Alaric exhales sharply, running a hand through his hair.
“I am merely… frustrated. Every path I thought I understood keeps burning away beneath me.”
“Welcome to my world,” I mutter.
The stone beneath us gives a subtle shudder.
I glance at Dagan.
He hasn’t spoken, but he might as well be shouting. The earth around him is a low, constant rumble, like an avalanche waiting for an excuse.
“What is it, man?” I demand. “You’re rumbling about like a mountain ready to slide. Speak before you crack the Eyrie in half.”
Dagan’s granite-colored eyes flick to mine, then away. His hands flex at his sides.
“It is nothing,” he begins.
“Bullshit,” Alaric says.
Kael snorts in agreement. “Your silence is louder than a quake, brother. Out with it.”
Dagan’s jaw works.
“You three have found your mates,” he says at last. “True viyellas with whom your zareth burns bright. And yet the crown is silent. And I—” He breaks off, stone humming under his boots. “I have gone to the Earth realm six times. Six. To no avail.”
I blink.
“Six?” Kael asks, brows lifting. “Where?”
“The southern continents,” Dagan says. “Dry lands with red dust and bright sunshine. Then lands in the far east—cities with neon lights and skies that taste like metal.” His mouth twists. “I walked among their people. I listened. I watched. Nothing.”
Kael’s lips curve, slow and wicked. “Well, there’s your mistake.”
We all look at him.
“Oh?” I arch a brow.
“You have to go to the place we found our mates. Jersey,” Kael says, straight-faced.
For a moment, silence.
Then, despite myself, I huff a laugh. Alaric’s mouth quirks. Even I can admit the pattern is suspicious.
Dagan, however, freezes as if struck.
“New Jersey?” he repeats, stunned. “You are telling me the secret to finding my viyella and maybe winning the crown of Nightfall is a specific mortal province called New Jersey?”
“Hey, I’m just saying,” Kael replies, shrugging. “All three of our viyellas. Same realm, same region. Perhaps the Fates like sass and bad infrastructure.”
Alaric’s grin is sharp. “And an alarming tolerance for chaos.”
I smirk, picturing Delia’s fire-bright eyes as she scolded me for nearly incinerating my brothers.
“They do burn hot, those Jersey girls.”
Dagan looks between us, stunned and faintly offended.
“You’re all laughing. But perhaps I truly have been searching in the wrong places.”
