“It means you’re the hinge,” I say, because plain words land faster than prophecy. “Light on one side, Wraith on the other. Shadow in between. You can choose what is seen. You can make two truths sit in the same chair and decide which gets a voice.”
She scowls. “Useful for parties. Less helpful for killing a world-eater.”
“Useful for not getting eaten on the way to it.” I lift my hand, palm up, not touching her.
“Basically, what he is saying is that you are doing what Aethel couldn’t and tried her entire lifetime to do,” Dastian says.
“You became the true Queen of the Gods,” I add quietly.
“Well, fuck,” she sighs. “I didn’t mean to. I don’t want this job. It’s yours, take it.”
I shake my head. “It’s not mine. It’s yours.”
She stares at me like I’ve offered her a dead rat. “Fantastic. Add it to the list of things I didn’t ask for.”
“You never do,” Dastian says, maddeningly fond. “It’s your best trait and your worst weapon.”
Voren is all frost and assessment. “She needs control, not compliments.”
He’s right. The air around her hums, a low-grade siren. It’s faint to mortal ears, deafening to anything older. She is a lighthouse in a storm, and every monster at sea has just seen home.
“Look at me,” I tell her.
She does, chin high. Defiant. Frightened. Divine. My domain ripples under my skin in recognition. It doesn’t kneel; it shows its throat.
“Shadow sits in truth and lie at once,” I say. “It doesn’t snuff the sun. It tells it where to fall.”
“Translation,” she says, voice flinty.
“Fold it.” I touch two fingers to my own sternum. “You. Your light. Your noise. Pull it into the seam. Decide what the room gets to see.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then the Devourer finds you in the next few seconds,” Dastian says, cheerful as arson. “No pressure.”
Nyssa flips him a gesture that would make a priest blush.
“Breathe,” I say.
“Iambreathing,” she snaps.
“Not like a person who wants to punch me. Like a queen.” I let a sliver of shadow unfurl from my palm. It doesn’t touch her; it curls through the air like smoke that forgot how to rise. “On my mark. In. Hold. Pull.”
She rolls her eyes. She does it anyway. In. Hold. The light under her skin flares on the inhale, and I feel the exact moment her stubborn brain reaches for the seam.
“Now,” I murmur. “Pull.”
She grimaces, and the hum drops a fraction as a wave of pure destruction washes over the old house.
“It’s here,” Voren murmurs.
Nyssa’s eyes fly open as the dark wave breaks over the house like a black tide at midnight.
The windows don’t rattle; they forget how to exist. The stairs lose their numbers. The air goes grave-cold.
“Fold,” I snarl.
She drags the light inward in panic, on instinct, or in rage. It fights. Radiance wants a stage. Shadow wants a knife.
