I felt my eyes flare red and turned from her so she wouldn’t see. This was too much. Her presence alone was undoing me.
“No.” I dismissed her more coldly than I meant to.
But all I could think about was her being in my home, fitting in as if she had always been here. Fuck, my throat was tight with worry. I needed to get the hell away from her before I lost my composure.
“Are you upset?” Her voice was timid, but I couldn’t look at her.
“No, don’t be ridiculous.” I turned away from her. “I’ve got to go.”
I didn’t wait for her to respond. My star mist circled around me, and when it disappeared, I was in the realm of Gilyx.
I needed to check on Bexla, the woman prophesied to break the magic barriers deep in the sea of void. The barriers were keeping the realms of Elloryon, Gilyx, and Valynth apart, but by doing so, it was suffocating the world.
Gilyx was to blame for it, so I needed to be careful as I checked on her. I was not welcomed here—the gods of Gilyxhatedall other gods but especially the old gods. My gaze shifted around the woods outside Bexla’s home.
Screaming tore through the night from her house—raw, panicked, wrong. The front door burst open, slamming against the frame as her brother, Landry, stumbled out onto the porch.
“Bexla, run!” he shouted, his voice cracking with terror.
“Bexla!” her father screamed. “The man in the dark is waiting for you. He wants you—he’ll stop at nothing until he claims you!”
The cold in Gilyx was brutal, the kind that burned your lungs with every breath. Snow had swallowed the woods whole, blanketing the ground and weighing down the branches until the forest looked frozen in time. My breath billowed in front of me in thick, ghostly plumes as I moved.
Bexla ran.
I followed, keeping to the shadows as she tore through the trees, her boots crunching against the snow. She was running straight toward him—toward what fate had chosen for her. Or what fateusedto choose.
The barriers had been failing lately. Magic was unraveling, tangling destinies that were never meant to cross. Gilyx itself was draining the realm dry, siphoning power from the land—and with it, certainty. Elloryon’s mating bonds had become erratic, unreliable. Fates collided where they shouldn’t. Severed where they should have held.
That was why I was here.
Bexla didn’t know I was following her. Even when her honey-colored eyes flicked anxiously through the trees, she never looked quite far enough. She could probably sense something; most of them did, but my magic wrapped around me, smothering my presence into nothing.
Shouts echoed behind us, her father’s voice, sharp with rage or fear, I couldn’t tell—but she didn’t slow. She didn’t look back.
She was dazed, half-blind with panic as her feet carried her forward, deeper into the woods, until the looming shape of Wolfe Manor emerged through the snow-laced trees.
She faltered.
The realization hit her all at once. Her steps stuttered, her breath hitching as her gaze snapped to the towering estate. Herfrantic movements betrayed her fear—fate clicking into place whether she wanted it to or not.
Good.
She needed to be caught here.
My eyes lifted to the second-story window just as a silhouette shifted behind the glass, a man standing perfectly still, watching her approach.
Waiting.
I turned my focus back to her when she ducked into the shed. Slowly, I walked toward the shed when I heard someone coming from the house. He walked toward the shed, and I listened carefully as he headed inside, and a fight between him and Bexla erupted. She escaped the shed and started running, but he was quick on her heels.
He tackled her, flipping her over and pinning her to the ground by her wrists.
“You are lucky I don’t snap your fucking neck.” He ground out. “I have been waiting for this day, Bex.”
Gods, he might actually strangle her to death. I watched as she fought him, and right as I was about to interfere, he let go.
“Did you really think I would let you die so easily?” He sneered. “I want to make sure you are terrified before I kill you. I want you to be looking over your shoulder in the dark. I want you to check corners and shadows for me lurking. I want you to beg me to kill you for relief from the torment I inflict, Bexla. You should be as terrified as my mother was when your mother murdered her.”
