Jealousy slid through her like poison and she was ashamed to feel such a thing.
Sunnëva’s eyes softened. “I am sorry you had to endure that.”
Alora drew in a careful breath, forcing the ache back behind her ribs. “Do you refer to Vorak’s visit,” she asked coolly, “or yours?”
Without waiting for an answer, she stormed past her and into the bathing chamber, where the bath had already been drawn. The sheets slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her feet as she stepped in.
The water lapped against her skin, steam curling thickly over her face until her vision blurred. She told herself it was only the steam making her eyes sting, not the tears lodged like a thorn in her throat.
Pathetic, she scolded herself. Why wallow now?
Sunnëva sat on the edge of the bath, ice feathering along the hem of her gown. “I’m sorry. That was cruel of me. Rune and I had a score to settle.”
Alora frowned. Did she even want to know? No, she rather not.
“I don’t care about your past together, but there is a reason you are lingering around him now,” Alora said, failing to disguise the possessiveness in her tone.
Sunnëva’s sigh cooled the air. “His sins are many. And he will not escape them unscathed.”
The warning made Alora tense.
She wrapped her arms around her folded knees and glowered at the goddess. “Is this what you meant when you said I shouldn’t trust you?”
Sunnëva stilled, her gaze holding Alora’s.
“I have regained my memories, Goddess of Death,” Alora continued. “Your face was the first one I saw when I woke.”
She looked away to the water as the memory rose unbidden. Sunnëva had stood beside her, white hair blowing in the wind, as they watched the Dark Way from the Shadow Keep. The siphoning of Sunnëva’s son. Demons falling to Seraph fire and sunlight. Time slowing when the skies rumbled with thunder.
Then Rune standing before the Heavens as lightning flashed.
“If you want to save him, you must rewrite your fate,”the goddess had said.“But it won’t be easy. You will forget. You will once again live your story. And your futures will rely on Rune making the right choice.”
Alora’s voice had trembled.“And if he fails?”
“Then fate continues as it was meant to. He dies forgotten and the world burns.”
Alora stared at her startled reflection in the water as the smell of smoke and Rune’s scream echoed in her mind.
“You told me I had to stop him…”
The Goddess of Death tilted her head, studying her as though she were a piece mislaid on a vast board. “You were the only one who could. The Heavens gave you a second chance, but not without reason. And not without cost. Do you recall what else I said?”
Alora’s stomach dropped. The words returned like thorns of ice.
“That you were there to collect souls,” she whispered. “And I would see you again when the time came to collect another.”
Silence stretched between them.
Alora forced the question through clenched teeth. “Are you telling me one of us will die?”
Sunnëva rose, frost blooming beneath her bare feet. “Vorak is a Titan. A devourer of worlds. What hope does a fallen seraph have against him alone?”
“He hasme.”
The goddess’s mouth curved. “Well, we can only hope.”
“Have you visited him before?” Alora asked, the question escaping before she could stop it. The look on Sunnëva’s face told her they had met more than once. “Why?”
