He didn’t know.
It was clearly unintentional, but that did little to ease the panic ripping through him.
After adjusting his clothes, Rune pushed to his feet slowly, every motion feeling foreign. Weak and wrong. His strength was still there, but muted. And his heart beat a little too loudly in his chest.
“How did I take your power?” Alora asked.
Even with her visible fear, everything about her was dangerously beautiful. Made of light and shadow and something ancient awakening beneath her skin.
Wholly divine.
“You’re aReigani,” Rune replied faintly, the truth raw in his chest. “A goddess. Not by marriage but by design.”
Which was unbelievable.
The gods were shaped from the stars. Demigods were children born of a union between them and humans. But she was neither of those things. She wasmade. A divine power, ancient and powerful, blood of the old gods and new lived in her veins.
He could feel it.
Her power was beyond him, to simply absorb his own magic and make it her own. She had siphoned him. The one thing he had been desperate to do before and terribly failed—yet she had done so with a kiss.
Alora’s eyes widened and light shone around her quivering body. “A goddess…?”
The ground shook and the wind outside rattled the cottage, threatening to tear off the thatch roof. Shadows lashed around the room violently. Darkness swarmed, swallowing the firelight in the hearth.
“Alora.” He lifted a hand toward her. The shadows reared tighter aroundherprotectively, warning him to stay back. “Calm yourself.”
But she was gasping for air.
Rushing to her, Rune took Alora’s chin, making her look at him.“Breathe.”
She forced herself to intake a shaky gasp. Two more and the room settled, the candlelight flickering brighter.
He let go once she was calm.
Alora backed away and sat on the edge of her bed, breathing hard until the room stilled. “Gods, I… I don’t know how to … control it.”
He managed a weak smile. “You will.”
The air grew taut.
Thick. Electric. Crackling with magic that was no longer his.
Rune braced his hand against the broken doorframe to steady himself. The weakness infuriated him. Mortal. Vulnerable. Stripped bare of every weapon he had ever wielded.
And still, when he looked at her—glowing, trembling, wrapped in his power like a second skin—the sight strangled the air in his throat.
He was inundated with wonder.
Devotion so violent it left him shaking.
Rune picked up the crimson spindle where he had dropped it, the point coated with his dried blood. “What did you manage to learn here?” he asked.
Alora blinked at it then glanced at the broken table where he imagined she had sat with the Thornbearer.
“Lady Zinnia said my mother descends from the Mortal God.”
“Eitan…” Rune arched a brow. “I assumed my brother only preferred males.”
