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Only, they didn’t become vigates. The memory swirled too fiercely for me to see exactly what happened once they stepped inside together, but I knew that Fate had said no when they emerged with similar scowls twisting their faces.

“Fate really is a bitch, huh?” Jagaros growled.

“Shhh.” Chrysanthia swatted at his arm, flicking a glance over shoulder where the temple doors had swung shut again. “Don’t let her hear you say that.”

“Why? How could she punish me any more? She already denied me a future with you.”

Contrary to his words, the look Jagaros cast Chrysanthia as they trudged down the steps was still flooded with the kind of longing that twisted heartstrings into impossible knots. He took her hand like he never planned on letting go.

“Then perhaps it is our fate to always fight for a future together,” Chrysanthia murmured, a twinkle returning to that depthless blue of her eyes.

The mist changed.

Now they were back in the jungle, crouching among ferns with heads tilted up at the patch of sky they could make out among the trees. A giant plume of milky magic was descending upon them, and Jagaros gripped Chrysanthia’s arm.

“You have to go. Run.”

Chrysanthia shook her head, disbelief scrunching her brows. “That’s Dyonisia’s power. She wouldn’t hurt me like Mydusia would. But why is she here?”

“Maybe Mydusia sent her to find you. Or maybe Mydusia stole her power and is using it to get to you now. Either way, you have to run.”

At the desperation in Jagaros’s voice, Chrysanthia dragged herself out of her hypnotic gaze and planted a fierce kiss against his lips. “Don’t let her touch you with that mist. Yenatin will be able to find me when the coast is clear.”

I watched as she scrambled up, their twined fingers stretching until they ripped apart.

And the mist changed.

Screams rattled the entire island as Dyonisia’s antipower pounded down upon Ranuq, passing right through the buildings like a spray of fog but crashing into faeries and disintegrating them on the spot. Jagaros was roaring, screeching, bellowing as he changed from shape to shape, leaping and flying and streaking through the jungle to get to the source, to rip Dyonisia Reeve into tiny, fleshy pieces before she could cause any more destruction.

When he finally found her, she was standing on a flourishing hilltop, surrounded by five other Sorronian faeries—including a younger Agathea Temberlein—and several hundred humans. Normally, Jagaros would have cared about their lives, but not after he’d just witnessed so many of his own crumble into piles of dust and bascite and blood that seeped into the mud as if they’d never existed at all.

He charged as a tiger, canines bared, murder as thick as saliva in this throat.

One of the other five faeries lifted their hands, and the hill upon which they stood began to rise.

And rise. And rise, until Jagaros was fighting an uphill battle. The trees turned to frost right before his eyes, and one of the other faeries whispered in his mind as Dyonisia continued to focus on raining death and decay down upon his people.

Do you have the Princess Chrysanthia?

Jagaros knew this other faerie must have some kind of mental manipulation power, because he wouldn’t have been able to lie even if he’d wanted to.

“No, I don’t!” His scream tore through gritted teeth as his form morphed back into his brother’s.

At that, Dyonisia finally stopped. Her attention came to a shivering halt on Jagaros still fighting his way toward her, slipping on ice that had casketed his beloved jungle. Most of her antipower swirled back into her body like milky ribbons, but a few remaining tendrils floating toward Jagaros himself, reaching for him like an extended claw to stop him in his tracks.

“Mydusia did not sell my sister to you?” she asked in a harsh inflection of his language. “You have not taken her hostage? Or as a slave?”

“Of course not, you raving fucking lunatic!”

Despite Jagaros’s rage, there was complete and utter despair chiseling his voice as he flung it up at the female faerie above him. The agony of it all punched him in the gut even more than the strings of mist she shot through his chest—not quite disintegrating him, but sending him thudding to his knees.

When sobs twisted in his throat, I felt them in my own as well.

So many of his people—gone.

So many of my mother’s people gone.

Dyonisia surveyed his broken, collapsed form with an inscrutable expression. She passed a brief glance at the island around her, reassessing the situation, before throwing a command over her shoulder. To the original Object Summoner, I could only assume.