“Tell me how.”
Not yet, Huntress.
That voice was singular. One woman. One. One single voice. I blinked.
Focus.
An apparition appeared before me, nearly invisible in the dark room. Her white wedding dress was covered in blood and her face, though beautiful, was haunted, plagued with misery as she looked down at the sword buried in her belly. She reached a bloody hand toward me before I met those eyes that were twin to my own. Another Huntress. Another of Thorne’s conquests.
I’d seen this death before. Not like this though. I’d seen it through the eyes of a sympathetic woman, falling for a man. Now, it was different. He was the reason. I knew it as thoroughly as I knew how to breathe. How to be.
She stumbled forward, staining the pure white snow with her blood as she fell into Thorne’s arms. I knew it was him without seeing his face. He reached for her, fingers trembling, exactly as I remembered in the vision Alastor had shown me. Only this time, the second before she died, she turned and looked right into my soul. The vision faded on her eerie scream.
Pain started building again, different this time, focused and sharp against my thigh. It burned like brands being pressed into my flesh, like molten metal seeking bone. My hands moved without conscious thought, clawing at the source of the heat until my fingers closed around gold and parchment.
Thorne’s book.
The voices screamed louder, became more frenzied, more desperate. The pain intensified until spots danced across my vision, until my breath came in ragged gasps that barely brought in enough air to keep me conscious.
Destroy it.
With the last remnants of strength I could muster, I hurled the book across the room. It hit the wall with a dull thud that echoed for eternity, then fell to the floor, its pages splayed open like broken wings.
The voices didn’t stop. They never stopped. But as I watched the book lying there, something inside me fractured in a different way, not from pain this time, but from the hollow emptiness that follows when you realize you’ve lost everything that ever mattered.
18
Thorne
“You didn’t have to come,” I said, glancing at Minerva’s hardened face as she squeezed between me and Tuck in the alleyway.
“I’m clearly siding with the illogical these days.” Minerva grabbed my arm with precise fingers. “Let’s get this done properly. You need me here.”
“If we’re keeping score, I still think this is a shit idea,” Tuck said, scratching his beard.
“At least we can all agree on something,” I muttered, staring up at my brother’s obnoxious temple. “This is the biggest fucking shrine to Ezra I’ve ever seen.”
“Aeris’s handiwork, no doubt,” Minerva said, her eyes cold as she studied the arched gates. “She’s turned Silbath into this gaudy nightmare. Golden streets and dark, unearned luxuries. Entirely calculated, you boys mark my words.”
“The mortals will piss themselves fearing gods they don’t even remember,” Tuck added with a grimace. “Won’t matter which side of the battle lines we stood on. Perth rots while Silbath fucking gleams and that’s what started the war between them ages ago.”
“I’d wager Aeris is feeding the divide. Creating jealousy between neighbors, cultivating fear among mortals. Offering new paths to the desperate and wicked, should they dare emerge from their damn holes to seek an audience with gods who see them as nothing but prey.”
Minerva shook her head. “The price for that kind of power must have been steep.”
“And completely pointless. But that’s not today’s problem.” I nodded toward the gates. “The Unmade are here.”
“What’s an Unmade?”
“Archer, what the hell?” I asked, whipping around to find him leaning on the building to our right in the alley. He wore his thievery leathers and had the damn sword Alastor gave Paesha strapped to his back.
“Been tracking you for days,” he said, sweeping his hood back. “This doesn’t feel like we’re rescuing Paesha, but who am I to judge gods?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Tuck said, stepping forward. “In fact, youshouldbe up at the castle visiting your father.”
Archer pulled a coin from his pocket, flipped it into the air, and caught it before smirking. Cocky fucker. “Learned something interesting from Aeris. Apparently, if I’m royalty, you can’t use your magic on me.”
I glared before stepping toward him, pivoting around and dislodging the sword from his back. I had him pinned to the wall, blade to throat before he could swallow. “Let’s play a game. Think of your beloved sister and tell me what color her hair was.” He struggled, but I kept him pinned, reaching inside his mind to slip that tiny morsel of a memory free. “Come on, Archie boy. What color was it? Red? Black?”
