Because they are not wrong.
I look past them to the high table again, to where Jules and Phoebe are talking with Delia, heads bent together, hands moving as they speak.
Three women from the same distant realm, from the same small swath of land in that realm, all now bound to the Lords of Nightfall.
All of them glowing with that damned light I cannot stop seeing.
“I watch my brothers embrace their viyellas,” I say finally. “I can see the bonds in each of you. Obvious. Strong.” I lift my tankard slightly in their direction. “And yet, I walk alone. Still.”
Alaric’s expression softens. I hate it.
“This fight is done, Dagan,” he says. “For now. The Vein stands. The wards hold.”
“For now,” I echo. “Idris is not finished. His cult grows in the cracks while we celebrate.”
“Which is exactly why we celebrate,” Kael counters. “If we wait to be safe, we’ll never raise a cup again.”
Thorne tilts his head, studying me. “This is deeper than Idris.”
I laugh, a short, bitter sound. “Is it?”
“Yes,” Alaric says, maddeningly sure. “I recognize the look. It is the same one that haunted my reflection before I met Jules. Before Phoebe dragged Kael out of drowning himself in duty. Before Delia forced you to admit you have a heart at all, Thorne.”
Thorne grunts. “She did not force?—”
“Please,” Kael and I say at the same time, and for a moment the mood lightens.
“Have you thought about New Jersey?” Kael asks suddenly.
I blink. “What?”
He grins like a man enjoying a private joke. “Have you thought about trying New Jersey? It has been… fruitful for the rest of us.”
Alaric’s mouth twitches. “Might be worth a try.”
I stare at them.
“I fail to see how one physical destination is the only place in the multiverse where our Fates deign to hide our mates,” I scoff. “You speak of this Jersey as if it provides viyellas on tap.”
Thorne snorts into his drink.
“Still,” Kael says, undeterred, “the pattern is hard to ignore.”
“Jules, Phoebe, and Delia all came from the same region,” Alaric muses. “Same realm. Same rough patch of coastline in that realm. There may be some… sympathetic resonance. Some thin place between Nightfall and that land.”
“Or,” I say dryly, “perhaps the Fates merely enjoy tormenting me by implying my future might be found in a place whose name sounds like an illness.”
“Rude,” Thorne mutters. “You haven’t even been. You went far south, then east, yes?”
I nod reluctantly. “I have crossed deserts of glass and jungles that stank of rot. I have met priestesses with eyes like poison and kings who thought themselves gods. None of them… sang. None of them fit.”
“And in all that wandering, you never thought ‘perhaps I should try this Jersey’?” Kael presses, eyes dancing.
“No,” I say flatly.
Alaric’s lips quirk. “Perhaps that is your problem.”
I roll my eyes and take another drink. The ale does not warm me the way it usually does. The hollowness inside my chest remains.
