Ribbons of color swirled around me in the darkness, each an image of a choice made that led me to the bottom of the thousand-year-old grave. Riyan falling to his knees as Ganorachoked me. Grigory Thornebow’s poison arrow that led me to the healing spring. The Man of the Mountain ordering Fraleigh to refuse to help me at her golden palace. Riyan brushing a hair away from my face as I slept next to him. A voice like satin saying “I choose Serafina Ravenwood” amongst a group of suitors.
My chest rattled with a sob, but the final vision that flashed before me sent a chill down my spine.
It was Daigen, his violet eyes twinkling as he led Astrid by the hand through the foggy mountain pass to the well.
If my heart were beating, it would have broken.
The Man of the Mountain had said a series of choices made before I was even born led me to eternity. He never said those choices were for my benefit.
I knew I should have never trusted Daigen. He helped me, hetrainedme, but I never realized he was just feeding a lamb to lead it to slaughter.
I was so desperate to get Riyan back that I had fallen right into the trap they had all laid.
“And I am tired.” Ganora’s voice broke as she clutched her chest. Suddenly she was not a queen, but a child. “It’s been centuries and…I just want to go home.”
I bit my tongue and looked up, finding the pinhole of light at the top of the chasm—the moon at midnight. Memories of Riyan’s laughter filled my ears. I remembered his strong arms wrapping around my body. I smelled nectar and wheat in the crook of his neck.
I smiled despite myself. As long as Riyan was breathing, darkness would never touch me…even if I knelt before Alastar XII as his slave.
A calm wave of finality washed over me. My white flame twisted, weaving my words into the infinite threads of eternityas I spoke. “What is done is done. I will take what you give and give what you must take.”
Ganora gave me a grim nod and held out her left hand. A matching gash appeared on her own palm and released a delicate swirl of blood into the dark water.
She grasped my palm. Cobalt flames surged through my veins. My stomach dropped like I had just fallen and the coldest fear I had ever experienced dragged through me.
My left arm vibrated as I gripped Ganora’s hand and all the fear twisted into icy rage. Her power lit me up with blue light that burned the clothes from my skin. Though I was naked and vulnerable, I felt like I could crack the earth, tear down the heavens, and fold a storm in my hands.
On the other end of that thread of eternity, Ganora’s hair brightened from cold white to warm blonde and her grey skin blossomed into pink.
Suddenly I was no longer holding the hand of the Queen of the Giants, but instead a young teenage girl. Had I not known any better, I would have thought she was just a first-year student at Ashmore.
“The bargain is in your blood,” Ganora said, her voice sweet and childlike. “Free my sister as you have freed me.”
My veins glowed with the bond of the bargain. Ganora looked up and raised her small arm, pressing against some kind of perimeter.
A male voice I did not recognize broke through the fabric between worlds. He spoke in Old Tongue, but the confines of language did not hinder understanding in the place West of the Moon and East of the Sun.
He was calling his daughter home.
A woman’s hand reached through the invisible barrier. Ganora’s pink cheeks rose with her smile as she grasped the hand.
Slowly, the hand pulled Ganora through the perimeter until she disappeared in the darkness.
A shiver crawled down my spine. That was her…Death.
My chest shook with the weight of Ganora’s eternity coming to an end, but then I heard a familiar tune in my ears.
“Still with me somehow.”
The voice was not Riyan’s, but a feminine voice I had heard before. I took a step through the darkness, following the song in my blood, until I found a girl with twin braids kneeling next to the body of a giant sleeping man with golden hair.
Astrid’s body was more transparent than Riyan’s. We were all nude, but no embarrassment plunged through me. The mortal rules of modesty could not reach us.
“Astrid,” I said gently, “I am going to bring him home.”
Even though I was talking to her mind, frozen in place from when she was seventeen, Astrid looked up at me with two-decades worth of heartbreak. “He never came back.”
I gave Astrid a soft smile. “No, butIwill. I promised Riyan I would take care of you.”
