“The gift, Wylfrael.” Her tone grew sharp with warning. The webbing vibrated all around me.

“Of course.”

She lifted a hand, and I dropped my severed hair into it. Her three fingers closed over my hair. As soon as the fist was made, her entire body went rigid. Her head flew back and her eyes went wide, endless black orbs in her face.

“What is it?” I asked urgently as the webbing shook with such force I thought the entire cave might collapse down around us. Rúnwebbe’s back arched, her body contorting, her six arms rising out to her sides.

“I see her,” Rúnwebbe gasped.

“Who?” I barked. “Skalla’s mate?”

“Not Ssskallagrim’s,” she groaned. “Yours.”

Mine... My mate?

Her next words tumbled quickly from her mouth, each one running into the last and bouncing off the walls of the cave in an endless, spiralling echo.

“Bound yet unbound. A partner and a pawn.

Trapped under the arching sky of dawn.”

“What are you talking about?” I snapped. “Who is she? Where?”

But Rúnwebbe just kept going, as if she could not hear me and did not see me.

“Fated bride of Wylfrael. Starburning but afraid.

And when she dies, it will be by her husband’s hand and blade.”

Everything stopped – the words, the shaking. The cave was plunged into stillness so catastrophic it felt like an explosion.

Rúnwebbe hunched over, her six arms folding in towards her torso. I stared at her for a long moment, slowly becoming aware of a brutal hammering sound. I wondered what dared disturb the shocked silence that followed Rúnwebbe’s words before realizing it was my own heart.

“Ask me no more questionsss, Wylfrael,” the weaver of whispers finally croaked.

My jaw worked, defiance rising in me.

“No, Rúnwebbe,” I murmured icily. My voice grew louder. “You must tell me more!” I would rip every strand of hair from my head if I had to. I’d give her my sword if she asked it of me now. Anything. Anything.

I had to know, had to know, who my mortal mate was. Where she was. When she was. If she was somewhere out there, even now, or if she had yet to be born.

Born to die by her husband’s hand and blade...

Impossible.

It made no sense. That I would kill my fated one, the one I was destined to love above all others. And even more than that, it meant that I would be killing, by proxy, myself. Once a stone sky god claimed his mortal mate and sealed the bond by giving her his knot, his life became inextricably linked with hers. He died the same moment she did.

“You’re wrong, Rúnwebbe,” I rasped when she did not answer. “I would not, could not-”

“The whispersss are never wrong.”

“Curse your whispers!” I roared. My hands shook, my breath tearing in and out of my chest. The webbing began to vibrate again, and where it had once parted way for me, it now surged inwards, rising and falling like tempest-whipped waves, shoving me backward out of the cave as Rúnwebbe shrieked.

“Out, Wylfrael!” Her voice cut through the air like slashing wings as I was forced into retreat. “Out, god of stone sky and Sionnach! Out, bride-killer, with your questions and your curses and your blade! Out, out! Out, and do not dare return. For if you do, I’ll save your doomed mate by killing you myself.”

I fought with everything I had against the web as it bore me ever backward and upward towards the surface. I refused to go – not like this. I had to get back down there. I had to make the whisper weaver explain everything, make her go back on her word, admit that she was wrong.

But the webbing did not let me go, and all around me its strands shivered with the words it had caught out of the air, hurling them back at me in a cacophony that started as a hushed breath and ended as a scream.

The whispersss... The whispersss...

The whispersss are never wrong.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Wylfrael

I returned to Sionnach, landing among howling winds that made me think Rúnwebbe’s voice had followed me here. But it really was only the wind, rising in preparation for a storm. It made my tied-back hair whip and buffeted my wings as I descended to the stirring snow.

But those winds, the coming storm, were nothing to what I felt inside myself. The confused rage that churned, Rúnwebbe’s prophecy the catalyst. I still couldn’t believe what she’d said, but more and more I began to hate and fear the fact it may be true. That I would be the cause of my own mate’s destruction. Rúnwebbe’s prophecies were very rare – usually, she only had whispers of what had already come to pass, or what was happening right now, out among the stars. I’d only heard tell of two other visions of the future besides this one, and both others had come to pass, just as she’d said they would.

I will murder my own mate.

I roared, rage coming out as sound. I funnelled my power towards the ground, sending a wave of snow high as a mountain crashing into the forest in front of my castle. It did not make me feel better, so I did it again and again, sending huge walls of snow rising and crashing. The wind picked up further, catching drifts of hurling snow out of the air and sending the white spinning in a frenzy until it seemed as if I’d been caught in the centre of some white tornado.

I was using too much power, and I knew it. I was still healing, and I’d opened two sky doors – one to Rúnwebbe’s, and one back here – already today. But I did not care. The fury inside me was too great. If I did not see it mirrored back at me by the violent landscape, I felt as if I might fall apart.

I fell apart anyway.

My power sputtered, then retreated. I collapsed to my knees, wind swirling against the great, chaotic dunes of snow that I’d created out of once-smooth white. I leaned forward on my hands and knees, my fingers sinking into the snow as I panted.

Who is she?

I knew now that I could never find out. I could never seek her out among the stars and claim her as I was destined to do. If meeting me would be her death, then she would never meet me at all. I would resign myself to a life of isolation, along with eventual mate-madness, or star-darkness, or both, to save her life.

At least Skalla has found his, I thought bitterly to myself. I hoped that she was safe, that her touch had calmed his berserker rage, soothed his madness, and brought him back into himself. But at the same time, an ugly jealousy made me almost wish she weren’t safe. Why should Skalla’s mate be fine when mine was doomed to die simply because she’d been bonded to me?

Rúnwebbe hadn’t given me enough information about Skalla; I’d still have to go track him down and make sure his rampage had ended for good and that he hadn’t harmed his mate in blind fury. And I still needed to find out what was happening at Heofonraed. But now that I knew I’d never have my mate at my side, approaching or joining the Council of the Gods was out of the question.

I stood, the bleeding ache inside me clotting to form grief-stricken resignation. I would have no mate. My greatest love would forever be lost to me before I’d ever even had the chance to find her. I would have no sons, would never have what my parents had once had, what every stone sky god searched for.

An empty, endless life.

Maybe I should have let Skalla kill me after all.

The storm was a full-fledged blizzard now, flurries of snow making it near impossible to see. I shouted, “Mirreth!” into the gale, and the castle appeared, a dim silhouette among the swirling white.