“The night before, she’d snuck into my father’s rooms and told him that to find her, he only needed to look for the light in the sky. At first, that confused him. He thought she meant stars, but the stars were hard to see through the thick fog. He figured it out, though, when he saw a flaming arrow shoot up in the air. They left a trail for him that he followed while everyone else was still lost in the fog, looking for tracks in the ice.”

“She sounds incredible,” I said. “I wish you could’ve met her.”

“I do too. Something … changed in my father when she died. He wasn’t outright hateful toward me. No more than any father-son relationship between goblins. According to Tanya, we looked very similar except for she was less…” He struggled for the right word, holding out an arm and glaring at his skin tone. “… blue.”

“I always wondered where you got your coloring from,” I said. I knew at least part of it was some genetic mutation that changed the pigment in his skin, making it not pale but an odd, semitranslucent blue-gray color, coloring his eyes lilac, and leaving his lips a soft powder blue. It was beautiful, to me, even if it was strange.

“Thank you for telling me this, Soren,” I said. “Really, it means a lot.” While Soren didn’t have nearly as many shields up as I did, I knew firsthand about sharing trauma and how painful that could be on its own. There was something comforting knowing Soren was okay sharing this with me.

“A bit much for a story, eh?” he said, the sadness wiped off his face.

“I’ll forgive it this time.”

Though certain thoughts and a certain voice lingered in the back of my head, asking me why I wasn’t doing the same. Soon, though. Soon. As soon as I figured out what was going on, I’d tell him. I’d apologize for keeping it a secret. I’d let him know that I’d been scared. Hopefully, he would forgive me.

Despite the stress and anticipation for the night ahead, Soren’s steady, calm voice did help manage to relax me as I lay there. He pulled up a chair beside me and brushed a runaway curl of my hair back behind my ears. My eyelids became heavier, and I closed them as he sang to me in a deep voice, so low I could barely hear.

He continued even after I closed my eyes.

4

THE KILLING SIGHT

FOR ONCE, MY sleep was blissful and dreamless—that was until the flat of someone’s hands nailed me in the ribs in the middle of the night. I woke, a scream on my lips, only for my mouth to be covered.

“It’s me,” Diaval hissed. “You weren’t showing, so I came to get you. Careful, you’ll wake Soren.”