The woman stopped instantly. Her head tilted to one side. Alashiya couldn’t tell where her gaze went when her eyes were so… different, but she was almost certain they crawled over the blacked out windows of the SUV.
“I won’t hurt you,” the woman explained, the words lilting up at the end so they almost sounded like a question. “I was just out looking for— This doesn’t matter. I only want to help. Did you know you are bleeding a lot?”
A burn had set in to the slice in Alashiya’s palm and crept upward into her arm. It didn’t matter. Who cared if she got an infection or somehow bled out from it? Nothing mattered except Taevas.
No one but clan and Wing,he’d said. No one else could be trusted.
Alashiya swallowed hard and wished she hadn’t left her shears in the car. “Don’t come any closer, please.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know you,” she answered, gritting her teeth against the burn that had begun to permeate not just her lower arm, but her shoulder, too.
The woman eyed her for a heartbeat before nodding once. “This is wise. I didn’t like speaking to strangers either, until I learned to do it well. Tell me your name so we aren’t strangers anymore.”
“I…” She lifted her uninjured hand to wipe rain out of her eyes. Despite being drenched in cool water, her head felt hot and her skin a little too tight. A pressure built in her chest — like some great thing was coiling, loop over loop, end over end, readying itself to spring.
“I’m Alashiya,” she finally answered.
The pale woman blinked. Little sparks fizzed in the air everytime a raindrop touched her skin. “I haven’t heard this name. Who gave it to you?”
Alashiya felt like she’d stepped from one nightmare to another, except this one didn’t even have the decency to make sense. “Why does that matter?”
“My name was given to me by myemaand myisaand my cousin,” the woman offered, like it was very important. Her expression was grave, and if Alashiya looked closely enoughthrough the haze of rain, she thought she saw exhaustion there. “Now you tell me who gave you your name and we’ll both know something about the other. We won’t be strangers anymore.”
Alashiya could only hear every other word. The impending sense that something was happening, that some great change was about to overcome her was a roar in her ears. Heart beginning to race, she answered, “I think my mother named me. She— she said I should have a queen’s name.”
A fleeting half-smile lit the woman’s aquiline face. “It is a very good name. Mine is Hele. It is better.”
Alashiya’s bloody hand slid away from the door. From the stranger’s lips, it sounded likeheh-lay.Hele.
I know that name. I know Hele.
What had Taevas told her? She scrambled to recall details, but everything was so fuzzy, and the horror of the last several hours clung to her mind like a film. All she could remember was that Hele was adopted and a genius and an elemental. Alashiya had never seen one before, but she couldn’t imagine a being made of pure magicnotlooking like the woman standing there.
Please, please, please. Please be her.
A hum replaced the heat in her skin — a rising pulse of magic as deep and ancient as the roots from which the first nymph sprang. And there, woven into that old magic was him.Taevas.As big and loud and beautiful as he was in life, so too was he in the hyphae.
A strong royal purple thread braided with hers, tying them together forever — and holding him to this side of Grim’s riverbank. To life.
Alashiya stumbled away from the door to grab the woman’s arm. Electricity rattled the nerves in her hand, but she held tight. Voice cracking, she begged, “Are you Hele?TheHele?”
The woman looked down at her with a deep frown. “I am Hele Aždaja, of clan Orlova and Piiritu. Chosen of Vael, cousin of the great Isand Taevas Aždaja, and daughter of Valerie and Constantin. Why?”
I know those names. They’re clan. Oh gods, they’re clan!
Alashiya’s legs couldn’t hold her any longer. She crumpled to the ground. Pressing her hands into the wet gravel, she bowed her head and begged, “Please, Hele— You have to save him!”
Hele crouched beside her. Tentatively running her hand over Alashiya’s spine, she asked, “Save who, strange woman?”
Alashiya turned her face up. Rain slid down her cheeks, over her lips, and dripped from her chin when she gasped,“Taevas.”
Chapter Forty-Four
It’d been a verylong time since Taevas woke up in a hospital room, but it wasn’t an experience one never forgot — or could mistake for anything else.
He knew where he was long before he put anything else together. The scent of sterile air, the starchiness of the sheets, the lethargy that came with mild pain medication… It was all familiar and awful in its mundanity.
