The apprentice initiation ceremony when they were seven, when Luna’s moonbeams lit up the Citadel’s amphitheater and the silver swirls on Daemon’s and Sora’s backs glowed at the same time, pairing them as geminas.

The first time he, Sora, Fairy, and Broomstick had been caught during one of their pranks, and how they’d all happily served detention together peeling potatoes for a week in the mess hall.

Daemon pumped the feelings of these memories and more, one after another, through their connection. The recollections felt like curling up against his wolf cub brothers and sisters—toasty comfort and safety and the knowledge that you were right where you belonged.

Gods dammit, he missed her. There was something about the way Sora made him feel—how thinking of their shared past made Daemon smile so broadly, it could illuminate the forest—that he didn’t have with anyone else.

He turned his head and looked at Fairy. She was focused on her own gemina bond with Broomstick, her nose scrunched as she concentrated. Her intensity and courage put an additional glow on her beauty.

And yet Daemon’s attraction to her didn’t feel nearly as strong as his connection with Sora; it was like a string compared to a thick nautical rope. Would it always be this way?

Our relationship will deepen, Daemon thought. He couldn’t compare it to his and Sora’s, because they were geminas and knew each other inside and out. He and Fairy hadn’t had the chance yet to develop the depth that he and Sora had. But it was nothing to worry over. He and Fairy just needed time.

Foggy confusion—not his own—spilled through Daemon’s gemina bond.

Sora.

He tossed his other thoughts aside and sent her the feel of another memory—of when they were twelve and he couldn’t sleep, and she broke curfew to join him on the roof of the boys’ dormitory so he could be closer to the night sky. Daemon could still feel how she’d lain next to him to keep warm, how her head fit right into the crook of his neck like Luna had always known they were a matching pair, and how Sora had nuzzled closer to him when the sky filled with shooting stars.

“You can do this, Sora,” Daemon said, even though she couldn’t hear him. “If anyone can steal from a god and get away with it, it’s you.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The water was unnaturally frigid, frosting against Sora’s skin as soon as she plunged into the lake. She opened her mouth in shock and almost gasped out the precious air she needed to conserve for the dive down; her whale spell would help only if there was oxygen in her lungs.