“I had a dream,” she heard herself say.
Rulene’s gaze burned. “What kind of dream?”
Mariah swallowed. “The kind…” She shook her head. “The kind that can’t be real but felt enough like it to convince me for a moment that it was.”
Rulene stepped closer. “You have a question. Ask it.”
“Can Kol walk in dreams?”
The room fell still.
Rulene nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said simply. Her eyes narrowed, again seeing far more than Mariah was willing to show. “In your dream, you mistook him for your Consort, didn’t you?”
That title. It made her shiver, some quiet place in her soul crying out in anguish. She swallowed again and dipped her head in affirmation, holding the goddess’s gaze.
“Fucking Enfara,” Matheo murmured.
At least now he knew why she’d woken up sick.
Rulene and Callamus shared a glance. “It makes sense,” he said softly.
“What does?” Mariah’s stomach twisted.
Rulene sighed, a sound that made the rainbows around them dance. “Kol has always had terrible magic. The kind that controls the mind, that twists reality, that bends the will. He enjoys playing tricks that are designed to torment. To make people see and feel things they don’t mean or that aren’t real. It makes sense, given who you are and the power you carry, that he would try to reach you now.”
“But why…that?” She couldn’t say the words. They clung to her throat, begging not to be set free. “And what does it mean for Andrian?” The panic leeching into her voice at the end was real.
She’d burned away Kol’s connection the night they’d bonded. But if this was a power inherent to Kol’s magic and he could reach her here, then what was he able to do to Andrian, trapped at Kol’s side within the walls of Khento?
“Calm your panic, Mariah,” Callamus said softly. “I know why you feel it, but you must not let it win. Your Consort will not be harmed by Kol.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“We do.” Sympathy was already washing through Rulene’s golden eyes.
Mariah braced herself.
“Kol is prideful of the things he creates—the greatest of which being hisreykr. He would never irreparably harm the last of them like that.” She paused. “He would never destroy his last son.”
The world blurred. Tilted slightly. The ground beneath her bottomed out.
“Hiswhat?” A croaked whisper was all Mariah could manage.
This wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Andrian wasgoodandwarmandhers.
He couldn’t belong to anyone else. She wouldn’t allow it.
“It’s how he was able to trick you.” Callamus’s tone was cautious, as if he could read the rage writing itself across Mariah’s face. “It’s not because you’ve forgotten your Consort. It’s because they appear as two sides of the same coin.”
What?
“The first generation ofreykr,” Rulene explained, “always take after Kol. So much so that the boys could be his twins.”
This was impossible. A nightmare made reality.
The room was silent as Mariah settled into this egregious truth.
But as her mind turned, she realized how much sense it made.
