I shook my head. “Touched by your concern, Camille—but I’ve still got it.”
Daphne touched the glowing lines. They flickered beneath her fingers, almost playful.
“What wards?” she asked.
“One physical, one magical. We’ve trapped the tunnels. But the Dusk Roads are another matter.” I drew a rune in the air. It hummed and shimmered like a sunrise. “It’s to make sure that the Renegade won’t take a shortcut and appear here,” I explained, and she drew a sharp breath. “That won’t happen.”
Camille drew her blade across her palm and smeared it across the stone. Orren knelt by his tunnel entrance, coaxing more roots to grow.
I looked at them both—warriors older than the gods these stones once knew. My companions. My family.
“Don’t die before me,” I told them. “You’ll make the afterlife intolerable.”
Camille rolled her eyes. “We were planning to haunt you, actually.”
“Better than poetry readings with the Renegade,” Orren muttered.
I almost smiled. Almost.
Daphne straightened her shoulders and cracked her neck.
“Then, let them come,” she said. Steady, fierce, unflinching. A tremor passed through me—not of pain, but of sheer, breathless awe. I had seen kings fall to their knees before the end. Watched gods bargain, beg, betray. But this mortal girl, born into a world that never wanted her, stood next to me and challenged fate itself. Calloused by the centuries, I wasn’t afraid of death anymore. I feared what I would become if I lost her.
My blood surged with anticipation. Old gods and new ones, sand and blood, snakes, scorpions and vigilant spirits. We might just win this.
Daphne
The Salt Womb
The chamber fell still after the others disappeared down their appointed paths. All that remained was the flicker of ley line light tracing the walls and the echo of footsteps already gone.
Emrys turned to me and took my hands. His touch grounded me, even as the hum of magic swelled beneath the stone.
“Are you ready, Daphne?”
I arched a brow. “What, no Miss Daphne? I’m scandalized.”
He huffed a laugh, but his thumb brushed mine with the kind of gentleness that made my chest tighten.
He leaned in so close I could see the reflections of magical light in his eyes. “I just want you to know,” he said, “whatever happens next—I’ve got you.”
The words knocked something loose in me. Not fear, not quite. The weight of everything we’d come through—and everything still ahead.
My thoughts scattered like startled birds. What would come after this? If we survived, if we won—what would peace even look like?
I squeezed his hand. “So do I, Emrys,” I said. And I tried to believe it. Maybe already believing it a little too much.
His eyes never left mine as he sank to his knees, drawing me down with him. Ley line light shimmered along the walls, pulsing like veins, brighter now than the sconces lining the Salt Womb. He pressed his right hand to the stone floor and closed his eyes.
It began.
The tether between us snapped—his magic pulling back through the bond we’d shared since I broke the wards. Something inside me was yanked loose with it, as if my soul was being unraveled from the inside.
It was the same dreadful sensation I remembered from Paris. It felt like a wild wind hitting my skin, but everything stood still. The air cracked, thick, and loaded with something unnatural. It tasted of rainwater and stormy clouds. Of blood and copper. Something inside me was pulled from my chest with invisible claws. A hollow opened behind my ribs, dark and endless. Aching to be filled.
It hungered.
It wanted.
