“I can control my healing but not the lightning. It’s just a raging torrent. All or nothing. What did you do when you helped it?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he says, “It just felt right. I could sense it spinning out, and I used mine to soothe it.”

“You might need to do that again.”

“Of course. But we’ll want to figure out how to control it without my help.”

I nod.

“And then what?” he asks. “What did you mean that killing me might have made things more complicated?”

“It’s all a blur, but meeting Zerra wasn’t the first time I ended up in the Evanescence,” I say. I go on to explain what I saw in that strange room with the seven original rulers of Ouranos. The creation of the Artefacts and the arks. And how the first Aurora King fell from grace.

Nadir is silent for a moment. “So you’re telling me my great-great many-times-over grandfather is the Lord of the Underworld.” He snorts and shakes his head. “Why . . . doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Don’t do that. You know that has nothing to do with who you are, Nadir.”

“Do I, though?” He blows out a breath. “She called me Herric. I think . . .”

“He hurt her,” I say. “Yeah. She said his name to me, too.”

I squeeze his hand and then let go as I twist my fingers together, because I’m not sure how to tell him the next part. He’s silent after I explain that I think the Empyrium want me to replace Zerra, his expression stunned.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. They said something about me being a queen without a queendom.”

“That’s . . .” He trails off. “I’m not sure what to say. If that’s what you want—”

“I don’t,” I say, interrupting him. “I don’t want that. We’ll find another way, and I will fight this with everything I have.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” he says, clutching his chest. “Because I was about to lose my mind.” His eyes darken. “No one is taking you from me.”

I give him a soft smile.

“Does Zerra know about their plan?” he asks.

“I’m not sure,” I reply. “Did she say anything?”

His expression darkens. “I think she knows, Lor.”

“Tell me what happened.”

He blows out a breath. “Your story is pretty crazy, but mine is up there too.”

Nadir then recounts his time in Zerra’s Palace as my hatred of her spirals deeper and deeper.

“She seems to have a vendetta against you and I couldn’t figure out what you might have possibly done to her. She said something about you being dead soon, and I lost my shit, but I got nothing else out of her.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “So she definitely knows. But how?”

“This Empyrium must have told her?”

“But why would they do that?”