KANE

MY FISTS CRACKLED WITH OBSIDIAN thorns and shadowed scales as I beheld Len, no longer on a worm-rotted wooden stool, but now

seated in a sleek upholstered leather chair. Fit for a king rather than a man. Or a witch or a beast—I still didn’t know what Len was. He hadn’t answered my question.

“What are you?” I snarled once more. My rage sent the flames of the white candles around us flickering.

“Would it make a difference? I can’t help you.” Fury—blazing fury—radiated through my chest. “Why not?” “I serve the many realms. Not heartsick boys.”

Serve the many realms…“Do not lie to me.”

The man that wasn’t Len frowned as he stood, his chair scuffing along the luxe rug beneath us. “About which part? The heartsick boys or…”

My mouth was inexplicably dry as I watched him pour himself a glass of whiskey from an ornate carafe. “A God? You’re a Fae God?”

He dipped his chin. “Frankly, I thought you’d get there quicker, boy.”

Was it possible that a God truly stood before me? I jerked my head around as if I could shake the shock away. “What is a Fae God doing holed up in Vorst?”

Irritation crested in his depthless eyes. “Do you have no fear? Most used to bow before me.”

Used to. My mind scattered and realigned itself twice over. “A disgraced God. A banished one,” I murmured. “What did you do?”

The man that was not the White Crow took his seat once more, now with a swirling amber drink. “I interfered with the lives of mortals. Who knew compassion for lesser beings was an existential sin?”

I had come all this way. Flown through hail and wind and ice. Topped clouds and peaks and pines higher than the stars. I’d scoured the Pearl Mountains for the White Crow. Scaled a mountain—and plunged from it— for days trying to reach him. And now I beheld a true Fae God. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this was the only chance I would get.

“You know what I seek,” I said, so low I hardly heard myself. “Can you make me full-blooded? I’m nearly so already. My father, Lazarus—”

“I don’t require your recounting, boy. I watched your father rock in his cradle.”

“Then you know what a monster he is. You know that blade may be gone already. Turn me, and let me rid this world of him.”

“The blade cannot be destroyed,” the God said, bored eyes on his drink. “Not by anyone.”

“That won’t stop my father.” I would have tied a thousand weights to the thing and sunk it to the bottom of the Ocean of Ore. Or fed it to an ogre, the blade safe within its monstrous gut.

“It didn’t stop him. But the blade always found its way back. If the Blade of the Sun cannot be with its master, it will find a new one, mortal or otherwise.”

Adrenaline and lighte both recessing, I slumped into my own plush leather chair across from him. “Where is it now?”

“With your father. In Solaris.”

“Turn me,” I said, heart in my throat. “I will do anything you ask.” “I did ask. You answered incorrectly.”

“Your questions don’t matter,” I bit out, slamming my hands onto the heavy table between us. “She isn’t alive.”

The God only tsked. “Your intentions are what matter to me.”

He had said he served the realms. Perhaps it was my integrity I needed to prove.

“You can decree the future, I’m sure. See all, know all…Tell me I am not the best chance we have to rid this world of my father. Tell me I don’t wish to save the lives of those threatened by him more than anyone alive. Nobody’s intentions are more pure.”

The God only laughed. “Hers were.”

“Arwen’s?” I hadn’t said her name aloud in over two months. The syllables slid cruelly across my tongue. Profound grief I thought I’d buried rose up my throat and coiled around my jaw.

And I couldn’t stand it—couldn’t stand another moment on this earthly plane knowing she wasn’t here, too. Here was my only chance at giving her death an ounce of meaning and I couldn’t convince him my intentions were pure? “I carry her will inside my heart. Consider her virtue, her morality, my own.”

Whether he detected the tenor of pain in my voice, I wasn’t sure. The God’s unflinching gaze only burrowed into mine.

Despite how I was breaking, I pushed on. “Look inside my soul. Tell me I don’t mean it.”

The Fae God considered me.

His judging gaze seared across my tensed brows, my burning eyes. My fingers, splintering the wooden arms of the extravagant chair. A sensation stirred in my chest, and I wondered if the man had the ability to somehow dig his hands through my ravaged heart.

The Fae God’s jaw stiffened. A breeze rustled the gauzy curtains. The wisps of smoke drifted from the incense over to the table until ash fell softly on the rich mahogany. I tried to draw in one single even breath.

When his glare found mine again, a sliver of hope sparked in my chest.

“You must swear on everything you own. Your kingdom, your coin, your people, that you will—”

“I will kill him. I swear it more ardently than anything I’ve ever sworn.” “Swear on her. That he will perish, one way or another.”

