“I can’t kill by touch.I can’t.”
Her gaze turned fierce. “You can’t? Or you don’t want to?”
“Both. I don’t have the power to do that anymore, and I don’t want it to come back. That would make me just like Andromeda. Too dangerous for this world.”
The thought of it filled my veins with acid. If I could kill by touch, no one around me would be safe. Just a small brush from my skin would be enough to send them to an early grave. And even while I felt something dark stirring within me, I couldn’t accept that Death was part of it.
“We could find a way to harness it,” she argued. “And use itagainstthe gods when they come for us.”
“I don’t have that power.” Gritting my teeth, I turned away. “Maybe I’m stronger than I should be, and I heal faster, but that’s it. There’s nothing else.”
Nellie pressed her lips together, but she didn’t argue anymore. My chest burned from the thought of the god’s dark power inside me, my mind flipping through images of my worst nightmares: Nellie dead from my touch; Kalen’s eyes rolling back; the world cowering when I rose up with Andromeda’s mighty power radiating off my body.
A strong hand pressed into my back, and the images blinked away. Kalen stepped up beside me with a furrowed brow, as if reading my expression. “We’re ready to go.” His eyes asked,Are you all right?
I schooled my features into a mask of calm. “I just need to fetch Silver, and then I’m ready.”
“Silver?”
“One of Oberon’s horses. He helped me reach Albyria, and I don’t want to leave him behind.”
His eyes softened. “All right, love. Go get him, and then meet us back here.”
Silver still stood on the other side of the hidden passageway, waiting for me. I grabbed his reins and led him back to the courtyard. His hooves clattered against the stone road. I could leave him here with Ruari and the other light fae. Truth be told, he belonged to them, but it felt like he’d chosen me that day in the mists, and I couldn’t bear the thought of saying goodbye.
I helped Nellie onto his back, and then we began the journey out of the city, across the bridge, out into the mists, and through the empty countryside toward Endir. It would take a couple of days on foot—the horses we’d taken to reach the mountains were gone now. Boudica swept through the skies overhead, keeping an eye out for shadowfiends. As the hours passed, the large party of warriors and guards settled into an easy rhythm, our boots thudding against the soft earth.
Kalen fell into step beside me, but his eyes were hard and distant. Every now and then, he’d looked up at the comet, and tension would ripple through his body, as if the very sight of it was a gut punch. Guilt thickened in my throat. Even though Kalen blamed it all on Oberon, I still felt at fault. I’d been the one holding the Mortal Blade. I’d been the one to chase Oberon through the mists. If I hadn’t fought him—if I’d not taken out my anger on him, desperate for revenge—we wouldn’t be in this situation now.
A situation I didn’t even fully grasp.
“Kalen?” I finally asked after a long stretch of silence.
“Hmm?”
“What happens now?”
He heaved a sigh that told me he, too, had been focused on this very issue. “We prepare ourselves for the inevitable.”
“A war with Andromeda and the other gods.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I don’t know how long it will take for them to reach this world, or where, exactly, they’re coming from, or what they’ll do first when they arrive, but we need fighters. A lot of them. Whatever they have planned, it will not be peace.”
My stomach tightened.War.It was something I’d never faced—none of us mortals had. We’d heard the tales from fae, of course, or we’d read about the battles in our books. But war had never felt like anything more than a fable, something that didn’t happen anymore. Nothing about it felt glorious. It was just blood and death and brutality. And it was coming for us.
“I’m so sorry, Kalen. I—”
“No.” He pulled me against him, our footsteps in sync. “As I’ve said before, if anyone’s to blame, it’s Oberon. And even then, he did not want this, either. The God of Death—Andromeda—was determined to find a way back, and she put forces into motion that could not be stopped. I see it now. This has been a long time coming.”
My heart shuddered in my chest. “You think this is what she planned all along? When she offered Oberon the chance to bring back…” I didn’t finish my thought. I knew how Kalen felt about what Oberon had done to his mother, and he still hadn’t fully processed it.
“I think she hoped to convince Oberon to release her from that gemstone a long time ago, but he managed to resist. But in the end, yes. It seems like she started this four hundred years ago. To a god, that’s only a flicker of time.”
“And there’s no way to kill them.”
“If there is, no one knows it. Thousands of years ago, fae and humans only found a way to banish them—or trap them. Not kill.”
And so, if we managed to banish them again, was it only a matter of time before they came here a third time, setting off this cycle once more? The thought weighed heavily on my shoulders. If it was hopeless—if there was no way to win—how much would we have to sacrifice just to give this world a little more time?
