He made a sound I couldn’t interpret.
Mind churning, I flipped back a few pages, to the sketch of the goddess rising from the swamp.Thatwas why Zephyrine had looked familiar. Because she had Amryssa’s face, or a version of it. Their coloring was so different I hadn’t immediately made the connection, but now that I had, there was no mistake.
The concept of the goddess bearing a daughter rocked me, yet the more I mulled it over, the more sense it made. My best friend was so much better than other humans, so of course she wasn’t one. No, she was something more. Something godly.
“Maybe you’ll get to marry up, after all,” I told Ky.
He said nothing. When I glanced up, his expression was tight.
The unfamiliarity of it gave me pause. “This doesn’t change anything for you, does it?”
“I never imagined I’d marry a goddess,” he said slowly. “Aside from the one I already have, of course.”
“Oh, stop it. I’m no goddess.”
He made a tutting noise. “I thought we’d established that you’re exceptional. And that I’m a fount of wisdom and truth.”
I rolled my eyes. “And bullshit, clearly. Lots of it.”
“Only half the time.”
“Uh-huh. And which half are we dealing with right now?”
He aimed a fond smile at me. “The truthful one, of course.”
My chest fluttered, which I ignored. “Fine. Then if I’m a goddess, you should listen to what I tell you, and I’m saying youneedto marry Amryssa. Now more than ever. Because if the Lady Marche made some kind of promise to give her back, then broke it, I need to get Amryssa as far from here as possible.”
For long moments, he didn’t answer. His chest rose and fell beneath my cheek. “Does that mean you’ll tell her? What she is?”
“I...” Silence welled. I didn’t like that question. “Can we just keep going?”
He didn’t argue. He propped up the book again, and we read on, about how the Lady Marche had faked a pregnancy while Zephyrine carried a true one. Olivian knew, but no one else, and on the day the child was born, the Lady went into the swamp. She emerged not only with her long-awaited baby, but an antler-hilted dagger, gifted from the goddess.
The knife holds a piece of Zephyrine,she wrote.One she cut from her own breast and forged into a weapon. It will help keep my daughter safe until her eighteenth birthday, at which point I’ll return her to the swamp.
Because if I don’t, Zephyrine will fall into a peaceless sleep that will bring ruin to all Oceansgate. And the goddess will never stop looking. Never stop trying to dream her child home.
A cold shimmer rolled down my spine. I flashed back to the night Amryssa had leapt from her window, when the nightmare had helped me.Andthe dagger, both. They’d conspired to save her.
Which made sense, now. A terrible, horrible, sickening kind of sense.
Few entries remained after that. The Lady Marche had apparently taken to motherhood like a muskrat to the reeds, because the intervals between updates grew. Two sketches accompanied the dwindling entries—one of the dagger, another of Amryssa as a toddler.
I try to remember this time is temporary, the Lady wrote after a three-year lull.But Amryssa feels like mine. I don’t know what I would feel for a child born of my own body, but I can’t imagine a greater love than this one. I care for her so much that I fear what I’ll someday do. Or not do, as the case may be.
The next page was blank. And the next.
Ky set the diary aside. Quiet blanketed the room.
“I doubt any of that’s what you wanted to hear,” he said.
“No. It’s really, really not.” My voice cracked. It was obvious which choice the Lady had made, just as it was obvious that ending the nightmares would mean giving Amryssa back.
I couldn’t have one without the other.
Shit.
Ky rolled toward me, leaving his arm in place as my headrest. He toyed with the ribbon adorning my keyhole neckline—not inan attempt to take off my nightgown, I knew. Just playing with the tie, without any motive.