The urge to bark out a laugh almost knocked me from my chair. “I swear on Arwen’s grave. I will do it for her. In her honor.”

The Fae God only scowled, but triumph soared inside my chest. I had him.

“I must warn you, boy, even if I were to try, I have never done such a thing. In the earliest days, when there was only Lumera, full-blooded Fae were born when Gods copulated with mortals…”

That was how Arwen had been conceived and born full-blooded—the mating of a Fae God and her mortal mother.

“But,” he went on, shaking me from my recollection of that rainy night outside Mariner’s Pub, “I have never taken a Fae and rebirthed him for the sole purpose of turning him true.”

I wasn’t clever enough to trick a Fae God. I was a mere blunt instrument. “Try.”

“There may be grave consequences.” “I know what I am asking.”

“The risk—”

“Do,” I gritted out, “your worst.”

A single wave of that hand once more and an elegant, elongated wineglass appeared at the table before me. Not wine, but thick, bone-pale liquid inside.

His eyes were vicious. “Drink.” That color— “What is it?”

The God only smirked. “You know what it is.”

Lilium.

I knew better than to say what echoed in my mind like a death knell:

That will kill me. Instead, I took two bracing, fortifying breaths— And I drank.

It was as if I had guzzled liquid lightning. Charring my throat, seizing my body as it oozed down my gullet. I choked on most of it, sputtering half up, collapsing, knocking the chair out from under me. It clattered somewhere behind me, shattering some bottle…I didn’t know. I couldn’t

think. Couldn’t breathe as agony shrieked through me. As my soul fled my body, digging through layers of earth for her—

CONSCIOUSNESS FOUND ME SPRAWLED ACROSS the polished wood floor. Alive, it seemed. And still in that sleek den belonging to a God. Bergamot incense and pungent spirit filled my nostrils. I choked back a gag.

My mouth ached. My very skin…weaker, somehow. The pulse sliding along my veins, so quiet I couldn’t hear it. I grasped at my body, my jaw, my thundering heart. “What did you do?”

My muscles, as I stood, sore though I’d barely climbed today. My tongue, heavy in my mouth. My eyesight, blurred…

“It’s only temporary—”

But I couldn’t hear past my own horror. “I’m…mortal.”

“All rebirth demands death. Now you are a slate, cleared and readied for a new inscription.”

“How?” I hardly grit out.

“A weapon forged with not only my own power but the other eight Elder Gods’ as well. A relic to grant you the blood you seek.”

“The blade…”

“Touch the steel once, and you will regain your lighte tenfold.” Len’s eyes gleamed with victory. “You will be reborn, full-blooded.”

Despite accomplishing all I’d set out to, relief evaded me. I was a mortal man. Mortal, until I got my hands on the blade. “That was not the agreement,” I breathed.

The God stood from the table. “It’s already been done.” “You knew all along, didn’t you?”

For the first time, remorse crossed his eyes. “I had an inkling.”

I thought I might hurl myself at him. Claw the skin clean off his face. But I was no longer Fae. I shouldn’t have risked the wrath of a God when I was, and I certainly wouldn’t now.

“And if I never touch the blade?” I asked around my splitting headache. “If I can’t find it?” A simple fall down the stairs could kill me now. I’d never make it through Lumera. I’d never locate the blade in the palace unscathed.

“The realms will be doomed.” No, no, no—

Why had he done all of this? He knew I could never destroy my father if I wasn’t Fae. Why did I need to swear to complete the prophecy in her place? Why did my intentions matter to him at all? How could he—

A singular, near-juvenile hope blazed in my mind. “Was this all a test?

Are you…Will you bring her back?”

Ice in that voice as he regarded me with less than pity. “No.” “Could you?” I had to know. “Are you choosing not to?”

“I would have,” he said, pushing his chair neatly back into the table as if finishing up supper. “If it were possible.”

“Why? Why isn’t it possible?” I was pathetic, and I knew he was sneering at me, and that nothing I said would work. Knew that I was weak and broken, covered in my own sickness and sweat, and still, I couldn’t stop the words from shoving past my lips. “I’ll bring you her body. I’ll scour the realms for it. I will pay any price you demand. Obey any request.”

“Go, boy. Find the blade.”

“Please.” I knelt to the floor, my mortal knees cracking against the wood. “Please.” My throat was so tight I could barely speak around it. Tears burned in my eyes.

“Please,” I begged, wrung out. “Please bring her back to me.” “Find the blade, Kane.”

When I lifted my bleary eyes to him, the Fae God was gone. The polished walls replaced by that grim cobbled stone. Bone-deep chill where there had been warmth. And my inedible meat pie, growing cold beside a dying hearth.