“Hey,” I echo, still too bleary to stand. “How long was I out?”
“Only as long as you needed to be,” Adria insists, stepping forward to take one of my hands between both of hers. She kneels beside the bedso that we’re eye to eye. “Long enough for me to bring the Shadow Court to a tenuous heel … repair that crack in your armor …” She drops the resealed section beside me on the bed. “… and drag the remaining husk of your starship from the Second Spire to just outside the fortress.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Iwantedto do that,” Adria insists, weaving her fingers with mine.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Does it matter?”
I squeeze her hand as hard as I can. “How bad are things with the court?”
Adria blows out a heavy breath, pluming white. “General Isek lost the leg,” she says, barely audible, as if saying the words out loud might wound her more than the serpents did. My stomach drops like a broken elevator. “And he hobbled into that meeting, on a makeshift mechanic leg, to call me his queen even still. To defend that I have only ever had the Shadowlands’ best interest at heart.”
Sighing, Adria runs a hand through her overlong black curls. Her lips keep moving for a moment, no sound coming out, as if stumbling over something unsaid, unspeakable, but she recovers herself. “If not for that, Kori, I sincerely believe it would’ve been a coup. They aren’t justdisappointed—half the court believes I’m an activethreatto the future security of the nightfolk.”
I lift my other hand to her cheek, raising her gaze back to mine. “And Thaane?”
“All but a statue while Isek spoke,” Adria says, in a voice balanced on a freezeblade’s edge. “But he didn’t breathe a word of what’s happened to you, surviving beyond your armor. Nor a whisper of your experiments with Aspect and sentience.”
“After what he said to you before … that’s honestly better than I expected,” I say, returning the repaired section of armor to my arm as we speak.
“I don’t deserve him. My brother since childhood … now my brother-in-arms … he’s watched me fail to lead at nearly every turn—and evenso, in the moment of trial, silent though he may have been, he stood by me.” Violet eyes full of awe, Adria shakes her head, pulling away from my hand on her cheek and my hand woven with hers alike. “I don’t take that for granted. I won’t.” She stares at the wall behind me, but I don’t think she’s really seeing the room around us at all. “When all this is over,” she says, resolved, “I want to be a leader that he can stand behind with pride. Not one for whom he has to make excuses.”
“You will be,” I promise, my hand finding its way into her dark hair, twisting and untwisting a loose curl around my finger. “I know you will be.”
Adria sighs and sits beside me on the bed. The mattress dips under her weight far more than mine, but this bed was designed for nightfolk to start with, so it maintains its integrity despite her muscled bulk. Her wings flare wide so that one wraps around my body, cradling me close to her side.
“My technologists were able to cobble your ship together into … something … akin to what it was. The engine blessedly survived the crash, and you should have just enough fuel for a one-way trip back to the Daylands. Aspect is fully recharged and waiting by the boarding ramp. They were … surprisingly helpful with the repairs.”
A little laugh breaks from me. “Like mother, like robot, I suppose.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Hopefully their help on repairs is better than their help in combat.”
“It would be a tall order for it to be worse.”
We both laugh at that, our hands wandering to meet again between us, her long fingers all but eclipsing mine. Despite her skin being cooler than mine, a little shudder of heat goes through me at the contact. I bring my other hand over to play with her fingers, and she lets me, despite the vicious claws and strength they hold. I lift each finger one by one, trying to memorize what they felt like on the skin of my cheek, in the waves of my hair, splayed across my back holding me fast in our long-awaited kiss.
“I have to go, don’t I?” I breathe, unable to meet her eyes. “I have so many questions that it hardly feels like going home at all.”
“You’ll come back to me,” Adria says, not a question this time. “Look at me, Kori.” I do, her gaze swimming with adoration I can still hardly believe. “And I’ll be waiting for you. I promise. I swear it on everything I have left to lose.” Her lips quirk upward. “There’s one other thing.”
She reaches into a pocket of her robes before plucking out a jagged stone that gleams a soft, steady blue. It’s just the right size for her to drop it into my palm. I expect the stone to be cold against my bare skin, like everything else in the Shadowlands, but it pulses with ethereal warmth instead. It’s beautiful, but somehow primal, too. My heart races, nearly pounding through my chest, as if to keep pace with a fundamental rhythm at the heart of the world.
I stare wonderingly. “Is this …?”
“A piece of the Diakópsei, yes.”
One of the gemfruits.I remember these from our visit to the Cataclysm site. Since they’re so much smaller than the main asteroid, the comparatively tiny energy they contain isn’t immediately overwhelming upon physical contact; instead, while I can feel the power pulsing beneath its surface, I think the gemfruit could be used as needed, staying contained until the right moment arose.
But it was definitely never meant formyuse. I feel the blood draining from my face, and a chill weaves down my spine. “Elysium can’t have possibly approved of this. Let alone Thaane, let alone the court—”
“I didn’t ask Elysium for permission,” Adria says, unflinching. “And I didn’t tell Thaane, or the court.”
I shake my head rapidly. “They’re waiting foranymistake, Adria. Any misstep at all. If they catch word of this—”
