“I don’t—”
She rose from her chair, gliding to a small dresser, her breath extinguishing each candle until the tent dimmed into dawn light. “Do not mistake this fate for punishment,” she spoke. “You were chosen for the part of you that still remembers the light. Your heart will not withstand what approaches. Yet your soul will endure. It was built to.”
I didn’t have time to decipher what any of that meant. A clatter sounded outside, steel against steel, Ronan’s voice bellowing through the shelter.
I jumped to my feet, hand flying to my dagger, already halfway to the exit when Mae’s voice rooted me in place.
“You remind me so much of your mother.” It was gentle but spoken in a thousand voices. “I feel her in you.”
I turned, every wisp of air leaving my lungs. “You...knew her?”
She nodded, the ice along the table moving, crystallizing along the floor, the tent walls. “She came to me when trust had abandoned her, when deception was but a breath from her heart. I showed her what could be.” Her hand pressed flat to her chest, then lifted, drawing an unknown shape through the air. “I see them both in your eyes, Verena of the Fallen. And though I do not condone what fate will demand of you, I understand it.”
My chest heaved, a sob clawing upward, my vision blurring with tears. In a moment, Maerin had made her real, whoever she was.
“Take your rightful name—” She shivered. “Let it weave itself into your bones. Remember,” the ice crawled toward her feet, up her legs, “she fell, so you could rise.”
I broke then, choking, the taste of grief fresh on my tongue.
She knew them. My parents. Myfamily.
Outside, the clash of swords screamed. But inside, only silence. Only Mae’s eyes on mine as I asked, “What is my rightful name?”
Three fingers pressed to her lips before she said, “Let them feel the ascension of your Vyratheon blood.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Verena
MY FIRST STEP OUTSIDE THE TENT, AND I PRAYED IT was only another nightmare.
Pixies were scattered around the charge of soldiers, their magic burning as steel flashed.
Light caught on the black of their uniforms, their shields.
No emblem.
They weren’t just soldiers. The Brightwalkers had found us.
The pixies had no weapons fit for war, no training to hold a line. Their forest did not breed monsters that forced them to learn defense. What magic they carried sparked unrefined, no match for blades sharpened by brutality.
The Brights had been made for this. And it was slaughter.
A reek of burning flesh pulled my focus to where Callum stood amongst the carnage, fire spilling from his palms as a soldier turned to cinders at his feet. Beside him, a young girl sobbed, cradling the limp weight of a woman across her lap, a hole where her heart should lay.
They shared the same rich depth of complexion. The same mane of spirals framing their elevated cheeks. She was young. Too young to have awakened to her own magic. Too young to have to learn grief like this.
Callum didn’t stop. He burned, and then he moved on, his flame leaping toward the next target.
It left the girl exposed, unguarded, and Callum didn’t notice.
A Bright did.
The nausea coiling in my gut burned upward, rage scalding it clean. I reached inward, but it wasn’t needed. The world had already begun to blur around its edges.
It didn’t feel like losing control, it felt like snapping the chains.
I let it flow into me, through me, releasing as my steps turned to a stalk toward the soldier in my sight.
