Together they must stand, to defeat what once thought dead. Together they must give, if any shall live to the end.
Forgotten, until Accolon had given it to me in a dream.
And cursed me and my mate forever.
103
VEYKA
Lyrena met us on the beach.
Percival and Diana sat up on the bank, wrapped in cloaks, warming themselves around a small fire that Lyrena kept going without a thought.
“Cyara is waiting for you at the top,” Lyrena said.
Her voice sent a shiver down my spine. That voice… I had not heard it since those dark days after Arthur’s death. It reached inside of me and touched a part of my soul that I had thought gone, healed. But there it was, exposed again.
My golden knight was hurting.
I reached for her arm, but Lyrena shook her head. “Go,” she said, lifting her sword—up, toward the center of the island.
For once, I did not use the void.
Arran and I walked every step of the way.
We hadn’t slept. There had been no time. We’d barely cleaned up the carnage from Imbolc when the communication crystal began to glow, summoning us here.
Up and up we climbed. I was thankful for the thick leather leggings and heavy fur cloak on my shoulders. Even with theexertion, the temperature dropped with each step we took. By the time we reached the clearing, I was shivering.
Arran tucked me in at his side just as Cyara appeared from behind a monolith that towered over even Arran’s head. A ring of them.
She did not wait for us to reach her, coming to where we stood on the edge of the clearing.
“The true story of Accolon and Nimue is etched upon the stones,” Cyara said. “And the prophecy. All of it.”
Fulfill the prophecy. All of it.
The witch’s answer to my question, how to banish the succubus for good.
Inside of me, something began to awaken. Not my power—that was slumbering happily after the way I’d used it to defend Eilean Gay. But an awareness that set my fingertips tingling, nonetheless.
Arran must have sensed it. His hand pressed into my waist hard, keeping me firmly anchored to his side.
Cyara merely bowed her head, her face devoid of all emotion. “I shall wait for you on the beach.” She was as good as any elemental at hiding her feelings, but this…
“Cyara—”
“No. It is best you do this alone.” Then she was gone.
I flexed my hands at my sides, trying to get the tingling to stop. Maybe it was the cold. So damn cold here in the terrestrial kingdom.
We climbed the last few feet into the clearing until the stones surrounded us. Cyara had indicated where to start. Slowly, still pressed together, Arran and I drifted from stone to stone, examining the engravings.
There it was, exactly as Cyara had said.
It was all as we had suspected until we arrived at the last battle of the succubus and the fae carved into stone. The towerwith the whorl at the top. Nimue with her void power, my void power, in the Tower of Myda.
Then, on the next stone, the prophecy.
