“A scribe? What are you on about? Are you all right?What happened?”
His hand tightened around mine. “I’ve just seen a vision of things to come. Now, and then again…two thousand years from now or even more. And I know what we must do if we want this world to survive against them. We must create the Daughter of Stars.”
My heart pulsed. “Survive against who?”
“Immortal creatures who have come to our world on the back of this fallen star. They’ll call themselves our gods.”
One
Kalen
Present Day
“What is this place?” Niamh’s voice echoed through the cavernous room as we took in the unexpected sight before us. A space had been hollowed in the side of the mountain, and towering shelves lined each wall. Weapons, chains, gemstones, and books were clustered in neat little piles with symbols etched below them. There were also some canteens of water and some dried meats. Someone had spent a long time on this place.
In our efforts to chase down Tessa and Oberon, we’d skirted around the base of the mountain toward the light fae army camping in our way. But just before their camp had risen through the mist, Alastair had spotted a hole in the rock face. A shortcut through the mountain, we’d hoped. Instead, it had brought us to this room.
Alastair frowned and spun one of his earrings absentmindedly, as he was wont to do. “It’s clearly some kind of hidden hoard. Must have taken years to get all this shit in here.”
“Yes, butwhosehoard?” With gleaming silver eyes, Fenella approached a shelf stuffed with little covered trays of dried herbs. She pulled one from the shelf and held it up, squinting. The darkness and mist had followed us into this place. Without torchlight, there was only so far we could see, even with our fae sight. Fenella wrinkled her nose and put the tray back on the shelf. “This is valerian. Looks like there’s piles of it.”
“Oberon.” Toryn swore beneath his breath and pointed at a pile of chains near the door. “This is how he trapped you. He came here to get his hidden chains and valerian, and then he took you out so he could steal Tessa away without having to fight you. He knew he wouldn’t win.”
I shook my head and turned back toward the hewn archway leading out of the cave. “We’re wasting time. This is a dead end, and we need to turn back. If we don’t catch up to them…”
My stomach clenched. I couldn’t even bear to speak the words out loud, and my Mist Guard already knew the ending of that sentence without me sharing my thoughts. If we didn’t reach them in time, Oberon would kill Tessa, all to keep my mother alive for a little longer. I could never let that happen.
No one objected when I pushed back out into the mists, although Fenella hung back just long enough to stuff some valerian into her pockets, along with a handful of tiger-eye gemstones. Curious that this place would have them, I had to admit. I hadn’t seen a tiger-eye in several hundred years. They weren’t found in Aesirian mines. Had a mortal from across the Bantam Sea built this place? It couldn’t have been Oberon or any fae inside of Albyria—they wouldn’t have been able to cross the barrier to get here. But Oberon’s one-eyed dragon symbol had been all over the place, and the weapons I’d spotted were light fae swords.
None of that mattered, though. Not as long as Oberon had his hands on Tessa.
Frowning, I squared my shoulders and stared out into the mists. The lilting sound of a fife drifted toward us, but the murmur of voices had died beneath the gentle rumble of a small fire. The people in the camp must have gone to bed for the night, though being the soldiers they were, at least three of them would be standing watch while the others slept. Everyone—even the light fae—knew what lurked in the mists: monsters.
And me.
I turned to my Mist Guard just behind me, all silent and waiting for my order. “We’ll have to skirt around them as best we can and then make for the bridge. Toryn, are you certain Oberon was taking Tessa back to the city?”
He gave me a solemn nod.
I frowned. It made little sense. Out of all the moves he might make, that was one I never would have predicted. His city was nothing more than a burnt husk of ash and embers, full of his enemies. I’d sent my warriors to patrol the streets and hunt for any sign of him. A few of my men even camped outside the Tower of Crones, which still stood even after fire had raged through the streets. Oberon’s brides were still alive and waiting for him, but surely he must know he could never show his face there again.
But theywerehis brides. Perhaps somewhere in his twisted heart, he held some sort of lingering affection for them. All those years ago, love had been his downfall. His path to the darkness.
And it would be the downfall of us all if we did not find a way to stop him.
“He must be suffering from delirious desperation,” I muttered beneath my breath.
Toryn stepped up beside me. “Boudica saw him badly wounded. He clearly knows he’s been defeated.”
I nodded. “We need to catch up to him.”
Just as we crept out from behind the shadow of the mountain, the sky shuddered as if it had been holding its breath for a very long time and had finally gasped for air. An uneasy sensation whispered across the back of my neck, and I dragged my gaze up from the misty landscape to the night-drenched sky. The ground beneath me seemed to tense as I met the sight I’d been dreading all my life. Even through the murky fog, there was no mistaking it. Blazing hot and as bright as diamonds, a comet speared the inky dark.
Niamh gasped, and Toryn staggered to the side.
“Oh, fuck,” Alastair muttered. “He’s done it.”
“It’s here.” The word scraped from my throat. Four hundred years ago, my mother had warned me of this very day. The comet heralded the return of the gods, those monstrous immortal beings who would be the end of everything we knew and loved. I’d dreamt of this day, feared for it. My mother had told me so little about the gods—the knowledge had been lost over the years, and even what she’d found in the mortal lands had not been much to go on.
