The halberd isn’t just a weapon. It’s an object of magic—light magic—blessed by the dragons themselves.
Nathaniel needs it when he fights me.
He’ll need it to regain his throne.
The fae have it now—the worst outcome, judging from the war I just witnessed.
I have to make sure he gets it back.
Stumbling away from the book, my head shoots up at the same time that Nathaniel steps away from the book he was looking at it. His eyes are glazed, but he shakes himself, suddenly alert as he looks at me.
“I know what you need to do,” we both say at once.
I blink at him.
He stares at me.
Our twin declarations echo in the silence.
I start to speak again, but I’m suddenly aware of the change in the room.
Darkness has fallen around us, deep shadows casting across the floor. Spinning to the window, I’m shocked to see the outline of the moon in the darkening sky.
I gasp. “How much time has passed?”
Tension thrums through Nathaniel’s posture. “Too much time. The sun has set.”
He strides toward me but stops before he touches me.
Despite the darkness falling around us, I am his focus.
The look on his face reminds me of Cyrian when he tried to torture me, when Cyrian had stopped, startled, and asked me how I exist.
The look in Nathaniel’s eyes now… It’s as if he’s seeing me for the first time.
Behind his expression is fear. Raw, exposed, genuine dread.
“I think I know what happened to you,” he says.
Chapter 13
I take a step away from him.
He keeps his voice low, cautious as he gestures to the book held by the stone girl. “You need to see this book.”
The darkness inside the room suddenly presses in around me. I take another instinctive step back. My heart squeezes inside my chest, my wary gaze flicking to the book and back to Nathaniel. “Why that book?”
He relaxes, his shoulders lowering. He inhales calmly, but it feels forced. “These books contain the history of the four magics. It was difficult to read their titles, but I recognize parts of the ancient languages. I should have realized we would get pulled into the pages. We’ve lost two hours. That was my mistake, but we can’t change it now.”
Pointing at the book held by the golden woman—the one I was reading—he avoids looking at its open pages as he says, “That is the history of light magic. The dark statue holds the book of dark magic. The crimson woman holds the history of fae magic. And the book I read…”
He steps to the book he was studying, pausing in front of it. “This book is about old magic.”
Gripping the edges of the book without looking at the pages, he focuses on the stone girl’s face.
He whispers, “I saw her in this book… Her name is Lucidia.”
I stiffen. “That’s my name.”
“Imatra gave you that name. It means brightest light, doesn’t it?” he asks.
“Yes, because of my Twilight power.” My breath catches in my throat, a sense of dread filling me.
“You need to see this, but don’t look at the pages for too long,” he says. “We can’t afford to lose more time. I’ll be here to pull you out, just in case.”
My feet are leaden as I force myself to move to Nathaniel’s side. He has never given me any reason to distrust him. Even right from the start, he promised to always tell me the truth.
I swallow my anxiety as I step up to the book.
The paper is pitch black, a dark abyss, an endless space that appears to have no boundaries, bleeding beyond the edges of the page and spreading across my vision. I shiver as I recognize the nothing that I sink into when I sleep, the nothing that I remember before my first memories of waking up at the burn site.
A splash of light appears within the darkness. It’s the smallest wisp, dancing across the page, growing brighter. It expands as it comes closer before it turns and glides to the left. Tiny lights surround it, making it sparkle. It hovers, gaining form, humanoid for a moment before it brightens again, the glow around it obscuring its silhouette.
The glow washes across the page, fading into darkness but never quite gone.
“Brightest light,” I whisper, a painful hollow forming in my chest as I press my fingers to the page. “What is it?”
“It’s old magic in its original form.” Nathaniel’s arms close around me as he pulls me gently away from the book, urging me to look up at him.
I blink as I surface into the dark room. Unlike our descent down the stairs, torches haven’t sprung to life around us, leaving us in increasing gloom brightened only by the moon outside.
Nathaniel’s voice is low and soft. “Do you remember when you showed me the diamond at the heart of the Spinning Lake and I told you—”
“I was being childish.”
He shakes his head, a small smile forming and then fading from his lips. “I said there was a playful heart locked up inside you. When you’re happy, you’re like a dancing star.”
The hollow in my chest widens. I push myself out of his arms, suddenly needing to put distance between him and me. He doesn’t try to reach for me. Instead, he steps away from the book and quietly removes his weapons, his harness, and finally his shirt.
He pauses then, a beautiful, strong man who looks at me as if he would do anything to stop the pain of the wounds he’s about to cut open.
He presses his forefinger to the invisible stone he wears next to his heart. “I’ve carried this stone with me every day and night since I was ten years old. I wore it next to my heart. I rarely removed it. The longest I’ve been separated from it was the last two days. Over time—in fact, there were many days when—I felt like this stone had become a part of me. Or maybe that I had become a part of it.”
He takes a step toward me.
I take a step back.
He stops. “I have been pushing away the things I see in you, denying them, because the answers seem too far beyond my reach. But the truth is that you…” His gaze passes across my face from my dull eyes to my pale lips. “You are beyond my reach.”
I take another step away from him, feeling like the foundations are cracking beneath my feet, but not knowing why.
“Ask yourself, Aura,” he says, demanding that I answer him. “Every impossible, unique, unusual thing about yourself. Ask every question that you don’t have an answer for—”
“Why am I alone?” My question sounds harsh in the deepening dark around us.
Pain flashes across Nathaniel’s face, but the questions suddenly pour out of me before he can answer me.
“Why am I the only Twilight fae? Why do I have power over light, but I can only sleep in darkness? How can I stop breathing and remain alive? How could I heal your wound this morning when fae magic couldn’t touch you?” I press my fingers to my lips, remembering the dust that coated my body after I stopped breathing at the burn site—the same dust that I coughed up this morning. “Why do I turn to ash and dust when I begin to die?”
Holding up my hands before my face, I study the shape of my skin, desperate to find answers in them. Flickers of starlight grow around my hand. My power is returning with the rising moon, the well inside me filling again.