Mariah nodded. “What was it?”
Andrian swallowed. “Don’t fight an evolution that was always destined to occur.”
“Exactly.” Mariah was now inches from him, chest heaving, heat pooling in her cheeks. “The man who raised you was just as much a monster as the one who sired you. He was responsible for capturing me. Fortorturingme. He—” Her words caught in her throat, but she pushed them out, even as her tears broke free. “He is part of the reason my mother isdead. So don’t you fucking dare feel shame that you ended him, too.”
They held each other’s stares for a long moment, exchanging ragged inhales of breath. Andrian’s eyes hardened, and he pushed his shoulders back. Without a word, he turned, stalking into their bedroom.
Mariah lurched after him. “Where are you?—”
He reemerged, shadows spilling from his shoulders, gripping something small and made of silver leather.
Mariah’s skin prickled, hair rising on the back of her neck, as he shoved theGinnelevéjournal into her hands.
“I’ve been reading it,” he said quietly. “I found it in your things that first night on the road. I don’t know why I picked it up, but once I did…I couldn’t stop.” He leaned into her, flipping the journal open to a page.
A page that Mariah recognized.
Abominations, monsters, evil crafted from the darkest corners of the heavens. It is not known if the reykr are born soulless or if they are turned that way.
“Kol’s mind magic doesn’t matter.” Andrian’s forehead brushed hers, breath ghosting across her face. “Because all those horrible things your ancestors wrote about my kind are true.”
She tilted her head up, finding his gaze beneath the dark fall of his hair. Her chest cracked at his brokenness, his vulnerability, the way a deep, aching part of him truly believed the things written on those pages.
“How much of this journal have you read?”
He pulled back, still holding her gaze. “Enough.”
Mariah shook her head. “No. Not enough.” She took the journal from him. “You found the bad parts. The parts written during a war. But five thousand years and hundreds of lifetimes can tell a lot of stories.” She fanned the pages, taking a moment to appreciate the magic of this little journal.
The pages were hardly aged, and the magic expanded it with each flip to fit more stories. When closed, it returned to no larger than a slim notebook, easily portable and easily hidden. She hadn’t opened it in a while; not since that fateful day in Khento.
With a tearful breath, she remembered her mother’s words, murmured over a fire from another lifetime.
When you need a reminder of who you are and what you are capable of…that book will tell you everything you need to know.
Maybe this—this desperate attempt to pull Andrian back—was another reason she needed it. A tool to face the darkness and find the light within.
Mariah’s fingers snagged on a page, and with a last shaky inhale, she started to read.
I had a dream last night.
I dreamed of silver and gold flames, of leathery wings, both blazing and shadowed.
I dreamed of that which was feared, saving us all.
And I dreamed that without darkness, we can never experience the light.
When she peeled her gaze from the page, lifting it to one of crushing tanzanite, she let herself crack.
“Don’t you see?” she whispered. “Your darkness is not something to be feared, Andrian. It is something to beloved.”
Andrian’s eyes flickered between her face and the words written on the open page of the journal. Shadows pooled between them, caressing her skin, as if he couldn’t bother to contain them.
“You didn’t hear him that day,nio. He made me to be a monster.”
“He may have made you to be one thing.” Mariah slid a hand around the back of his neck. She gripped him tight, pulling him to her, forehead again meeting his. “I was also made to be something else, something new. Butfuckthose who made us.We only belong to each other and ourselves. Those who try to take either canburn.”
They stayed like that, for too long. The sun hung heavy in the mountain sky, burning the air with the headiness of late afternoon. Cielle’s wingbeats thrummed beyond the glass, and somewhere a butterfly danced on the breeze.
