Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
IDALLIA
This is it. The test. My birds watch me with encouraging but slightly anxious expressions.
Sybil and Stuart are with me. Danica’s here, too, but that’s just a coincidence.
She visits a lot. She’s bored without Wade.
He lives in Drayke now with his husband, Brian.
They make the most fantastic carvings out of birchwood and red cedar and juniper trees that hold details down to the thousandth-layered dragon scale or the tiniest shivering leaf on an autumn tree.
They bring new pieces to me every so often, and contrary to the cold, classic statues all over Glarraden House, I only see the light and joy in this artwork and don’t mind it decorating my home.
I see the improvements in Wade’s work every time they visit.
He’s learning from Brian, and their business is booming. Not that they need the gold.
“Just a little sunlight won’t do too much damage, will it?” Danica asks nervously. “You know, if the magic doesn’t work?”
I shrug. “I’ll get some nasty burns, but I can jump back into the shadows before anything too awful happens.”
Dawn isn’t far off. Light already limns the horizon in bright gold and blood red.
When the sun rises, I’ll step into its light for the first time in two years and test the combined magic of Stuart, my best sorcerers, and the earnest, endless love of my birds.
Everyone’s been working nonstop for nearly a month.
Today is the deadline—the day I’m to meet Bale on the mountain where our kingdoms join.
My heart swoops, free-falling into the void of my chest with maybe no one to catch it. I almost hate Bale more for giving me this hope—of sunlight, of a new home we build together, of us.
But love is stronger than hatred, and mine feels like it’s climbed the endless steps of Drayke Mountain, one foot at a time, until it reached the top and pushed hate out the window.
I’ve wondered these last weeks who I’m really punishing at this point.
Continuing to punish Bale feels a lot like punishing myself now.
I needed time. Bale gave it to me.
Now I think I need him.
I swallow hard, tears blurring my eyes. Hope and dread.
Fear and elation. I wouldn’t change anything about my choices, but I never expected to have this choice again—to move around outside, both during the day and at night.
I would drink from Rannigan, pull off his arm, and pound him to death with it again in a heartbeat, even if it ended my time as a sunblood.
His blood made me truly starborn, a queen, and the scourge of Bloodwold—until the kingdom finally turned the corner I wanted.
And now…maybe I can live again.
The sorcerers only just finished, and most of the residents of this keep are heading to bed right now as the sun rises in the east. If the Bloodwold sorcerers hadn’t already had a base spell to modify, it would probably have taken years, not weeks.
The first one did, and those human sorcerers are long dead.
Creating Rannigan’s firebreath shield from Bale’s stolen scale took most of the decades I lived at Glarraden House.
It was done by the time I reached school, giving me equal footing to fight Torridaig’s greatest enemy.
Fire and flight didn’t necessarily crush vampires anymore.
My bound breasts are covered, and I take my shirt off. For this magic to work, for it to be safe and not something someone can take from me in broad daylight or that’ll wear off with time, it needs to merge with my skin. A tattoo would only be inked on. This will be fused with my very being.
Fyrestar’s feather is soft, medium-sized, and fiery orange. He plucked it himself straight from his chest. Closest to the heart, just as he promised.
Rim’s came from his reddish-gold wing. It probably won’t grow back, but it was so long and beautiful that he wanted me to have it. It’s still warm with inner fire, even weeks after he pulled it out and gave it to Stuart.
Sol’s gift to me was a little feather from her bright-yellow head crest. It might be small, but it’s one of the feathers that always brought me the most joy as I watched it fly in the wind, trailing sparks like a ray of sunshine in this endless dark.
I take a deep, steadying breath. “Here goes.”
I turn my back to Sybil, and she tucks Rim’s long feather into the cloth binding my breasts, laying it flat against my spine from the small of my back to my neck. The tip brushes my nape, tickling a little.
I hold the other feathers myself, pressing Sol’s offering to the right side of my neck and Fyrestar’s against my hard-beating heart, the angle of it forming a line from the inner curve of my breast to the top of my left shoulder.
Idallia. I’m meant for this. Behold the sun. It’s in my name—the one Bale chose for me, knowing my story and hoping I’d turn to the light in my life instead of the dark.
It’s been dark lately. I’m ready for the light again. I might live for centuries, but two years is already enough time to waste on bitterness and doubt.
With my phoenixes’ spell-imbued feathers against my skin, I pull my shoulders back, lift my gaze to the east, and step into the rising sun, praying to a dead goddess that I don’t burn with the dawn.