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“How old are you, Ashin? You don’t look any older than my children. It’s my understanding the Evelians didn’t recruit for their Coven until the body was at maturity.”

She shook her head.

He laughed again, this time a little quieter. “Were the Evelians good to you? I imagine they must’ve been to send you to die so young.”

“I believe in their necessity. The Wraith absolved my name of what it asked of me.”

“Tell me in your words what she asked of you.”

The woman lifted her head, exposing her swollen and dirty face, but she didn’t say anything, splitting glances between the three men above her.

Valen rocked an impatient knee and leaned forward. “Were the Evelians good to you?”

“They have been nothing but gracious, allowing me to walk among them.”

“But not beside…” Valen made a thoughtful sound. “I imagine it must not have been easy—secluded to the shadow of a god?”

“It was an honor.” The woman licked her cracked lips, trembling. “As it once was yours.”

Her words plucked the wrong note from Valen’s temperament. Draven’s lungs constricted, ready and waiting.

“Manipulation of the dead is reprehensible! She dares to tell me I’ve fallen when she encourages an act she once called unnatural and cruel?” Valen exhaled through his nose. “You will find no peace on Theila. It is harsher than the Reatian tundra, and your soul will never again rejoice in the feel of a warm body.”

The snap of his fingers bit through the air, and the woman’s violet eyes immediately landed on Draven. She whimpered, spinning around the room, looking for a gaze that would meet hers. Alister lifted a hand, and she rose with it, arms pinned tightly behind her back from his telekinesis.

Draven didn’t remember the walk down the dais, or the looks on their faces, but he’d never forget the feel of their cold skin against his fingertips—right hand at the base of their throats, left hand on a shoulder.

He pushed, slowly and softly, finding a pulse in the slick hollow of her neck. The Guardian thrummed in his palm…

“It’s me!”

His empty gaze shot open. Not to the rose filled, sun kissed throne room, but to one that was empty and desolate. The stale air smelled of chemicals and long burned incense. His arm trembled under a tight pressure, and pain tore into his wrist.

His heart lurched at who he had by the throat.

Lilith?

Wearing the ripped robe, skin pale and long hair so metallic it was almost white, the woman stared back at him, scratching her nails from both hands into his wrist.

Her eyes brimmed with tears, lips turning blue.

It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be.

A new, fiery pain stole his focus. His flesh seared before his eyes, and Draven released her. She fell to the ground, gripping her neck and coughing.

Draven examined the marks in his arm and then the woman. Her eyes were empty, black sockets, and her skin aged rapidly until it dripped like hot wax from her skull. Draven leapt backward, tripping over a large chunk of misplaced marble and falling on the steps of the cracked dais.

“I thought you weren't going to hurt me?”

Draven shot his gaze to a woman kneeling beside him. Lilith. Truly her. Strands of her choppy hair obscured her face until he swept them behind her ears, revealing life in her skin and the Wraith clouding behind her eyes where it belonged.

“No.” He exhaled. “I—I didn’t. I could never.”

She laughed quietly, placing her hand atop the one still caressing her face, entwining their fingers. A warm tremor snaked through his body, and close at its heels was a chilly sense of foreboding.

She crawled onto his lap, straddling him. “Are you sure?”

“Lilith—”