The wall beneath us explodes, sending debris blasting in all directions.
“Brace yourself,” a smooth and unfamiliar feminine voice commands.
The night sky shrouds the face that belongs to the voice, and I don’t have time tothink, because the voice belongs to a Rider atop her wyvern’s back. Moonlight catches on her torn green cloak, illuminating thick leather straps around her waist and wrists.
The Rider flies her beast alongside Zeph, their wings nearly touching as she leans toward us.
She’s unlike any fae I’ve ever seen, her features wild and unruly. Her face is smudged with charcoal across her eyes andtemples, and her hair is woven into a five-strand braid. The fae’s cloak connects to a frayed hood covering half of her face, though her bright green eyes shimmer as if the sun were beaming directly on them.
Her hand raises in the air, signaling something to her wyvern that I can’t decipher, and I catch a glimpse of a white scar across the center of her palm. It had to have been a deep cut to not heal on a fae. I shiver at the thought, trying to figure out who the hell this woman is.
But it’s Calix who asks from my left, “Who?—”
A burst of wind blasts my hair back as something flies past us.
Zephyr tenses beneath me as the strange woman smiles.
Wings beat in the air, and I realize the woman isn’t alone. There’s another wyvern.
Blur after blur crosses from up above, swooping into a nosedive toward the ground.
There’s not just one wyvern with her. There are too many to count…
And they’re all aimed at Daimon.
Three
Aureum Obsidian
Red skies darkeninto a deep maroon above me, glowing with an ever-present light that never quite reaches full darkness of night.
My eyes squeeze shut as my muscles tense, knowing the pain that’s about to tear through me.
I pull against my restraints, wincing as the shackles bite into the tattered flesh of my wrists. The motion causes the freshly healed wounds across my chest and back to stretch until the pain in my wrists feels like a pinprick in comparison. Dribbles of blood leak from various cuts, the chill of the liquid making me shiver.
As the sliced skin across my body stings, I still can’t muster any fear for myself or my situation. My single focus is on what the Goddess of Vengeance would do to Lunaria if she got her hands on her. If she could dothisto me, an Aegis who serves no purpose for her…
Cold chills climb up my spine, causing my teeth to chatter.
We still don’t know why she wants Lu or what her interest is in her. That more than anything haunts my thoughts. But as long as I’m in the Vale with Vidaris, then that meanssheisn’t.
Hands slide onto my face, and I jerk away from the touch as my lids spring open.
Wide hazel eyes stare back at me—the eyes of the woman I love.
Relief crashes through my veins like a violent storm suddenly giving way, but the relief doesn’t last long. My heart clenches at the mirage in front of me, the edges of the Vale still visible around the illusion Vidaris has conjured.
“Graylen,” Lu says frantically, her hands reaching to unchain me. “Please, you have to wake up—she’ll be back any minute.” Lu loosens one of the chains around my ankle, her fingers trembling. “Did you hear me? We have to hurry.”
Her voice… It’s a lullaby to soothe my aching soul.
“Lunaria?”I send into her mind, a part of me yearning for this to be more than a trick created by the Goddess of Vengeance.
My jaw tightens as I watch her, and I shake my head.
It can’t be her; she couldn’t be here. If she were, then Vidaris would find her—would likely kill her, or use her for something Lunaria would want no part of.
But my pulse quickens regardless. At seeing her face, at hearing her voice. She’s the most stunning creature I’ve ever seen, with eyes like leaves changing during the fall, and a smile that brightens the darkness within me.
