She frowned. “I’ll try.”
Rune exhaled and managed a small smile. “Console yourself with the fact that you’re a rare treasure. One I will bargain even with the Heavens to keep.”
Alora flushed and rolled her eyes, muttering “You’re so dramatic.”
When would she understand he meant every word?
She sighed heavily and took his hand. “You said that song could summon something.”
“Not something…” he murmured. “Butsomeone.”
She shivered, her wide eyes searching his. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the name. Not when his entire being went cold at the thought of that entity.
“What happened in there?”
Rune’s mind spun, a storm of disbelief and memory. With the voice he heard in those dark chambers. No. It couldn’t be. And yet…
“Rune…” Alora linked her fingers though his hand. “Please. No more lies.”
Something caved in his chest at the plea in her voice.
Truth.
He had never worn it well. His whole existence had been stitched from deception and survival. It was how he knew to keep breathing. Yet the way she looked at him now, bright with sadness and hope, made a colder fear coil in his gut. If he told the truth now, how much more would he lose? Her trust. Or the last thing he still had to lose.
A second chance.
Rune swallowed, tasting ash behind his teeth. He couldn’t give her everything. Not yet.
But he could give her this.
He drew a breath as he tightened his grip on her hand, steadying himself. “You went into a trance when the mirror showed you the moment of your birth.” Turning over her hand,the scar on her fingertip turned white against her flushed skin. “Salvia had to prick your finger with the spindle for you to breathe life.”
She stared down at it. “Zinnia told me that part…but there’s more, isn’t there?”
“Your mother made a bargain with the source of the dark itself,” Rune confirmed, voice low. “Your birth drew magic from the Netherworld. I should havefeltit. A rip through the veil.” He shifted around, looking up at the slabs of stone, baffled that he had not sensed it at all. It had been concealed from him. “Or I would have known an aberration was born …”
He hated that word the moment it left his mouth.
Alora’s fingers curled into the fabric of her dress, knuckles white, as though bracing herself against a blow neither of them ever thought she’d have to face. “Are you telling me I was never meant to exist?”
The question lodged deep in his chest, too close to truths he had buried. He had believed that about himself once.
A disappointment.
A mistake.
But never about her.
The bond throbbed in Rune’s chest, steady as a second heartbeat. It hummed with her presence, undeniable as breath. Such a connection was purer than bargains or birth. Whatever she was, she washis.
“Your birth may have been forged in magic,” he said, voice low, “but magic cannot forge a soul. Such a pure thing is sacred in the Heavens, carrying the force of a star. Souls are shaped in the River of Souls and travel through the Seven Gates before they enter the mortal world.” He held her gaze, unflinching. “Whatever destiny the Fates planned for you, it wove you into mine.”
Alora’s mouth parted with a stunned breath, as if she wasn’t sure whether to argue or fall apart, hope and fear warring in her eyes. “Then what did you mean by aberration?”
Rune rubbed his face, expelling a heavy sigh. “The gods never mix their magic, Alora. They are jealous creatures. Each one wants to be the sole creator.” He turned to her, his hands clenching. “Only once in the history of the world has the divine magic of two mixed by desperate hands. And what came of it was...” He trailed off, thinking of the mutant warg that came to be with the magic of shadow and death. “A being of abominable power.”
Alora’s eyes widened and she backed away from him. “And that… happened to me?”
