cat, and I barely manage to set her bare feet on the ground before she’s clawing at the broken fruit.
“Give it to me.” Greedy, she rips the pomegranate out of my hand, prying it open with her fingers, then tearing into its flesh with her sharp incisors. Bloodred juice pours down her chin to dribble onto her already ruined gown. There’s a feverishness to her energy. A frenzy that sets my nerves on alert.
She tosses aside the spent rind and motions to a ceramic bowl. “The milk. Now.”
As soon as I pick up the bowl of still-warm sheep’s milk, she snatches it out of my hands and guzzles it down. I lean back, muscles primed, observing with a soldier’s keen eye. I’ve seen Sabine eat and drink a hundred times. Even at her most famished, it’s never looked likethis.
All around the Garden of Ten Gods, pilgrims laden with offerings stare in rapture at the newly awakened fae goddess.
Already, I can hear the rumors spreading from person to person. Traveling like an infection from the garden, to the castle gates, and out into the streets of Norhelm.
Vale and the other fae approach, stopping at the highest level of the sunken amphitheater, the weight of their presence bending the air itself.
The ceramic bowl shatters behind me as Sabine drops it, careless, to move onto a bunch of grapes on a bronze platter.
She stuffs a handful in her mouth, but her eyes dart needily over the altar’s other offerings. Oven-warm loaves of dark bread. Carved wooden figurines. Vegetable-dyed wool skeins. She pounces on a cured lamb haunch and sinks her teeth straight into the salted flesh.
After a few bites, she comes up for air, wiping her glistening mouth with the back of her hand. Her fingers are shaking. Eyes glassy, distant.
I gently touch the small of her back, and she jumps, whirling on me.
She blinks, trying to focus. “Basten.” Her voice comes out like a gasp for help. “I don’t know what’s happening… Everything inside me is too loud, too bright. Too hungry. I—I can’t turn it off.”
Her voice breaks into a sob, and with it, the last of my hesitation shatters.
I tighten my fingers on the back of her gown. How could I ever doubt her? She’s no monster like the others.
She’s still my little violet.
“I’ve got you.” I pull her into my arms, letting her hot tears stain my shirt. “I’m with you.”
“I didn’t know, I promise,” she chokes out. “I would have told you that I was—was—” She briefly turns her head to gaze up fearfully at the fae at the top of the stairs. A hiccup makes her jump. She whispers, “I don’t want to be like them.”
She suddenly breaks eye contact and begins to shake.
Her eyes are rolling again, wide like a raging horse. I cup her chin in my hand and gently guide her attention back to me. “Hey. Eyes on me, sweetheart. Listen, human or not, you aren’t like them. Iknowyou.”
Her hands twist in my shirt. “How can you? I don’t know myself! I don’t recognize who I am like—like this.”
She swipes the back of her hand again on her cheek, brushing away a slather of greasy lamb’s meat. Her stomach groans, followed by her eyes darting back to the altar.
A deep, distant clap of thunder rolls across the horizon.
“Don’t fight the hunger,” I urge her, giving a worried glance at the sky. “You have to get through this. Your father called it a Gloaming. You need to—” I look doubtingly over the altar offerings, none of which seemed to make a dent in her appetite. “—to build back your strength.”
Her throat bobs in a hard swallow, but her will is no match for her insatiable appetite.
She grabs an oat roll and tears into it. She relaxes, but after only a few bites, her face twists into another scowl. She throws aside the half-eaten roll and grabs a wine bottle instead, tipping it up to guzzle straight from the source. Her throat bobs until the entire bottle is empty.
