Dreven stalks out of the surf, dry and fuming, and fixes Nyssa with a gaze that could strip paint. “You drowned yourself.”
“I improvised,” she corrects.
Dastian grins at Nyssa, his eyes flashing molten gold. “So, the Crown’s awake. You’re glowing. The sea is terrified of you. What’s the plan, your holiness?”
Nyssa wipes salt from her eyes, her expression hardening into that familiar slayer steel. “Now we figure out how any of this is supposed to help me kill the Devourer, because… yeah. Zero clue.”
I chuckle. “Who knows? Sadly, that is something we will all have to figure out, and fast.”
“Was I this when you saw my final death?” Nyssa asks.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “We have made changes, but it doesn’t mean you are safe. Not yet. Not until that thing is gone.”
She nods slowly. “We need to go back to the Pantheon realm and find it. But I need tonight. I need to spend time with Rynna like it’s a normal day. Can you give me that?”
I cup her face and brush my lips against hers. “Always, slayer.”
We don’t walk back. Walking is for mortals who haven’t just surfed a Tidewraith. I wrap the mist around us, a cold, grey blanket that wipes the beach from existence and deposits us at Marrow House, where fewer eyes are watching. The transition is jarring, the silence of the countryside loud after the roar of the Atlantic.
Nyssa stumbles slightly—divinity or not, the adrenaline crash is coming—but she waves off Dastian’s hovering hands.
“Normal,” she reminds us, pointing a finger that still glows faintly gold at the edges. “That means the three of you need to stay away and give this to me. I will come here when I’m ready.”
“Do we at least get to fuck before we head off into the fight of our lives?” Dastian asks.
She smiles. “Always. But after I come back. I need to see Rynna.”
Nyssa gives me a slow nod, then turns on her heel and walks down the hill, her blade in hand, the crown invisible again, but its presence is felt.
“So that happened,” Dastian says, punching Dreven on the arm. “Why so glum?”
“This is wrong,” he says. “She is not the goddess of water. Why is she commanding the waves? The Tidewraith? Why did the Crown make her drown herself to ascend?”
“Because she didn’t ascend.”
We turn to the old crone, who is hovering in a lavender bush outside the front door.
“Meaning?” I ask.
“Voren,” Tabitha says, moving forward. “How awful to see you again.”
“Back at you, you old bitch. What did you mean?”
“She didn’t ascend,” Tabitha repeats, plucking a twig from her coat with infuriating calm. “She woke up. There is a difference, you great brooding lump.”
Dreven shakes his head. “The light was unmistakable. She commanded the sea.”
“She commanded awraith, you moron. With theWraith Crown. The Tidewraith obeyed the Crown, not her. It recognised the authority of the dead, not the element.”
Fuck.The old witch is right.
“She hasn’t shed her mortality. She’s just wearing her divinity like a coat over the top of it. It’s messy. It’s unstable.”
“And it’s dangerous,” I add.
“Dangerous isn’t the word,” Tabitha says, tossing the twig aside. “She is a beacon now. A lighthouse with a cracked lens. She thinks she has time to play happy families with her sister? The Devourer doesn’t need to hunt her anymore. She just sent up a flare that pinpoints her exact location.” Her sharp gaze lands on me. “You witnessed her end.”
Which one?But I nod.
