Page 23

I did not want to marry Helion. And I would not be toyed with in a game where the cost of losing was deliberately hidden from me.

“Helion!” I screamed, the name reverberating with an unearthly melody beneath my own. My powers flickered weakly in my chest, slowly trickling back to me.

I pushed through the dancers, yet they paid me no attention as I stumbled through the ballroom.

“I am done playing!”

A frustrated sound built in my chest as I shoved through a couple, splitting them apart only for them to draw back together as I stepped past.

There were thousands of people in this room. I wouldn’t be able to find Helion like this.

The priest’s words echoed through me.

The part of yourself that I tried to bleed from you.

I sucked in a sharp breath, my feet stilling beneath me.

I wasn’t sure if it would work, but something inside me urged me to try. I was not going to be prey any longer.

I am a goddess.

My lips parted, and the haunting melody wound its way out of me, floating above the sound of the string ensemble. Every syllable was luminous and aching. The dancers nearby stopped in their tracks, staring at me with slack jaw’s as I strolled through the crowd. But this song was not for them, it was to lure Helion to me.

A hand closed around my wrist. The touch was electric against my overheated skin. Charged, as though lightning had found a vein beneath my pulse. My body reacted before my mind could, breath catching and stealing my song as I spun toward the source.

My gaze did not rise all at once.

It began at the hand—large, steady, wrapped firmly but not painfully around me. My pulse fluttered against his thumb.

Almost instinctively, I searched for that shadowed place inside me where the ghost of Rythos lingered. He was still there, tethered tight to my soul, a dark thread I could never sever. And yet my eyes betrayed me.

They roamed upwards, over fabric stretched taut across straining biceps and the breadth of his shoulders. The sharp cut of his clenched jaw, as though he were restraining himself.

Unbidden heat unfurled low in my belly and I cursed inwardly.

He wore a mask that gleamed like liquid sunlight, smooth and unbroken save for subtle ridges along the bridge of his nose that flared toward his temples, sculpted to exaggerate the severity of his features. It was almost cruel in its beauty.

His gaze crashed into mine, storm-cloud grey with flecks of amber that did not hold his usual light. There was no amusement in them now, no arrogance. Only a heated intensity that moved over my skin like dawn breaking after endless night—slow and inevitable and impossible to look away from.

“Helion,” I said breathlessly, pulling my wrist out of his hand. My body seemed to protest at the lack of touch, and I wanted to find the repugnant god who drugged me and flay the flesh from his body for causing this.

“Lyra,” he whispered as though he were in pain.

The dance around us had stilled, the music dissolving into silence.

For a suspended heartbeat, the only sound was the rush of our breathing before the onlookers erupted into thunderous applause.

A woman dressed in black strode toward us with deliberate purpose and the crowd parted around her, still clapping.

Dark waves spilled to her waist, and lace sleeves cascaded from her arms, trailing nearly as long as the train that rippled behind her.

An obsidian mask that seemed to absorb the light concealed her flawless features, but I did not need to see her face to know it was Cerilla.

My lip curled.

Fury cracked open inside my chest, splitting wide and bleeding into my vision until the edges of the world darkened.

Her painted lips stretched into a genuine smile as I struggled to cage my emotions.