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“Don’t drag your feet.” She points toward the opening of the cavern. “We don’t have time to linger on quibbles.

“Stay,” the woman says to Lyxander. “Your place is not within. Not this time.”

He bends into what appears to be a bow. One wing sweeps forward while the other arcs back, his body tilting gracefully, as if presenting his exposed shoulder in offering.

Then he straightens and steps closer, his voice low enough that only I can hear. “I’ll be right here, waiting for you.”

The words settle some of my unease, but I still rest my finger on the hilt of my dagger as I turn toward the cavern and follow the Oracle inside.

The cool air presses close as I pass through the entry. At first, it looks exactly as I expect—rough-hewn walls, jagged edges, the floor uneven, with gravel crunching under my boots. But the deeper we go, the more the space shifts. Stone gives way to smooth tiles, carved shelves, and well-loved furnishings scattered around the space, until I’m standing in what appears to be a homestead.

At the center, a pale glow emanates from a frozen pool. The light pulses gently, illuminating the tapestries that hang along the walls.

The oldest one near me is worn thin with age. Four winged figures kneel before a fifth whose face is lost to frayed thread. Around them, a net of pale stitches once spanned the sky, now broken in places, as if someone had torn them loose.

“You’ve done well to endure,” the woman says, breaking the silence as I follow her deeper into the space. “Aella. The weight they’ve put on you. Your own doubts.”

“You know my name.”

She makes a rasping sound that could be a scoff or a laugh. “Some things require no effort to see. Especially not for one who stands at the edge of what has come before and what is yet to be.”

“So your power enables you to see visions. It’s not just impressions.”

The woman lowers herself onto a cushion beside the frozen pool and gestures toward one on the opposite side. I lower myself, curling my legs beneath me.

She tilts her head, misty eyes watching me from across the pool. “Do you know what I am, child?”

A furrow creases my brow. “An oracle.”

Before the woman can answer, another voice cuts through the space.

“Not an oracle, Daughter of the Tempest.”

The words are a chorus of feminine voices speaking as one. Whispering, hissing, singing.

“She is the Oracle,” Sphinx finishes as she emerges from the shadows, her piercing, catlike eyes aglow with something that is older than time itself.

My eyes widen as I take her in. Her razor-sharp claws scrape across the tiles as she approaches, the pool’s light gleaming across the sleek, golden coat of her feline body and her golden-black wings at her back.

“You made it out,” I whisper.

“Because of you.”

I tear my gaze away from Sphinx and turn back to the old woman. There hasn’t been a true Oracle in centuries, not since the God War. The woman’s eyes settle on me with calm patience, her lips curving into a faint, almost tender smile.

“You look so like her,” she says. “Queen Nephelle Kytherion, descended from one of the first Harpaurai. Their blood is potent in your veins.”

Despite already having heard it from Lyxander, there is something about the way the Oracle says it that has my mother’s last name settling behind mine.

Aella Sotiría Kytherion.

“She came to me many times,” the Oracle continues, her gnarled fingertip skimming the surface of the pool. “But the last time she visited was a year before you were born.”

“Why?”

“We were friends for many years.”

My lips press into a thin line as I eye the Oracle. “You’re not the first to make such a claim.”