Those words… I realize I’ve heard them before. Eurydice called me that when I went to the Celestial Temple. At the time, I had assumed it was because my mother was fae and my father was human. But if both of my parents are fae…
“Perhaps you should question your lineage beyond your parents more,” he says softly, and I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise. “Your father has magic that no fae could harness, andyou.” His jaw flexes. “Your magic is different from the others, just as his has always been.”
My heart races in my chest.The story of a dagger that can pierce through any darkness.
“You’re telling me—” I take a steadying breath, “—that I have the blood of the gods?”
The buzzing I felt before I touched the drawing on the rock wall slowly returns, gradually increasing to a loud hum. My vision begins to sway, the sensation of weightlessness returning.
“Forge your own path,” Nyx insists. “And remember—Nightfall can pierceanydarkness.” His voice floats away as if closed off behind a wall, and then the world around me fades into nothing once more.
Forge your own path.
Hushed voices slowly filter in around me, my head pounding and my eyelids feeling as if they’ve been filled with sand.
And remember—Nightfall can pierceanydarkness.
“If you two had anything to do with this?—”
A warning growl cuts the raspy feminine voice off—a voice that sounds familiar. With my thoughts hazy, I can’t pinpoint where I know it from. I try to wiggle my fingers or toes, but my body doesn’t listen. Instead, I lay there, frozen in paralyzed flesh.
“What do you want me to believe?” the familiar voice hisses. “You take her to some far-off cave and bring her back likethis? Both of you should be praying to Eurydice that she’s okay.”
Warmth stirs in my chest as a name forms in my mind. Leda—my sister. Her fierce protectiveness snaps awareness back into my body, my limbs still filled with lead but my thoughts beginning to clear.
“And if she doesn’t?” a light voice whispers with a quiet challenge—Willow, I think. “What will you do about it?”
The floorboards creak beneath the weight of footsteps. With it comes a shift in the air, a heavy blanket of tension that settles into the room.
“We’ve touched that rock dozens of times and nothing like that has happened before,” Willow adds, her words clipped. “Whoever left the depiction of Nightfall must’ve done more than just carve the drawings.”
Nightfall.
The memory of the split-irised god flashes through my thoughts. The things Nyx said to me begin to repeat in my head, causing my blood to pump fiercely through my veins.Forge your own path. Blood of the gods. Daughter of two worlds. Nightfall awaits you.
It isn’t a secret that my magic has been different from the start, that I somehow have an affinity from each of the four races of fae, but this? Being told I have the blood of the gods by oneof the Divine—though he doesn’t seem like the most trustworthy of them.
But the look in his eyes, the urgency with which he told me those things… It didn’t feel like a lie or trick. He didn’t try to get me to make any deals, or ask anything of me. And if he’s telling the truth, then I have to find out. This could be how I get Graylen back—the missing piece to get me into the Vale.
That is,ifI get to him in time. My blood runs cold at the thought, turning my veins into icy webs.
There’s no telling what Vidaris is doing to him—if she’s fracturing his spirit or torturing him physically. Likely both.
A bitter laugh breaks me away from my spiraling thoughts.
“Lunaria isn’t like us,” Leda snaps. “So go find your healer and?—”
“The dagger,” I croak, my throat raw and scratchy as I force my lips to move.
Several gasps echo throughout the room. I blink my eyes open to a blurry world.
“Lu?” Calix asks from just beside my shoulder. His face swims into view as my eyes adjust, his brows pinched together as he watches me. “How do you feel?”
I push myself up by my elbows, and his arms dart out to help me. Leda hovers, her eyes blazing. Once I’m sitting up, I swing my legs over the side of the cot and peer around the room.
They’ve brought me to the healer’s cottage, everyone crammed into the room along with the healer who helped Brielle out earlier, along with another one I don’t recognize. Sidra, Orla, and Maddox are crowded close beside Leda, relief evident across all of their faces.
A flash of movement catches my eye from the left side of the room, and I find Brielle propped up on her cot. It’s now pushed against the wall so she can lean against it. But she’s sitting up, so that’s progress.
