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My breath stops.
Where once she had one blue eye split by a deep brown that matched her other eye, now both have turned to crystal, the living Opal shifting through colors no mortal eye should hold. The transformation has taken deeper root than I feared.
The court has claimed more of her than even her bond to Elionn.
“Does it disgust you?” she asks, the blunt question underscored by a thread of uncertainty I’ve never heard from her before.
“No.” I brush my thumb along her cheekbone, following the iridescent light shifting beneath her skin. “It fascinates me.”
“My vision has changed.” Her voice drops lower. “Colors that have no names. Light where there should be none.”
She takes in the suite around us. “The Dark Sithe glows with patterns of magic that were invisible to me before.”
The implications chill me. “How much did the court change you?”
“I’m still figuring it out.” Her fingers brush her ear again before her hand drops to the sithean stone hidden beneath her shirt. “Elionn is still there, connected to me through the bond. He’s alive, though the court tightens around him every hour we delay.”
My brother’s name on her lips sends a complicated surge through me. Relief at his survival, determination to save him, and the same unnamed emotion stirred by his stone resting on her skin.
“We will bring him home,” I promise. “Both of you.”
“There are more than just Elionn trapped.”
I freeze. “What do you mean?”
“Those who came after Kelaros,” she whispers. “The stag didn’t kill them all. Some, it tried to change, and now they dream with the old king.”
Shock rocks through me. “He still lives?”
“He does not die,” she corrects, and the distinction holds its own kind of horror.
Her crystalline eyes reflect my face back to me in fractured patterns of light, revealing truths I cannot hide even from myself. I cradle her jaw, the warmth of her skin a counterpoint to the cold magic coursing through her veins.
Words I have not spoken in centuries form on my tongue, humbling me as nothing else could. “I am sorry, Amalia Wolf. I regret bringing you back to this realm.”
Kings do not apologize. We cannot afford to acknowledge error, not when our decisions shape the fate of all our people. Yet here I stand, stripped of pretense before this woman who has sacrificed more than anyone had a right to ask.
Her pulse flutters beneath my thumbs where they rest on the soft skin of her throat. Her scent rises between us, human sweat threaded with fae magic and an electric hum of energy. It speaks to ancient parts of myself I thought long buried.
“I will release you from any obligation,” I continue. “You will have all the gold you could desire, safe passage to the human realm, protection from any who would follow.”
She remains still within my grasp. “We’re past such empty gestures, Theron.”
My name on her lips, unadorned by title, strikes me with unexpected force.
Neither leaning into my touch nor pulling away, she studies me as if she sees straight through my intentions. “We both understand that leaving is no longer an option for me.”
“I will open a mirror—”
“It’s not the passage back.” She steps away, breaking our contact, though the ghost of her warmth lingers. “The Opal Court is inside me now. I carry a fragment of it in my blood, in my bones.”
Her palm settles over the place where the fragment lies within her. “If I return home, it will follow. I won’t take the risk.”
A chill rolls through me. “You believe it would use you as a doorway.”
“Without question.” She turns from me to run her finger over a display of knives. “Even now, it reaches through me, searching for pieces of what it once was.”
“If I crossed the veil, it would pour through me into a world helpless before its hunger.”
