Give Thaan the true details of how we’d spent the past few weeks.
Each thought turned my stomach, but what choice did I have? What other choice had she given me?
I. Refused. To. Let. My. Sister. Die.
Cebrinne shook her head softly. “I am. Aegir already knows. He said he’d help my daughter when she comes.”
“Well, I won’t. I won’t be here. I promise you.” My words vented from between my teeth, each one fuming with hot ire. Each one a foothold against my fall. “I promise, Ceba, if you do this. If you abandon me after I’ve stayed by your side all our lives, through everything else, I’ll never forgive you. If you break my heart, you may not have it back. I won’t stay here in Calder and wait to meether. I won’t help her. I won’t protect her. I won’t give her Theia’s message. You can’tcordaea man for life and have a daughter just to throw them away, and if that’s what you choose, I won’t help you.”
Cebrinne’s gaze had lowered at some point around the wordabandon. She stared into the corner of the floor where a thin film of dust had gathered, her throat still strict, and swallowed silently. Then reached into the small brown canvas bag she’d brought with her, untying its strings.
“Do you know what this is?” she asked.
Jaw hard, I studied it for only a moment. It was a candle, thick and tall. Black. Not just black.Deepblack, the deepest shade I’d ever seen laid into wax. My eyes flicked back to hers.
“Aegir helped me make it. The wick is braided with three strings. The wax is harvested from moon bees. All I have to do is wait for the blood moon this autumn and light it, then add a drop of my blood to the melted wax.”
My stomach heaved. Acid burned up my throat. My jaw hardened as I stood across from her, and though I remembered Theia’s words, I was unwilling to comprehend the purpose of a candle made from blood and moon. “I don’t want it.”
“It’s the promise of a Triad. It will light itself when the first enters Perpetuum, and keep the Triad open for the other two. As long as it remains lit, the gateway is open. As long as it’s lit, I’m there. Senna.” She reachedfor my hand, and I backed away, stumbling into the wall. That sound in my ears roared again, feral and violent. Blinding.
“What about everything we’ve sworn to each other?” I asked, staring at it. “What about until the ocean dries? What about until the moon burns?”
Cebrinne closed her eyes. Then opened them, thick glass over her teal gaze. “Selena.”
“Don’t you love me?”
Her mouth opened. Her brows slanted. She looked at me with the same burning betrayal that laced the quiet shake in my voice. As though I’d thrust a knife into her stomach and twisted.
The door opened. Footsteps meandered through our apartment. I stole out of our bedroom before Vouri appeared, grateful that my mask covered half of my face, only pausing as I passed the beautiful Venusian. “I can’t stay, but you look lovely, Vouri. Ceba will stitch you up.” I smiled as though my eyes weren’t misty. As though the choke in my lungs didn’t exist. And gave her arm a gentle, excited squeeze. “Good luck.”
Dusk had already come and gone, leaving the world floating in a ribbon of night, but light flooded the expanse of the palace. Not buttery and warm like the sconces usually were. The palace servants had somehow coaxed clean, cool light instead, as bright and silvery as the moon.
The massive windows had just been washed, each one a canvas of twinkling stars, though clouds threatened to block them out. The first drops of rain scattered across the grounds, and by the looks of the skyward veil drifting across the moon, the Queen’s Starlit Bloom might soon be lost in a downpour.
Music strung me down the great halls to the ballroom, but as I breached its grand threshold, it wasn’t the pipe of the reeds or the thrum of the fiddles that lured me in.
The refreshment table dripped with opulence. A diamond-woven silk runner, rows of tall crystal flutes, a bowl of sparklingvolare. I ignored the footman waiting to ladle me a glass, grabbing one and filling it for myselfinstead, knocking it back in one motion. The poor human blinked at me in surprise. I refilled a second glass, hesitating for only a moment before using it to chase the first.
I’m going to Leihani.
I filled a third and drank that too.
None of them doused the coals still lodged in my throat. None of them quieted the burn in my stomach or caught me from the fall within those words.
Cupping the flute in my fingers, I turned, eyes roaming the crowd. King Emilius often appeared late at parties, especially those thrown by the Queen. I usually did as well, but Cebrinne’s words had all but banished me from my apartment. So here I was. Among the social elite of Calder. Masked, curled, oiled, poised, pinned, primped, powdered, perfumed. Suddenly, they were all as horribly foul as Cebrinne had always said they were. As shallow, as boring, as pathetic. Egos as fragile as the glass in my hand, loyalties as fickle as the liquid inside it.
I drained another flute.
33
Cebrinne
“How do I look?”
I hadn’t realized I’d been staring at the door, still closed after Selena had passed through it, until Vouri roused me from my thoughts. I forced something like a smile over my mouth, though it felt slimy between my lips. “Beautiful.”
“Not that it matters.” Vouri rolled a shoulder forward and turned, offering herself a better view of her back in the mirror. The boning of her vibrant green dress was nearly invisible, the fabric an intricate mess of dips and slants. “I’ll be meeting my brother, not Sindri.”
