Chapter 28
Magic calls to me like the night sky yearns for the shining glow of the moon.
I slowly slip out from under Cal’s arm, careful not to disturb him.
His deep steady breathing indicates the dreamless rest I covet that evades me yet again.
The tug in my gut so intense that it pulls me outside before I even have shoes on.
I suck in a sharp breath at the first touch of wet snow on my exposed feet.
With a sweeping motion of my hand, a clear path cuts through the snow, a runner of plush grass growing where I intend to step.
The serpentine ditch I carved through the landscape earlier is overflowing now, rushing rain water threatening to spill over its shallow banks.
My skin is hot, so fucking hot. Even my thin shirt is too thick for the heat that wafts off me.
For a moment, I’m tempted to strip down and plunge into the icy stream for relief before I think better of it.
I don’t know if hypothermia can kill a god, but I know they can die.
They have to, otherwise my mother would still be here.
My mother.
I sit in the newly grown grass, the light of the full moon illuminating the fading crescent-shape sketched onto the first page of the worn leather journal that I slipped from my saddle bag, her piss poor attempt at an explanation.
Hold fast, my dark bloom, and destiny will come.
How was a scared, grieving eight year old supposed to understand her cryptic scrawling? Hell, I barely understand it now. Why couldn’t she find the time to tell me any of this to my face?
‘By the way, Ivy, if weird shit starts happening to you, it’s because we are goddesses’ seems like a pretty easy way to start.
But all it does now is fuel the anger I’ve held onto for all these years.
I’ve tried so many times to make sense of her words without success, tried so many times to will the answers to light.
The edges of the journal are still charred from the last time I fished it out of the hearth before it could fully catch fire.
I’ve let that rage consume me so much that I barely remember her any other way.
There’s only snippets, flashes of her singing, dancing, or painting.
In every recollection, she is illuminated by a radiant light.
Haloed in sunlight. Moonlight dancing on her porcelain skin. Firelight sparkling in her golden eyes.
I know I loved her before anger colored my memories, but I lost her and gained terrifying magic on the same day. And here I sit, eighteen years later. Another dead parent, another gift of power I never asked for.
Tears prick my eyes, threatening to spill onto the parchment pages. I knew I would likely never see my father again, but I thought I would feel him die. With my mother, it was as if we were a string being severed in two. I felt the moment her soul left this realm and crossed over.
But the man who raised me, the man who made me who I am, the man who gave power to a daughter where others would have cast her aside—that man slipped from this world days ago and I didn’t feel it.
Questions I’ll never get answers to race through my thoughts. Did he know what she was? Did he know what I am? Is he even my real father?
No. That one I will not entertain tonight.
His death is still too fresh, the grief still too raw for me to sully his memory with traitorous thoughts. Regardless of my parentage, he gave me more than any mortal father could. He gave me a title, a purpose, and a training to back it up—more than any female child in Corinth has had before.
An icy wind blows through the clearing, but it does nothing to cool me. I pull on the blue threads of Cal’s magic again, eager to master the one element that still evades me. His magic filters into me slowly, my breath stilling as the image of my face pops into my mind.
I watch as silver rims my green eyes. Tan fingers grip my hand and splay it across the hammering heart that reverberates throughout this form.
A haunted, pained look flits across my face as too sweet words flood my ears, a look that should have doused the fiery hope that burns in this chest, but doesn’t.
It’s easier to release his magic this time.
Easier to let go of the emotions and memories that accompany it.
I see how he looks at me, but to see it through his own eyes …
his steely gaze that threatens to cut through the iron-clad box that guards my heart, the metal so thick that nothing has ever pierced it without my consent … that nearly breaks me.
Cal looks at me like he’s been wandering the Synalian desert for two decades and I’m his idyllic oasis. Not the first drink he’s found, but the only hydration he’ll ever need again. There is no end to his want, no limit to what he’ll do to have me. It’s a look most women would kill to receive.
