Arran inhaled sharply. “What is happening?”
“She is traveling,” Cyara breathed.
She was so entranced, she almost forgot to light the fire. A wave of her hand, and a flame danced to life above the pile of stones. Her eyes were fixed on Diana, lips moving constantly. Repeated the spell, again and again, in a breathy whisper that Cyara could hardly make out.
A wave of heat pressed at her cheek. She could not have lost control of the flame—
“What is that?” Arran said, shifting forward to get a better look at the flames… at the image that appeared there, wreathed in undulating red and gold.
Cyara recognized the goldstone palace immediately, even if it was not the version she was familiar with. This one was stunted, still built into the orange-red mountain itself, rather than rising above it. But that was not what drew her eye. It was the sea of black. Where Baylaur should have been, and the sand of the Effren Valley, there was only black. The succubus. A throbbing darkness that stretched all the way to, and around, another familiar monument. The Tower of Myda. Then the undulatingblack wave retreated. Contracted. Until there was nothing but red sand.
Diana’s voice was getting louder.
The flames devoured the image as quickly as it had appeared.
Two figures stood on the edge of a vast ocean. Waves lapped at their feet, around their ankles. Higher, until they were wet to the knees. But they were both smiling; staring at each other, completely lost to the rest of the world. Accolon and Nimue. It had to be. This was the mating, the one that had truly happened before the Great War, not to end it. Even as Cyara realized, a third figure rose out of the water. Everything about him was foreign—the tilt of his eyes, the knot that held the cerulean loincloth in place around his hips… he drew a dagger, its hilt made of embedded bit of sea glass, and slashed it across their hands. First Accolon, then Nimue—
The image dissolved.
Diana’s voice filled the temple. Cyara spared her only a glance, only long enough to see that her face and eyes were unchanged before turning her eyes back to the ball of fire. Her heart raced, trying to fit in every detail against what she already knew, to find the incongruities.
Another vision—another place.
Towering white cliffs rose, up and up and up to the very tip of the flame. Waves crashed against them, battering the stone with unforgiving, endless swells.
The Ancestors had battled the succubus in the Effren Valley seven thousand years ago, caught them between the goldstone palace and the Tower of Myda, and emerged triumphant.
Accolon and Nimue had been Joined—mated—before the Great War. Because that was the Split Sea they had stood in, and it had not been breached in seven thousand years. Not since the end of the Great War.
But even as Cyara stared and stared at the white cliffs, she could not make sense of it.
There was too much noise. She could not think at all. Everyone needed to stop yelling…
Diana.
Diana was yelling—the words of the enchantment, each one a battle cry ripped from her lips.
Arran’s sharp voice—a commander’s voice—cut through everything else. “How do we get her back?”
“There is no getting her back! Didn’t you hear what she said?” Percival screamed over Diana. “Is it worth it to you, if she dies here?”
“No one is dying today.” Cyara said. Yelled. She had to yell to be heard. She grabbed Percival’s other hand, while he clung to his sister with the other. “You are her tether. Pull her back.”
“I do not even know what that means!” he cried.
But someone did.
Cyara spun. “Arran. You are Veyka’s tether when she goes into the void.”
“What?”
“The mating bond—that is how she finds her way back. How she does not get lost…” Panic bubbled to life in her gut. “She did not tell you.”
She had to stay calm. Everyone else could panic, she would stay calm.
“Later,” Cyara said sharply. “What does the bond between you feel like?”
Diana’s cries were not getting louder, but they were more tortured by the moment. Percival was crying, his entire body shaking with the force of it.
