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Mention of the Games is a stark reminder of how much time has slipped away. And of how little progress I’ve truly made.

“Speaking of my brother,” Cynna continues as she steps closer and pulls a small white feather from the pocket of her trousers then passes it to me. “He asked me to give you this since he couldn’t be here himself. He said it’s for strength.”

A wry smile twists my mouth as I clip it to one of the clasps on my chain. “I’ll take all the strength I can get.”

Her sharp intake of breath draws my gaze back to her, and she shifts, arms crossing her chest once more. The defensiveness of her posture does little to counter the vulnerability in her expression.

“I never thanked you,” she says.

“For what?”

Her jaw tightens, her eyes flitting to the gathering behind us. Then her shoulders lift with a subtle breath, and she says, “For Eretria. For sparing me.”

The words dredge up memories I’d rather leave buried. The trials. The moment she lay bloodied before me, and I had to decide who would live and who wouldn’t. The choices I made, and the aftermath. I stay quiet.

“I was released from the infirmary the morning after the ball,” she goes on. “Chaos all around, and all my careful plans shattered. After years of searching, I was so close to finding Xan, but when I woke, I couldn’t sense him nearby anymore.

“I resented you for taking that chance from me,” she admits, meeting my gaze at last. “For making me feel powerless. And when I found you here with him, I was so convinced he had brought a serpent into our nest, that you would be the one to devour us from within. But then he told me the truth—how, if not for you, he would still be trapped in another cell, a prisoner. Or dead.”

I struggle to find words, but Cynna isn’t finished. She plucks a feather from her wing and clips it to my chain herself. The light from the auroras shifts over the white fibers before the goiteía of the clasp turns it gold.

“This is for gratitude,” Cynna says. “For his life—and mine. No matter what happens after tonight, you will always have it.”

All I manage is a nod as her words settle into the hollowness beneath my ribs and warmth blooms in its place.

She leaves me standing there, silent and still as I admire all four feathers from the kin on my chain.

All but one.

A cool breath of air brushes against my skin, urging me forward as I weave my way back toward the others, slipping between the clusters of Harpaurai, careful not to disturb their rustling and fluttering wings. But as I step through the crowd, my feet falter, the warmth in my chest wavering.

Even in a sea of winged figures clad in white, Lyxander is unmistakable. Yet by his side stands Solenne, her flowing black hair and shimmering wings etched into my memory from the moment I first saw her in the palace.

And then I notice the feather in her hands.

Not one of the small, soft feathers I received tonight. This one is long and pale as moonlight, held between delicate fingers as she looks up at him like he painted the aurora in the sky himself. His feather.

Cold overwhelms me, the warmth I felt replaced by a chill creeping across my skin. I press my hand to my chest as if I can keep it from spreading, but the icy tendrils inch toward my heart.

I spin, seeking something to anchor me, seeking anything that isn’t him, isn’t her, isn’t the sudden tilt of the world.

My gaze collides with Queen Khione’s.

She steps forward, her wings trailing faint glimmers of light as the auroras catch on their edges. Her eyes slide past me, and she tilts her head to the side.

“Hope is a fickle thing, delicate as spun glass. It takes but a moment, a single fumble, for it to shatter,” she muses. “I learned of the prophecy almost a year after Nephelle left, and I went after her at once. It was a foolish impulse, one perhaps driven by hope. But by the time I reached the Sorrows, it was too late. You were born, and your mother was gone.”

My chest tightens, the ache twisting into something colder, something numb. “You’ve known about me all this time?”

The queen inclines her head. “I considered bringing you here so you could be raised among your own kind, but fate is a treacherous thing to tempt. We had already erased ourselves once to survive, and I would not risk history repeating itself.”

“So you left me there.”

“I left you alive,” she says, her gaze hardening. “And when you found your way here, I offered a chance.”

The murmur of the crowd fades into a hush that presses against my ears, as if they have sensed the shift between us.

“I allowed you to remain because of your lineage,” the queen continues. “But it is clear to me that you are unfit to stand among us.”