It lunged.
Thorne caught me around the waist and spun us both out of reach. The creature’s fangs scraped the wall where my head had been an instant before. Its breath hit us, a blast of cold so sharp it burned. More ichor sizzled along the stone where it dripped from the creature’s pointed fangs.
Poison venom.
Rydian roared. His shadows speared forward, plunging into the beast’s open eye. It screamed—a high, piercing sound that made every torch gutter. Then the darkness erupted outward, bursting through its skull and severing the scaled creature from itself.
Its head hit the ground with a wet, final thud.
I slumped against the wall, clutching my shoulder. My fingers came away slick with my own blood. The wound burned, cold seeping inward.
“Don’t touch it,” Thorne said, waving Keres over. “Looks like poison.”
“It was just a falling rock,” I said, but he ignored me.
Keres was already there, tucking her blades away, eyes narrowed at the torn flesh. “Hold still.” She reached for her salves, shadows gathering at her fingertips to pull the toxin free.
The world tilted. A deeper cold crawled up my arm, and my knees nearly buckled.
Rydian’s arm braced my back, steadying me. “Easy.”
Black ichor pooled beneath the creature’s severed head,viscous and smoking in the torchlight. The remnant of power inside it whispered—cold, wrong, barely alive. Something in me answered before I could think better of it.
Heat flared from the rune at my throat—then raced down my arm, through my veins, white-gold and furious. The pain vanished. Flesh knit beneath Keres’s hovering hands, the torn edges drawing closed as if stitched by invisible thread. Strength flooded my limbs so sharply I gasped.
Rydian jerked back in shock. “Aurelia?—”
“I’m fine,” I said, though my voice came out strange, layered with a hum that wasn’t mine.
Keres stared, then grabbed my wrist and turned my arm to the light. The wound was gone—only clean skin and faint smudges where poison had touched. Her expression shifted from suspicion to something like wary respect. “Well. That’s new.”
Daegel held up a jagged spine with the tip of his sword, black ichor dripping. “It was poison,” he confirmed before glancing at my now-healed arm.
I pushed to my feet, breath steadying. The heat beneath my tattoo cooled; the hum faded. But the memory of that power lingered—wild, ancient, and hungry for more.
“You have the power to heal yourself,” Leif said, his voice hushed with awe.
I glanced at him then away again, unease filtering through me as I noted all of the Withered watching me with that same reverent expression. Even Einan was slack-jawed.
I found Rydian’s gaze, and in it, no trace of damnation.
“It’s called Makarios,” I told them. “A gift from the Furiosities.”
A few of the Withered gasped at that.
“They are not what we think,” I added, my voice only trembling slightly.
Keres’ expression was hard, but her eyes glittered withappreciation. Slade and Thorne said nothing. But Daegel nodded at me.
“They want to defeat Heliconia too,” I said. “They are the reason I was Chosen. Their gifts…”
I trailed off. If the Withered rejected me because of the gods who’d gifted me this power, I needed to let it happen now. Before any more of them died for me.
“The Fates are of the light. They alone bestow gifts to chase away the darkness,” someone said.
“The Fates have vanished,” I said, impatience creeping in. More than anyone else, I knew the frustration of the Fates’ abandonment. I’d watched Sonoma and the others try for years to call their masters—to no avail.
“They have left this realm and us,” I went on. “We must fight with what we can in order to save ourselves.”
