Leaning forward, Adara peered over the ledge of the roof. The building sat along the edge of a cliff, overlooking the Plagued Sea. Violent waves crashed against the rocky surface far below, mist spraying. She wondered if she’d survive the fall, if she’d crash against the rocks with as much force as the sea, splitting her into a million pieces.
She leaned back. Her eyes drifted farther out across the Plagued Sea toward the horizon painted with moonlight. Was Blemythia out there anywhere? Did her home even exist anymore? Perhaps the prophecy had already been fulfilled. Perhaps she’d already destroyed everything, and that was why she could no longer find her home.
Adara lifted her scarred hands, angling them this way and that in the starlight. Flames swirled around her fingertips, sparks leaping and dancing between her hands until they grew into fiery blue butterflies fluttering around her. She enjoyed this, the forming of shapes with her power—a difficult trick for most Flamecarriers. Fire was a raging, powerful thing. It did not deign to be controlled, yet some advanced Flamecarriers could manage to tame it.
“You’re not going to jump, are you?” a wry voice said behind her.
Adara laughed, dry, bored. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She turned to look over her shoulder at Dominic. She expected to be angry at him for following her, or comforted by the fact that he found her, or perhaps disappointed for knowing none of it was real.
She didn’t feel it, though. Didn’t feel anything save for the pain at the thought of home. The sorrow and shame it brought to her. The guilt for not saving her people.
Hands resting in her lap, Adara dug her fingernails into her palms, letting her flames bite into her. She needed to feel something, anything other than what she felt in her mind. Those scars on her hands stared back at her, mocking. A reminder that, should she ever feel too much or nothing at all, the fire inside would devour her.
Dominic stalked closer, his scent of pine meeting her like an embrace. Warily, he took a seat next to her, like she’d use the butterflies to attack and lead him to a fiery demise. His legs joined hers, both dangling in the air side by side off the ledge. His gaze fixed on her marred hands, on the flames wreathing them.
A butterfly landed on Dominic’s shoulder. He flinched, then relaxed when he realized there was no bite to the flames. Adara didn’t let the fire sear him. One fluttered to her skirts, another landed on the tip of her index finger, their flaming bodies nothing more than a tickle of warmth. Its wings opened and closed gently, the fire springing outward, but Adara drew it back in, willing it to stay in whatever form she demanded. Dominic sighed, his shoulders rising and falling with his breath. A butterfly fluttered up, startled, then settled onto him again. A long silence yawned between them, the only sound that of the waves lapping far below and the crackle of the flames. Adara reached for the bottle of rum, took another swig, her gulp audible.
“You could have killed me,” Dominic finally said.
“I didn’t.”
He laughed bitterly. “Just for that, I guess you deserve this.” He reached behind his back and held out a book to her.
“What’s this?” she asked. The butterflies dwindled to ash. Gradually, her hands brushed his as she took it, fingers tracing the letters on the cover, the spine decorated in whorls of gold. Itwas the sequel to the book she’d been reading in her spare time on their journey.
“A Livisian gift,” he said. “And an apology.” He held a red rose out to her. The corners of her lips tugged up as she grasped the stem—the thorns had been cut off—and lifted the flower to her nose. She breathed in the sweet aroma of its petals with a contented sigh, then gently placed the gifts beside her, closing the stem between the book’s pages.
“For what?” she asked skeptically.
Dominic ran a hand through his hair. “For everything,” he said. “For trying to kill you after you revealed the truth about the dragon scale and shadow steel—”
Adara laughed. “I kind of deserved that. I should have told the truth from the beginning.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have said those things to you, and I shouldn’t have tried to harm you.” Hesitantly, his hand reached out, lacing his fingers through hers over her satin skirts. “But most importantly,” he said softly. “I’m sorry I can’t be the person you want me to be.”
His words were filled with such regret, such despair. Adara couldn’t take it. She wanted to believe the mask he donned was real, but she knew the monster hiding beneath. She pulled her hand away, shaking her head. “Anyone in their right mind would be aware that Dominic Nite is incapable of love. Therefore, I am doomed in this game. Doomed from the beginning,” she muttered, drinking again.
It was true that part of her felt doomed, but perhaps, if Dominic believed she had given up, believed she accepted her fate, he would peel off that stone exterior, giving her some room to worm her way into his rotten heart.
A rotten heart that doesn’t exist,she reminded herself, recalling that wretched scar in the center of his chest, jagged and deep and so, so cruel. How he dealt with the pain,Adara was astonished. Sometimes, she wondered if she had truly experienced heartbreak when Cal died. Because whatever Dominic had faced, whatever had broken him so thoroughly, had made him force himself to forget it, to rip out his own heart, must have been much worse. What was her pain compared to his?
Adara huffed a laugh, breaking through the silence.
“What?” Dominic asked, a brow raised.
She leaned back on her hands, head tilted up to the sky, as if she could peer into the heavens above. “It’s just that for the gods needing me to fulfill my role in this world . . . ” she said, choosing her words carefully. Dominic could not know of the prophecy. She didn’t know what he’d do if he did. “They’ve tried to kill me an awful lot before it’s happened.” She lifted her hand, aiming a vulgar gesture skyward. Two stars twinkled in the distance, the Eyes of Elysian, as if blinking in disbelief at her sudden outrage.
Lips parting, Dominic sucked in a breath. “Are all those stories true?” he asked, voice quiet.
A tad offended, Adara frowned. “Of course.” She lifted her head to meet his gaze.
He had finally moved, turning that distant expression toward her.
“Do you question the existence of all gods or just those belonging to foreign lands?” Some did not deign to acknowledge the Goddess Adara as a divine being simply because her story was Blemythia’s. Most Enfiderians simply worshipped Elysian and Belor, Life and Death. Nothing more. Malrynians believed in the Crowned Pantheon. The people of Jeotom didn’t believe in any higher power. However, as a Blemythian, Adara believed in all twenty-seven. Her home indeed was the home of the gods. It was their battlefield long ago. All of their stories were intertwined there, as would hers be once they forged the Realm Fracturer.
“All,” Dominic replied blandly. Fingers locking behind his head, he lay back on the roof, gazing up at the heavens lit with billions of tiny pinpricks of light.
“May I ask why?” With everything that had gone wrong in his life—though Adara surely didn’t know the half of it—she didn’t blame him for not believing. She even had some doubts herself. But her life, power, and soul were proof that the gods did exist.
