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“What does it mean when someone touches a Harpaurai’s wings?” I had meant to ask Rhaya or Kato, but the thought had drifted from my mind, and the others have stopped farther down the hall.
Silas studies me with a glint of amusement in his eyes. “Our wings are both our greatest strength and our greatest vulnerability,” he says, drawing out the words. “Touching someone’s wings is intimate, and often done only between lovers. A gesture of trust…and desire.”
Intimate. Lovers. Trust and desire. A furrow creases my brow, and I can’t stop my mind from drifting back to the way my fingers had grazed the edge of Lyxander’s wings, unthinking, unknowing. Then, again, on the ridge after I’d broken the harp. He didn’t pull away. But was that out of consideration for my ignorance?
Solenne continues to smile up at Lyxander, and a storm brews within me.
I’m not an insecure person. But Solenne has something I don’t—something I’ve come to want. She fits seamlessly into this world of wings and bloodlines and unspoken rules. She belongs here in a way I never will.
“Why so curious, Aella?” Silas whispers.
“You seem to be in a good mood,” I say, sidestepping his question. “Why is that?”
“Did you miss the part where I said I’m going home tonight?”
“I didn’t,” I say slowly as I study him.
The council’s earlier words flicker through my mind, their disdain for the other kingdoms of the Empyrieos dripping from every syllable. But their barbs had felt pointed, aimed at Silas himself, as though his very presence was an inconvenience they barely tolerated.
“How did you manage to get the council and the queen to agree to the alliance? They seem so resistant to it.” My tone is light, but there’s a thread of caution beneath it. Silas is the one member of the kin I’ve spent the least amount of time with, and while he seems to have accepted me like the others, the topic makes me tread carefully.
Silas tilts his head slightly, the motion so like the one I’ve seen Lyxander make countless times before. “They weren’t exactly eager to open the borders to anyone. But Xerxes is…persuasive. He offered them resources they couldn’t refuse.”
“With the right guidance, I’m sure.”
His smirk sharpens, a glint of amusement flickering in his eyes. “I may have had a vested interest.”
“In the Harpaurai, or in Xerxes?” I counter, tilting my head to mirror his.
“Two things can be true at once, Aella,” he replies smoothly.
“Are you flying the whole way?” I’m not entirely sure where Aerilos is in the Thalkans, but based on the route Lyxander and I traveled, and the tower’s position overlooking the Seleni Sea, I’d gathered the Harpaurai’s hidden city was far northeast. Surely it’s too far to fly.
Silas hesitates. And before he can speak, Lyxander’s voice cuts in. “He’ll be using the goiteía gate.”
My head whips toward him, startled by his answer.
“Goiteía gate?” I echo, the combination of words foreign on my tongue.
Lyxander shifts his gaze to his cousin and lifts a brow. “Are you leaving now?”
“Gods, yes. And even that’s not soon enough,” Silas mutters.
Lyxander’s silver eyes find mine again. “This will be simpler if we show you.”
The others return to the tower, their footsteps fading into the distance, but I follow Silas and Lyxander deeper into the palace. The air grows cooler with each step as the marble halls give way to darker stone, the walls rougher as we move toward the mountain’s heart.
When we round the last curved threshold, guards come into view. They stand like statues beneath their heavy armor, wings hidden and poleaxes pinned sharp and upright at their sides. The guards dip their chins toward Lyxander, then step aside with formal stiffness. Though one of them glances at me as I pass, his gaze cold and assessing.
The doors open onto a wide, circular cavern with rough-hewn walls, like a secret that was buried here long before the palace was built. Above, a natural skylight pierces the ceiling, its jagged edges framing the night sky. The moon hangs high, its silvery light spilling through the opening and cascading down in a soft, ethereal glow. The light pools onto the stone archway at the center.
The stone is different from the surrounding chamber. Where the floors and walls are the same pale gray threaded with silver as the rest of the palace, the archway is a pure, shimmering white.
The goiteía marks carved into the stone speak for themselves. Ancient magic is woven into its surface like whispers reaching across time, an unbroken current threading itself into every breath I take the closer I step toward it.
“The goiteía gate?” My pulse spikes as I step closer.
“One of six,” Silas says. “Six gates spread across the realms. Here, Kosmos, and the Isle of the Winds. And there is one each in Reveza, Eretria, and—”
