“Very funny,” I snap. “I’m the one currently breathing, thanks to a very grumpy Wraith God. What’s your excuse?”
The feeling shifts, turning from cold stone to the oily slickness of ancient secrets. The snake on my chest uncoils, its metal scales rasping against my skin with the sound of a thousand whetstones. It doesn’t move like a creature of flesh; it moves like a thought, fluid and inevitable. It slithers up my throat, its weight pressing into my windpipe, and peers into my eyes with sockets that hold nothing but the void.
The warden is a lie. The line is a leash. You died and broke the chain, Nyssa Vale. Now, you belong to the light.
“I belong to me,” I growl, reaching up to snatch the bastard off my neck. My hand passes right through it. It’s an echo, a parasitic memory trying to find a home in my newly hollowed-out soul.
The dais beneath me cracks, weeping that same sluggish river of blood I saw in the ruins. The snake flares, its steel turning white-hot, and the agony in my chest returns, a phantom of Voren’s hand reaching in to save me.
Wake up, little goddess. The Devourer is hungry, and you’ve rung the dinner bell.
I bolt upright in bed, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The room is dark, save for the faint, silvery glow of Dreven’s eyes at the foot of the bed. I look at the bedside table. The crown is still there, silent and still as a grave. But my palm—the one I used to seal the gate—is burning like I’ve held it to a furnace.
“Nightmare?” Dreven asks, his voice a low vibration in the gloom.
“More like a performance review,” I rasp, checking my chest. No wound, but the hum under my skin is louder now. “The snake talked. Well, it felt at me. It says I’m not a warden anymore.”
“What are you then?”
“Something that belongs to the light.”
Dreven’s gaze shoots to Voren, who sits upright, and Dastian nearly flies off the bed in agitation.
“What?” I say, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. Should one not talk about light in front of Shadow Gods?
“Nothing,” Dreven states and turns back to the window.
“Oh no!” I say, climbing off the bed, sticky, sweaty, and practically vibrating. “You don’t get to react like that and then shut down. Why does that freak you out?”
Voren stands slowly. “The light,” he repeats. “Radiant and Shadow. Aethel was the Light. Since she died, the throne of the Radiant Gods has been empty.”
“So?” I demand. “I’m a slayer. I’m mortal. Well, mostly. I’m not some celestial placeholder for a dead queen.”
Dastian lets out a short, sharp laugh that has zero humour in it. “If the crown is calling you a creature of the light, it means your little trip to the afterlife didn’t just stitch you back together. It rebooted the system.”
I look down at my hands. They look the same. But the hum beneath the skin is undeniable. It’s not just slayer power; it’s a dawn breaking in my marrow.
“You’re saying I’m the new Aethel?” The thought makes me want to vomit. “Do I need to stab myself in the face?”
Dreven turns from the window, his silver eyes reflecting a light that isn’t in the room. “No, you will not. But you don’t have a choice. The Devourer is coming, Nyssa, but now you are the one thing it needs rather than wants to eat.”
“Meaning?” I croak.
“You have the power of the light. Aethel’s power.”
“The power that killed it.”
“Bingo,” Dastian breathes.
Silence descends.
“How long have you known I’m a goddess in waiting?”
“Since you came back,” Dreven says, “Although we had our suspicions prior to that event.”
Event.My death and resurrection were an event.
“So how come the crown didn’t reject me? It let me pick it up.”
