Lucien studies it. “It hasn’t given up its secrets to you?”
“Not yet,” I admit. Maybe this one also takes two of us, for whatever reason?
I hold up my hand with the Tear outstretched. Lucien reaches out to take it, and I clench my fingers down. “I’m not giving it to you. I just think… maybe we should both touch it?”
Lucien agrees without making any lewd statements this time. We both take a deep breath, and then his hand closes down over mine.
I’m yanked from the deck of the ship and into the sky, swirling, body tossed upside down and then righted again. I’m intensely nauseated for a moment and then light and tingly like I’ve left my body behind and I’m nothing but a memory.
I don’tseeLucien, but Isensehis presence. We’re together, then, witnessing this vision as a pair.
The same woman from the other vision—Lumina—materializes out of the blinding sunlight. At first, she’s pacing on air, her dress flowing behind her. Then the room takes shape around us, board by board and stone by stone until I’m back in the tower room we just left.
It’s set up the same, except it shows no signs of age.
Lumina looks pained. She’s moving back and forth, rounding the room in circles like a trapped animal. Her fingers rake through her verdant hair repeatedly, and her eyes glint as she turns and turns again.
Suddenly, the space darkens. The shadows coalesce and knot together like writhing snakes. The man from the previous vision appears—though, like Lumina, it seems not quite right to call him aman. I know in my heart he’s something more. He’s just as handsome and cold as he was earlier.
“Nocturn!” Lumina screams instantly, storming toward him, skirts flying. “What have you done?! How did you manage this? You’ve weakened me!”
Nocturn.The name sends chills through me. Another name so often on my mother’s lips.
Nocturn’s children, written in the riddle on the altar. I read it as meaning the children of Nocturna, but maybe that was entirely wrong.
An echo of the name resonates through me, like a haunting chord.
I know I’ve never seen his likeness before.
But his voice…
It hits me: the voice in that shadow realm. The voice of my dreams that has plagued me since I first bonded with Anassa and set this all in motion.
Could it have been Nocturn all along?
In the vision, the corners of Nocturn’s mouth dip downward. His eyes are uninterested, though. Like he’s just discovered he has a nuisance to deal with.
“You’ve weakened yourself. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Myself?” Lumina exclaims.
“You were always so giving. It’s not my fault that your selflessness harmed you,” he says plainly. His frown deepens. “It’s ungodly of you.”
Ungodly. I knew in my heart, but even still, this confirmation sends a riot of shock straight into my bones. I start to tremble.
Gods. They’re both gods.
Lumina’s eyes shimmer. Her hands are in fists on her skirts. But she takes a deep breath and, somewhat more calmly, says, “Why are you doing this?”
Nocturn steps close enough to her that his boots pin the hem of her skirt. “You belong to me and me alone, and you will stay here until you accept that.”
Didshe accept that? Is that why she’s no longer in the tower, why we didn’t find her there? She became his, and he let her out? Or did she refuse him and fight to free herself?
Lumina opens her mouth to scream again, but Nocturn dissipates into darkness in the space of a second. He dissolves and then dispels into the dark corners of the room. The darkness flares as he joins with the waiting shadows, then eases away slowly, letting the light back in.
Lumina falls to her knees, weeping, and my heart breaks for her. The rest of the room fades away because she’s all that matters. Her and this pain that I recognize so intimately.
He might be a far distant ancestor, but Ihatehim.
