I force my temper into a neat, lethal line and start with the only thing that matters: the artefact. I sweep the cottage with shadow, every corner, every mote of dust. The wards thicken until the lights dim. The house exhales and then forgets how.
“Don’t pout,” Dastian says mildly, which is rich coming from a man who sulks with fireworks.
“I’m not pouting,” I say, and the walls get darker because I am, in fact, pouting.
The crown is not here.
It is here.
It’s on her.
I step into the doorway. She’s still in the bathroom, a towel in one hand, knickers bunched in the other like a declaration of war. Her throat is bare to my eyes, but the air around it moves wrong, a subtle refracting, light refusing to sit where I put it.
“Hold still,” I murmur.
“No,” she says automatically.
I move anyway. My fingertips hover a breath above her throat, not touching skin, tasting for the absence. There is a cold curve in the air. A weight that weighs nothing and everything. The serpent is coiled, riding the line between my world and the Radiant.
“Show yourself,” I command, voice dipping into the register that parts veils and closes mouths.
Nothing.
“Voren,” I call without raising my voice.
He is a winter draught at my shoulder, a heartbeat later, palm lifting, frost blooming across the air at Nyssa’s neck. The chill outlines something that should not be invisible—an impression of scales, a crown pretending to be a collar.
Nyssa’s mouth flattens.
“Did you know it was there?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.
“I did. I can see it.”
“And you weren’t going to tell us?” Voren asks before I can.
“I didn’t exactly have time before you all crowded in here, telling me how fucking useless mortals are.”
“That’s not what we?—”
“Save it,” she snaps at me.
I swallow the growl clawing up my throat and make myself useful. “It’s bonded,” I say, eyes on the frost-outlined coils at her throat. “Half in our realm, half in the Pantheon. It will not show itself unless it chooses. Which means it has already chosen.”
“Me,” she says flatly.
“We already knew it would,” Voren says briskly.
“So now what? Clearly, I have to do something. Do I call the Devourer to me and kill it? Or what?”
“Now, you have to accept who you are, and your powers will come to you,” I advise.
“Accept that I’m this goddess of light?”
I nod, watching her reaction. Her jaw clamps tightly. “You look like you’re swallowing a brick,” I observe.
She glares at me, eyes flashing with that amber fire I’ve become addicted to. “I’m swallowing a lifetime of believing I was human. It’s a bit indigestible.”
She brushes past me, shoulder-checking me with enough force to bruise a mortal man. I barely sway, but I let her go. She marches into the bedroom, slamming the door on us for the second time in ten minutes. The sound echoes through the cottage, rattling the frames on the walls.
