The otherkin.
I feel breathless. They no longer exist now except in stories or in the features I sometimes see bred into unseelie faces. When my kind fled through the stars and arrived in this land, these were the beings that lived in what we now call Arcaedia.
Monsters, all the history books say.
But there are no monsters here.
“This way,” says the voice. “Let me show you what we are.”
Rune stones appear. A Hallow. But the rocks remain mere sandstone, unblemished by any mark or rune. They simply exist, surrounding a smooth plane of rock that looks like it’s been polished for centuries.
Otherkin kneel there, singing and weaving back and forth in some sort of… prayer?
The Mother of Night appears, walking among them in a gown of shimmering black that look like she’s stolen a piece of the night sky and woven it into some sort of material. Little black horns poke through the glistening strands of her dark hair. She’s always looked ageless to me, but something about her tells me she’s younger in this moment.
As she passes the otherkin, she ruffles her hand through their hair and smiles at the children, and perhaps it’s the smile that undoes me.
This is wrong. This is all wrong.
“Why am I here?” I demand, tugging my hand from the one that curls around mine.
Instantly the forest disappears.
I’m standing on the icy-cold island in the middle of the Mother of Night’s prison world.
“Because we wished to show you the truth,” says the male voice at my side.
The truth?
“I want to go back! What have you done to me? What have you done to Eris?”
“She is but sleeping,” says the voice.
“You could end her sleep.” The Mother of Night appears, walking up the rocky shore. “You could wake her with but a single word.”
“And does that word have anything to do with ‘yes’?” I demand. “Yes, I will free you from your prison world. Yes, I will free you all. Because if that is to be the price of… of Eris’s waking, then you do not know me. And you do not know her. Because if Eris were here to tell me what to do, I know what she’d say. No price is worth the risk of seeing you and your kind free.”
There’s a long moment of silence. “We are not monsters, Iskvien.”
But I’ve had enough.
“You pulled me into this dream, didn’t you? And you did something to Eris. It was you who plunged all those guards into sleep. It wasn’t Maren, after all.”
All of this, just to push me into a place I don’t want to be.
The Mother exchanges a glance with the creature beside me. “Maren wielded the Dreamthief’s Mirror, and with it his power. It took your friend. But she did not realize that the second she wielded the Mirror, the Dreamthief was granted access to you. We can help you and your friend, Princess.”
I’ve played this game before. “You’re lying.”
“We’re not lying.”
I glare at the Mother of Night. “I will find your crown and I will give it to you by the end of the year. And then you will rot in this prison world, because I will not be your pawn. I will not be your leanabh an dàn! You can all rot!”
I turn and lunge for the forest I first found myself in. The one with bare branches that hook toward the sky and snow underfoot. The baby is screaming now, the sound cutting right through me.
I’ve been trapped in these dreams for months.
“You’re just trying to scare me!” I shout.
And I turn and run the other way as the baby’s cries echo louder.
And then Thiago is there, his eyes flashing with green fire as he grabs me by the upper arms. “Why didn’t you tell me you were the leanabh an dàn? Why didn’t you trust me to love you?”
“Because you said the child of destiny needed to die!” I gasp.
“But that’s not the truth, Vi,” he snarls. “I would have loved you. I would have trusted you. I would have given you everything. And you have ruined it.”
The protest dies on my lips, because there’s something quivering around his hand, an enormous twist of shadow writhing into a nest of shadowy snakes.
He hurls them at my face, and I try to scream, but they evaporate the second they hit my skin, leaving me to inhale the smoky residue of their being.
It tastes like death.
At that I wake, gasping in a suppressed scream, every inch of me hammering with alertness. My hands shake. My pulse thunders. And I swear I can still taste the kiss of the grave.
But I’m in the room beside Eris’s bed, and though the candle has burned low, it’s the same candle I lit hours ago. I wave a hand through the flame, just to feel the bite of its heat.
“It’s just a dream. Just a fucking dream.” I reach for Eris’s hand to squeeze it, but she doesn’t squeeze back.
She’s still asleep.
Still shockingly vulnerable.
Every bead in the web of dreams lies crushed into dust on the pillow around Eris’s dark hair.
I want to run. I want to hide. Even my nights are no longer safe. But I reach out for the power of the Ceres Hallow, feeling it tremble awake somewhere close by.
“Prove you’re not monsters. Let her go.”
It’s a foolish thought, thrown out into the night in the hopes that the Mother of Night will hear it.
I don’t dare hope for anything more.
But nor do I lay hands on Eris again, because that hungry, slavering darkness within her knows I’m there.
And I think it knows that I’m the key to freeing itself.
Even though, Maia help me, I’m the one in chains.
Chapter Sixteen
The next day, I’m slumped in my bath, trying to wash away the residue of oily smoke that still somehow clings to me, when I receive a note from Thalia saying the impossible has happened.
Eris is awake.
Slipping into my training leathers, I hurry through the hallways of the
