Rytha's ash-gray skin flushes darker with anger, but her voice remains steady as mountain stone.
"The alliance was built on my marriage to him. If it's going to survive this, I need to understand what we're dealing with." She turns her gaze back to me, and something cold and calculating flickers behind her eyes. "Five minutes. Alone."
Elder Korrath shifts on his stone seat, ancient bones creaking like ship timber in a storm. His weathered face bears the skeptical expression of someone who's seen too many political maneuvers go wrong.
"The girl has a point," he admits grudgingly. "Perhaps she can talk sense into him where we've failed."
"Or perhaps she'll end up as bewitched as he is," another elder mutters from the shadows.
Rytha's father studies his daughter's face, searching for something I can't identify. His scarred features work through emotions like storm clouds racing across a battlefield—anger, frustration, grudging respect, and something that might be pride.
Finally, he waves a dismissive hand at the assembled crowd.
"Clear the hall. All of you. But I want guards at every door." His gaze fixes on me like a crossbow bolt. "Try anything and you'll be decorating the walls before you can blink."
The warriors file out with the reluctant shuffle of men leaving a good fight unfinished. Tarnuk catches my eye as he passes, his broken tusk gleaming as he shakes his head in what might be pity or disgust. The elders rise from their stone seats with the groaning protest of ancient joints, their ceremonial robes rustling like autumn leaves.
33
THALIA
The world bleeds away in crimson fragments. Each shallow breath sends fire racing through my ribs where Rytha's boots found their mark, and the taste of copper coats my tongue like a funeral shroud. The chains bite deeper into my wrists with every heartbeat, but even that sharp pain feels distant now, muffled beneath the growing darkness that creeps in from the edges of my vision.
My knees buckle against the stone floor. The cold seeps through my torn dress, but I can barely feel it anymore. The torchlight wavers like candleflame in a storm, and somewhere far away I hear my own breathing grow shallow and desperate.
The last thing I see before consciousness abandons me is a spider of blood spreading across the gray stone beneath my face.
Then—nothing.
I wake standing barefoot in a field of wheat that stretches beyond the horizon like a golden ocean. Each stalk burns with inner fire, their tips crowned with flames that dance without consuming. The grain waves in a breeze that carries the scent of harvest bread and something wilder—like lightning and rich earth after rain.
My bare feet sink into soil so dark it's almost black, warm against my skin despite the impossible flames surrounding me. The torn dress and chains are gone. Instead, I wear simple linen the color of fresh cream, soft as spider silk and clean as morning dew.
Above me, the sky blazes with the deep amber of sunset, though no sun hangs in the endless expanse. The light seems to rise from the wheat itself, from the very earth beneath my feet.
"Finally."
The voice rolls across the field like distant thunder, rich with the authority of mountains and the warmth of hearth fires. I turn, heart hammering against my ribs, and find myself face to face with divinity.
She towers above me, easily eight feet of muscle and grace wrapped in skin the color of spring moss. Tusks curve from her lower jaw like polished ivory, and her hair falls in waves of copper and gold past shoulders broad enough to bear the weight of worlds. Vines thick as my wrist spiral around her arms and torso, their leaves shifting between emerald and flame-orange as they move with her breathing.
Her robes burn without being consumed—fabric woven from living fire that dances and flows around her massive frame like liquid light. Where the flames touch the wheat, the grain glows brighter, singing with a sound like wind chimes made of crystal.
But it's her eyes that steal my breath. Ancient beyond measure, they hold the wisdom of countless harvests and the terrible compassion of someone who has watched civilizations rise and fall like wheat before the scythe.
"Harvest Goddess." The words whisper from my lips without conscious thought.
Her smile holds the warmth of summer afternoons and the inevitability of autumn frost. "All seeds must burn before they grow."
I drop to my knees in the soft earth, the wheat stalks bending around me like protective arms. "I don't understand. Why me? Why now?" My voice cracks, raw with desperation. "I'm nothing. I've never been anything but a servant, a tool to be used and discarded. What could you possibly want with someone like me?"
The Goddess moves closer, her flaming robes casting dancing shadows across the golden field. Each step she takes leaves small flowers blooming in the dark soil. "Because you still choose love."
I shake my head violently, tears streaming down my cheeks. "But I'm no one. I clean floors and mix herbs and bow my head when they tell me to. I've never made a choice that mattered in my entire life."
Her massive hand reaches toward me, and I expect to be burned alive by those living flames. Instead, her touch is warm as fresh bread, gentle as a mother's caress. She places her palm against my chest, directly over my heart, and I feel something deep inside me unfurl like a flower greeting dawn.
"Come."