Dawn is nearly here, and in the last cold rays of night, I know I’ve gone too far, entertained my own pleasure and whims for too long.
Morning brings an end to the night I promised Cal.
The end to the permission that I gave myself to give in to my own wants.
Dawn brings me another day closer to the death that awaits me in Amale.
If the Dark God has any mercy at all for the man who has given him so many souls, he’ll take me before I completely destroy Cal.
The weather becomes warmer the further west we go, leaving the last remaining dregs of winter in our wake.
We travel slowly, determined to make sure Marks and his soldiers have already crossed the watery divide between the Ruby and Diamond Regions before we arrive at the port city.
We don’t leave camp until well into the morning hours, and when we ride, only the browns of the common folk adorn our bodies as we journey deeper into the heart of Corinth.
My magic hasn’t quieted since the tattooed serpent appeared on my belly.
It knows exactly where Cal’s power is at all times.
I can sense him without sight, without hearing.
A mystical, infuriating sixth sense that I can’t shut off or drown out no matter how much I try.
It blazes with every delicate graze of his tanned fingers, sears me with every seductive wink of his gray eyes.
It consumes my waking and sleeping thoughts, demanding I give it the one thing it desires: him.
But I’m a stubborn bitch, and I deny it with a renewed vigor. I don’t let him get too close to me and don’t dare to give myself over to him again, no matter how futile my resistance may end up being.
Quiet hours on horseback sneaking through the Godswood give me more time to think than I care for. Thoughts that start with denial and always end up in a state of what if.
What if I don’t die in Amale? What if we have time? What if I want to have time with him?
But they’re pointless questions. My nightmares only increase the closer we get to the Diamond Region, dreams that now include more blood than should be possible and the face of the man who rides alongside me.
Even cloaked in the common brown, every trace of his persona removed, he exudes power.
Cal is power. Now that I know he’s a god, I can’t see him any other way.
How he walked among us disguised as a mortal, I’ll never know.
He’s a force to be reckoned with, and while all of Corinth may not know the true reason, they recognize it, fear it, and respect it.
Perhaps the most attractive thing about Cal isn’t his honed physique or the downright sinful things he does with it, but the fact that he sees me as his equal.
Not something to be used, extorted, or controlled.
The first person to see my true power shattered the pretty little porcelain box I hid it inside all these years.
He pulled the veil from over my eyes and gave me the first piece of my true identity.
An identity that still doesn’t feel complete.
The revelation of my heritage does little to settle the decaying power that swirls in the shadows surrounding camp and lurks in the shade of the passing trees. The magic that claws at the underside of my skin like a rough stitch. The constant reminder of the doom that awaits me.
We reach the port city just before nightfall on the third day.
The last stop on the Ruby side of the Alloy River is especially dangerous.
Marks has to believe I’ve returned to Emerald or we lose the one element we can’t magically wield but have to have: surprise.
If I’m spotted here, the plan we’ve managed to string together will unravel.
Soldiers, dressed in the gray and gold uniforms that signal their allegiance to Corinth, are stationed at the docks. Marks left his own men on this side of the river to replace the regional guard, a clear sign of the distrust we correctly anticipated.
Cal’s face is too recognizable to these men, so there’s no point trying to hide him.
He exchanges his modest cloak for one in a striking raven hue, putting the first phase of our plan into motion.
He’ll secure passage for himself tonight, and in the morning, he’ll bribe the same soldier to look the other way when he brings along a woman that he happened to meet in the tavern.
It’s a ridiculous idea, but it’ll work. A woman on the arm of a powerful man is rarely looked in the eyes. So I’ll swish my hips when I walk, lay my head playfully against his arm, and swallow down my pride until we’re in the safe cover of the Kingswood that waits on the other side.
“I’m not known for traveling with a … hired companion, so you’re really going to have to sell this one, princess. You sure about this?” Cal asks.
“It’ll work,” I reassure him. “Go do your soldier thing. I’ll meet you in the tavern.”