She glanced at the bed as I made my way to sit back down. “Malachi is readying the horses,” she added, like she’d been waiting for me to ask. “Supplies. Farewells.”
Something pinched behind my ribs. I hadn’t known what to expect of this morning, only that it would be a line I couldn’t step back over.
I sat on the edge of the bed, blanket clutched tight around my shoulders. My gaze drifted over the room—the still hearth, the wash of pale light through the window, the silence that seemed louder than any storm.
“Make some space. Let’s tame that.” Lysara gestured to my hair.
A breath of a laugh slipped out of me as I shifted forward, making room for her on the bed. I turned, and her fingers slid into my curls. Near my nape, she stilled.
“I know it’s a lot,” I said, before she had to.
“You’ve been marked.”
The weight of her words anchored themselves in my chest. We stayed there unspeaking, braid unfinished, her hands warm in my hair.
“I’ve not seen this variation of mark before,” she said at last, voice low.
Another knock. The door eased open and Eryndis stepped inside.
The air shifted, thinner and wider at once. Time felt like water around her—she moved through it rather than with it.
“Lysara,” she said, quiet and clear. “May I speak with Aurelia?”
“Yes, of course…” Lysara started to rise.
“She can stay,” I said quickly, pressing a hand to her arm.
Eryndis considered that for a beat, then inclined her head and came farther in. Lysara’s hands resumed, steadier now.
“You are changing,” Eryndis said. “Not all who change rise. Some fall. Some unravel. Some become echoes of a life that wasn’t meant for them.”
“And me?” I asked. The question lodged sharp in my throat. I wanted her to say I’d survive it, that I’d still be myself when it was done. But deep down, I already knew there was no going back. The only choice left was whether I broke with it, or became something else.
“You were not made to echo,” she said. “You were made to resound—to be the first note, not a reflected one. When you move,” she said, “power will answer you—not because it is summoned, but because it recognizes you.”
“What rests on you is not a command,” Eryndis said. “It is an opening.” Eryndis’s gaze flicked to my neck. “That mark was not given in haste. It is older than patron rites. Older than most lines of blood. Your mark makes you eligible for rites the goddesses cannot ignore, even if you want nothing to do with them. It is not merely mine. It is a shard of what I was, and a bridge to what you are becoming. A kind of immortality without pageantry.”
Eryndis paused before continuing. “You carry what remains of me, but not as a copy. It is yours now, shaped by your hand, your will. We are all born of fragments—mercy and fury, love and ruin.”
Her eyes lingered on me, something like recognition flickering beneath the veil. “But some fragments runolder than goddesses, Aurelia—older than the first stories we learned to tell about ourselves. You must decide how you will wield what you are. Because it will not be decided for you.”
“What does itdo?” I asked, because today needed answers more than poetry. Aeryn didn’t have the luxury of guesswork. Neither did I.
She stepped closer, her hand reaching for mine. A breath snagged in my throat.
“It hardens what would break,” she said. “Not bone—you. Your mind, your will. It keeps you from shattering when the world tries to take pieces of you.”
My pulse kicked.
“It slows the taking of time,” she went on. “Not the way his blood does. Kaelith’s gift stretches life by hollowing it. This slows time without stealing anything from you. And it lets you stand where oaths and patron-sight cannot follow. In this land, we call that place silence—the seam between what is seen and what is sworn.”
Her voice softened. “Silence is not the absence of sound. It is a threshold. A place outside bonds and oaths, where even goddesses cannot reach you.”
My throat tightened.
“There will come a moment,” she said softly. “Quiet. Small. A turn no one sees coming. It will hurt. You will want to shrink. To disappear. Do not. In silence, you are not nothing. You are unclaimed. You are free. That is where you choose who you will be.”
She let that settle, then added, “You will not rise alone. Look at who stands with you. Let their love root you when the wind starts tearing things loose.”