Eight years later
“Your Majesty.” Corvus taps impatiently, his black wings puffing against my face. “Is it time?”
“Almost,” I reply, shooing him from my shoulder. I adjust the lapels of my dark suit, fiddling with the fabric until I finally remove the jacket in frustration.
“Anxious?” the raven asks.
“No,” I bite out, adjusting the pomegranates in the bowl for the fourth time this hour.
“Liar.” Corvus plucks a single stem from the vase atop my desk, flying over to drop the dark purple bloom in my hand. “It’s been a long time. It is okay to be anxious, Your Majesty.”
“The Dark God of Death does not get anxious, bird.”
“Maybe he does not…but Drayven does.”
Corvus’ beady eyes see far too much of me. But that’s the way it’s always been, ever since the day I killed him. He was my first death and the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend.
“I’ll finish the preparations; you go fetch the queen.”
The sound of her name whispered in the ether pulled me from sleep in the wee hours of the morning. Ever since her name was written on the scroll of souls to be collected today, I have been preparing. From sending my Reapers to gather her favorite fruit to changing into four different black suits—all of which look and fit identical—I have been uncharacteristically nervous.
I slip the flower into my pocket and take one last look at myself in the mirror. The ink on my skin vacillates from sunbursts to crescent moons in anticipation. The overly polished rings that adorn my hands glimmer in the firelight as I smooth back an errant strand of white hair. My fingers skate over my naked pinky, the missing ring soon to be reunited with the set.
“Corvus,” I say with a shaky breath. “Wish me luck.”
On a deep exhale, I command the shadows to wrap around me and step into the dark void of eternity. The infinite chasm between worlds where space and time does not exist. One star stands out on the map—a fixed point in glowing viridian.
If that wasn’t enough to locate her, our blood bond pulses like a honing beacon. It calls to me—shecalls to me.
I train my internal compass on Realm 717, traveling faster than I ever have before. Moments later, my feet sink into sand.
The Eastern Sea laps against the shore, the light from the sun catching on a hint of black scales that crest in the waves. I offer a lifted finger in recognition of the creature who has come to greet me before following Selene’s pull toward the cottage just over the dunes.
The weathered door opens easily, granting me entrance without knocking. Tentatively, I step into the cottage. The smell of salt and leather fills the home. Books litter the large dining table, and in a chair, slumped over the pile of tomes, sits the mortal man I have watched live alongside the goddess I love.
His sleep is light and fitful. I inch toward him to read the pagewhere exhaustion finally took hold of him. It’s a list of rare herbs, medicinal plants, and the illnesses they’ll cure.
But none of them have worked on her.
What ails Selene isn’t anything a human has ever experienced. Her death is a slow, painful murder at the hands of a vengeful God King. Eight years of no offerings, no worship, and severely reduced magic are what destroys her now.
Mikais wasted no time gaining power of this world and wiping all of them—every member of his rebellion—from their religious texts.
Every member except him, of course.
He erased the details of his betrayal, but left the act, and their speculation of the motive behind his treason has proven to be more than enough to sustain him.
I lay a single finger on the mortal man’s temple and grant him the deep sleep he desperately needs—but mostly to ensure that he will not wake to see her departure.
Leaving him, I follow the bond to the bedroom at the back of the cottage. There, wrapped in green velvet, lies the Goddess of Light. She doesn’t acknowledge me at first, her attention wholly fixed on the beach just outside her window.
A child with fawn brown hair splashes in the waves. She frolics and giggles in the water, finding an innocent, momentary respite in the grief that surrounds this home. She turns toward the window and my immortal gaze locks onto wide eyes of emerald green.
“She has your eyes.” Selene’s weak voice demands my attention. I drop to my knees at her bedside, taking her hands into mine.
“My light.”
The sight of her like this, pale and barely clinging to life, enrages me. If I could kill Nobus, I would travel to the god realm right now and and rip his soul from his body with my bare hands.But he made a deal with Creation that even my magic cannot undo.
