The question hit me sideways. I opened my mouth to snap back, then stopped. Would it have changed anything? Would I have refused to go with him? Forced my children to face whatever horrors waited in that forest?
“That’s not the point,” I said finally.
“Isn’t it?”
Varyth stepped closer, and I caught that familiar scent of sandalwood and dewed grass that always seemed to cling to him. “You needed safety. I provided it. The method was irrelevant.”
“The method was you casually rewriting the world around my children without their knowledge or consent.”
“And the alternative was leaving you to die in the wilderness.” His voice had gone soft, dangerous. “Tell me, Isara, would you have preferred that?”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to rage at him for the manipulation, the casual dismissal, the way he made decisions about my life like I was a chess piece to be moved around his board.
But underneath the fury was something else. Something that tasted like gratitude and felt like betrayal.
Because he was right. I would have died out there. My children would have died. And whatever else Varyth was—arrogant, secretive, insufferably calm—hehadsaved us.
Even if he’d done it by bending reality to his will.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said finally, the fight draining out of me. “Absolutely fucking unbelievable.”
“I’m aware,” Varyth said, and there was definitely amusement in his tone now. “Shall we continue? We have a limited window to complete our business here.”
I glanced around, taking in our surroundings for the first time since landing. We stood in a clearing, and beneath the familiar hum that had threaded through my consciousness since crossing the Veil, something else stirred. A different melody, hauntingly beautiful, like wind chimes made of starlight and sorrow.
And there, maybe a hundred yards away, the Veil stretched across the landscape like a silver scar.
“Business,” I repeated. “Right. And what exactly is our business at the place that nearly killed me the first time I crossed it?”
Varyth’s smile was sharp as broken glass. “We’re going to find out what you really are.”
“What I really am?”
“The black fire, Isara. The shadow flames.” His eyes gleamed. “They didn’t just appear when you crossed the Veil. They were always there, waiting. The Veil simply... awakened them.”
“You’re saying I always had this power?” My voice came out higher than I wanted.
“I’m saying the Veil doesn’t create magic, it reveals it.” Varyth moved closer, his presence overwhelming in the charged air. “And I’m going to prove it.”
Behind us, both dragons settled down to wait with the patience of creatures who had done this before. Caorath even closed his eyes, apparently planning a nap.
“Well,” Darian said, as he bounced on his toes. “This should be fun.”
Varyth moved toward the Veil with the kind of predatory grace that made my skin crawl and my pulse quicken in equal measure.
The silver barrier stretched before us, that impossible wall between worlds that had nearly torn me apart the first time I’d encountered it. But now, seeing it again, I could sense something different. The air around it didn’t just hum with magic. Itscreamedwith it.
Varyth stopped abruptly about twenty feet from the Veil, his head tilting as he studied something I couldn’t see.
“Here,” he said, carrying a note of satisfaction that made the hair on my arms stand up. “This is where you crossed.”
I squinted at the spot he was examining. It looked like every other section of the Veil to me, that same shimmering, silver barrier that seemed to exist somewhere between liquid and light. But as I focused, something began to emerge from the magical static.
A distortion. Subtle, but there. It was like looking at the world through water, everything just slightly bent and wrong.
“How can you tell?” I asked, though part of me already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Because you left a mark.”
