“Relax,” Eris says, hauling back on the oars of the little boat we rented from a hob. “You’re knotted tighter than my bow. The local fae are going to start looking at us closely if they notice how nervous you are.”
“Sorry.” I stare across the waters, trying to fight the urge to tap my fingers. “I’m just tired. Every time I think we get closer to the crown, my leads shrivel up and die.”
“You have over eight months to find it,” she says.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“Vi?”
Sometimes I forget how perceptive she is, but then she was born on a battlefield, and she’s spent her entire life reading the room.
“I’m late.”
Unlike Thiago, she understands immediately.
“Well, fuck,” she says, tugging out the flask she carries and taking a swig from it.
“We were always careful. But somehow….”
“Fate,” Eris says roughly. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you try to prevent such a thing, it still happens. How certain are you?”
“I don’t know. Five days late, maybe. Tired. Hungry. But I don’t know if my mind is conjuring symptoms simply because I fear they’re there, or if I just need a week in bed.”
Eris hauls back on the oars. “Then we find the crown, pay your debt, and kill the Mother of Night.”
The breath explodes out of me. “Do you have any idea how difficult that would be?”
“Everything can be killed. Even a goddess.”
I slump back in the boat with a weak laugh. “Sometimes I wish I had your assurance. And if the entire alliance couldn’t kill her—could only lock her away—then what makes you think I can manage to do it?”
“We,” she corrects. “The darkyn prince of Evernight and his queen, the leanabh an dan; his cousin, one of the salt-kissed; a general who once belonged to the Grimm; a dangerous sylvaren warrior; and me.”
“The scariest fae in the world.”
Eris gives me a look.
“You think I’m talking about that Devourer bullshit?” I snort. “You’re terrifying enough on your own.”
She looks away. But she smiles a little. “Here we are.”
I don’t comment about how neatly she managed to distract me as she rows the boat toward a floating island in the middle of the swamp. I’m no longer worried about the Mother of Night.
No, now I have to deal with the saithe oracle.
Eris flips me a small vial. “For the oracle,” she says. “It’s one of my memories.”
I curl my fingers around the vial.
The oracle is one of the few free immortals who remain in the world, and they say she exists now on the taste of mortal memories. Nobody knows what she does with them—whether she simply swallows them whole and gluts herself on them—but the more painful or joyful the memory, the more it sustains her.
“Eris, I can’t—”
“You’ve given enough memories for him,” she tells me. “And you are my queen. Let me spare you this. I don’t need this memory. Trust me on that, if nothing else, Vi.”
I look at the small glimmer of swirling white trapped in the vial.
A memory is part of your identity. It’s part of your whole. And I’d been worried about providing one, considering I have so few left.
“She will take it,” Eris growls, as if she senses my hesitation. “Painful memories are the ones that bring the most sustenance, and this one is full of blood and tears.”
“I’m very tempted to hug your right now, E.” The words thicken in my throat. “But then I’m going to embarrass us both, and I know you hate displays of emotion.”
She shies away from me. “Please. Don’t. I’d hate to have to dump your undignified ass in the swamp.”
The pair of us smile, both of us playing up to the extremes of our character.
And then Eris scowls at me. “Well, go on. Go and find our crown. I don’t just give away memories for nothing.”
She shoos me toward the ruins on the island.
I tuck her memory away. “You’re not just a friend, Eris. You’re mine now, you realize? You’re part of my new family.”
The words strike her like a blow, but she merely tips her chin up. “I expect to be named godmother.”
I laugh as I turn toward the ruins. “I think you’ll have to fight Thalia for that honor.”
The saithe oracle reclines upon an ancient stone throne, those all-black eyes focused on me so intently it seems as though she can see right through me. Every last little hope. Every dream. Every nightmare I ever owned.
But it’s the look in her eyes that makes me swallow.
She’s otherkin. Born of the same peoples as the Mother of Night, and I can see the resemblance there in their pointed chins and the little horns that curl in their hair.
Not an Old One—Thalia’s sources tell me the oracle was never worshipped, nor sought out others of her kind—but she is bound to an ancient power that guards the swamp, and can never leave its waters.
“Little queen,” she says, her brightly painted nails scratching over mossy stone. “You have finally come to me.”
I hate the way oracles and seers always act as if they’ve been waiting for you.
“I have brought a memory.” I tug the vial out of my leather coat. “And in return I have questions.”
Her dark gaze locks on the vial. “This is skirting the rules,” she chides. “The memory is due to be one of your own.”
“This belongs to Eris of Silvernaught. It is full of blood and tears, she assures me. A worthy meal.”
There’s hunger there in her dark gaze. But fear too. “The Devourer.”
“No. My friend.”
She slinks from her throne, barely able to hide her eagerness. “You’re a little fool if you think her your friend. Eris of Silvernaught is prophesied to swallow the moon whole. If that thing inside her gets loose, then she will drink in the souls of all that walk these lands.”
I want to ask.
I want to know what
