Nemeth growls low in his throat, frustrated. He glances at the open door and then down at me. Then, he hauls me against him and bends over me, his lips on mine in a hard, frantic kiss. “Whatever waits for us on the other side, know that you are everything to me.” His mouth presses to mine over and over again. “Everything. Understand?”

I cling to him, kissing him back, trying to show him just how much I adore him. I know we’re both stalling but I don’t care. I would happily have kisses from Nemeth until the end of time.

He sets me back down on my feet again with utter gentleness and then sighs. He holds his hand out to me, his gaze upon the door, and I slip my hand in his. We move closer to the edge, and then he nods at me, lifting one foot.

And together, we step over the edge of the portal and outside of the tower for the first time in over two years.

Chapter

Fifty-Eight

I’m holding my breath.

Holding my breath, my eyes tightly closed, and I wait for something to happen. Time feels as if it’s slowed, my pulse pounding in my ears. My slippers—made for walking on the even stone floors of the tower—sink into the sands of the beach. A breeze ruffles my hair, pulling a few strands loose from my braid. Somewhere in the distance, a sea bird cries out.

I wait for the goddess’s wrath to fall upon us. I wait for lightning to strike us down. For the skies to rumble with thunder and the wind to wail, letting us know she’s displeased that we’ve broken our vow to remain in the tower. I wait for anything, any sign at all.

Nothing happens.

I exhale and open my eyes.

It’s…a nice day. The sun shines down from above without a cloud in the sky. The breeze is cool for the otherwise warm day. The sandy beach surrounding the tower looks pristine and untouched, and if the waves seem to be a little high and white-capped, it makes for a pretty scene.

Shouldn’t it be…awful? Out here? As punishment? “I don’t understand,” I say to Nemeth, my clammy hand still clutched in his. “I thought we’d feel something.”

“I did, too,” he confesses. His gaze moves over the bright blue skies and he squints, raising a hand to shield his eyes. “Perhaps the goddess has not noticed yet. Or perhaps she understands our problem and forgives us.”

Out of nowhere, thunder rumbles overhead, loud and crackling.

“Or not,” I say tightly, clutching at his hand as I stare up at the still-blue sky. “Dragon shite.”

Nemeth extends a wing over my head as fat drops of rain begin to fall from above. It seems impossible for it to rain on us without clouds overhead, but I guess the gods can do whatever they want. I peer out from under Nemeth’s wing, thinking of the small pack I have on my back with my cloak and a change of clothing. Nemeth insists upon carrying everything heavy but I don’t mind carrying my fair share. I glance up at my lover, and the rain is sluicing down his dark gray skin in rivulets. “Do we…go back inside and wait out the rain or do we just soldier on through?”

He shakes his head slowly. “It seems insulting to retreat back to the tower after taking two steps out. We’ll continue onward. Let us give the rain a moment.”

Sure enough, the patter of rain stops as quickly as it started, and Nemeth shakes off his wings before folding them up again. “Shall we have a look around?”

I nod, not trusting my voice when a knot rises in my throat. We really are leaving. We’ve done it now. There’s no turning back. It doesn’t matter that we had no choice. The goddess would probably argue that our choice could have been to starve. The Golden Moon Goddess has never been a goddess of kindness and understanding, after all.

I cling to Nemeth’s hand for a moment longer, and when I take a step forward, my shoe scrapes on something hard. I glance down and realize it’s one of the bricks that used to cover the door. It’s nearly covered in sand, and a quick look around shows that more of them are scattered against the wall of the tower and off to the side, most of them covered in grit or half-buried.

It reminds me of the dead men who should still be on this beach.

Instead of investigating our surroundings, I scan the sands for dead bodies. They would have rotted, I think, though I have no idea how much or how little would remain. I doubt they would have coin, but they might have weapons. More knives. We can always use more knives.

So while Nemeth looks around on the beach, his mood as apprehensive as mine, I go hunting. A short distance from the door, I find what looks like a ribcage half-buried in the sands. I use my shoe to kick some of the sand away, and the moment I do, I see a dirty piece of cloth…and then a faded symbol embroidered on the cuff of a sleeve.

It’s the cuff of one of Castle Lios’s guardsmen. Surely he couldn’t have been one of the men that broke in? I remember them as skinny and disheveled, with ragged beards and a terrible need for a bath.

“Candra?” Nemeth calls. “What are you doing?”

I kick the sand back over the bit of rotten fabric. “I thought I saw a pretty shell,” I call out. “It’s nothing.” Gathering my skirts, I return to his side, slogging through the sand. It fills my slippers and makes walking difficult, but I manage a bright smile for Nemeth. “I don’t suppose you see a raft anywhere?”

“A raft?” Nemeth echoes.

Nodding, I glance around the lonely stretch of beach. There’s nothing here but a few waving grasses and a distant seagull on the far end of the beach. I vaguely remember the old, weathered dock on the far side of the shore, and how there wasn’t one on this side. “Something we can use to get across the water? I can’t swim.” I want to point out that the men who arrived to attack us would have needed a raft or a boat of some kind, but I don’t want to bring Nemeth’s attention to the dead. For some reason, I don’t want him to know that they were from Lios. They were human, so it stands to reason that they were my people, but…still. “Any ideas?”

Nemeth chuckles. “I cannot believe you even have to ask.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask what he means when he picks me up into his arms, grinning. My shoes stream sand and I cling to his neck as he spreads his wings and moves into the shadows of the tower⁠—

—the world flips upside down and my stomach heaves. Everything spins and it feels as if all gravity has disappeared.

A moment later, everything is heavy once more. The tumbling world sets itself right again, and when I blink away the confusion, I see we’re still on the sandy shore, but now we’re in the shadow of a cliff, and across the long stretch of water in front of us is the distant tower.

He’s shifted us into shadows.

“See?” Nemeth murmurs against my ear.

I smack his arm, furious (and a little queasy). “You said you wouldn’t do that! You’re not supposed to risk your life.”

“There was no risk. I could see the beach from here.” He ignores my anger, setting me down. “And with how weak you’ve been, I don’t want you swimming.”

I don’t point out that he has wings. We both know he does. The fact that he wouldn’t fly us over the water means he doesn’t trust them, which makes me ache inside. How horrible must it be to have wings and not be able to use them? To be stuck with nothing but your two feet to travel? I want to ask him how he’s feeling, but I also don’t want to prod an open wound. So I give him a huffy look, straightening my rain-dampened clothes. “Next time you do that, please warn me.”

“So you can panic?”

So arrogant and confident in himself. I love it, even if I want to wrap my hands around his neck and choke him right now. “So I can talk you out of it.”

Nemeth snorts with amusement. His gaze moves over the rocky shore, eyeing the Liosian land. On this side of the channel, it’s not nearly as mountainous. The Fellian landscape is nothing but mountains, his people living deep in the belly of the rocky giants instead of on their sloping surface. Meanwhile the Lios lands are far more temperate. There are some steep cliffs near the waters, sure, but Castle Lios itself is tucked into a rolling green valley surrounded by a thick forest on one side and hills upon the other, with an impressive dockyard to the south leading to deep waters and a harbor constantly full of ships. Here, though, days away from the castle and the city it protects, there’s nothing but desolate beaches that lead up to equally desolate plains. Here, there are no ships on the water, no farms for as far as the eye can see. It’s remote and deserted.