“Right,” he said, unruffled. “So what’s a few more days?”
“And you’re dragging me there now?” My voice cut. “While I’m becoming something I don’t even understand?”
“I’m not leading you to a slaughter,” he said firmly. “But I need to know if the village exists. If the old ways still breathe. The ones who whisper Eryndis’s name despite the goddesses trying to bury it. If they’ve endured, Aurelia… they may be searching for a way to bring her back. To end the reign of the daughters who broke her.”
My breath caught. “Why are you telling me this? You just said I’m tied to Kaelith in ways you don’t even understand. Why trust me with something that could get you all killed?”
Malachi’s jaw flexed once. “I’m not trusting you,” he said. “I’m trusting what you are. Kaelith thinks your bond to him makes you loyal. It doesn’t. It only makes you dangerous. And dangerous things need truth, not blinders.”
My heart stuttered. “So this is strategy.”
“This is survival,” he corrected. “Yours. Ours. Theirs. I tell you because if that village is real, its people are the only ones left who might know what you’re becoming. His gaze softened then—barely, but enough to make my ribs ache.
“You deserve to choose what you stand for before he chooses for you.”
That word.Survival. It sounded right on his tongue, but it set my spine stiff.
My hand lifted to the scar above my heart, the one from thedream. It pulsed under my fingers like something waking. Remembering.
“If I’m becoming something dangerous,” I said, steady but low, “I need to know.”
“You will,” he answered softly. “When I understand it myself.” There was something raw beneath his calm. A fracture in the iron.
I inhaled sharply. “Fine. I want my leathers. The ones I came in.”
“You’re not wearing those,” he said, crossing to a chest by the hearth. He drew out a folded set of black leathers. “I had these made.”
He pressed them into my hands. I unfolded them slowly. The firelight caught on the fabric, making it shimmer faintly. It felt impossibly light—too light to offer real protection—but strong beneath my fingers.
As I turned them over, Malachi stepped closer. His hand lifted, brushing the faint scar visible just above my heart through the thin weave of my tunic. The wound had healed—mostly. But the instant his fingers touched it, shadows stirred under my skin. They bloomed, soft and spectral.
This close, I could see everything. Not just the immensity of him—the breadth of his shoulders, the height that seemed to blot out space—but the details I’d missed before. His skin, that deep umber, warm in an otherwise cold place. The sharpness I’d once taken for menace now looked carved instead from patience. His jaw was hard-cut, his mouth held in restraint. And his eyes—gods, his eyes—still churned molten gold, rimmed in darker burnish. But I knew now they weren’t only a predator’s. They carried more than he would ever let the world see.
My breath snagged in my chest. I hated how close he was, how much space he claimed, how much of me he seemed to read without asking.
“I can hear your heart,” I whispered.
His mouth quirked slightly. “You’ll start hearing more. Smelling more. Feeling things that aren’t always yours, especially through the bond you now share with Kaelith. Everything sharpens during transition.”
“Is that why the air hurts? Why the light cuts and the dust sings?” I asked. “Why my throat is on fire?”
He nodded. I clutched the leathers to my chest, grounding myself in their weight.
“We need to get to Aeryn,” I said. “He’ll think I’m dead—or worse. And he’ll try something reckless.”
Malachi didn’t argue. “What exactly could be worse than death?”
I stilled. “This.” I gestured to my entire being.
“I told him I was searching for books. For answers. A way to receive a blessing without a patron ceremony.” My voice thinned. “Even if he thought it reckless, he’d have believed me. A friend, Hayat, knows the truth of where I went… though by now, he must think I’ve been lost.”
Malachi’s gaze sharpened. “You weren’t wrong. Those books exist. Seraphine has them.”
I turned sharply. “What?”
“She’s been guarding them. Records from before the rites became law. Knowledge that should’ve been burned.”
I swallowed hard. “Then I need them.”