I cry, and I cry until my soul melts out of my chest and my limbs drain of every emotion and feeling, leaving me numb and hollow and broken.

CHAPTER 2

“Oh, do stop your blubbering,” comes a sharp voice, shocking me into choked silence. My head snaps up to find we’re no longer in the forest where I dragged Nadir. “It’s so very . . . phlegmy.”

We’re in a massive round room, the floor made of a shiny material that might be marble, except it’s one continuous slab with no discernible breaks. Windows surround us, filtering in soft white light that seems to almost hum. I feel it more than I hear it with the barest vibration in the backs of my teeth.

Though this isn’t the same room where I met the Empyrium, premonition tells me I’m back in the Evanescence, but I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Given my luck lately, it’s probably a terrible fucking thing.

Before me stands a woman wearing a silvery dress that dusts the floor in light, airy folds. Her bronzed arms are bare, and her blonde hair curls almost to her waist, crowned with a silver circlet framing her lovely, heart-shaped face. A pair of piercing aquamarine eyes stare down at me with cool detachment.

She seems familiar, and it takes me a moment to place her. She’s the former Aphelion queen who failed to help her people and was “volunteered” to become a god.

“Zerra,” I whisper, and she tips her head, looking down at me like I’m dung smeared on the heel of her shoe.

“You called me.” She gracefully spreads her arms with her palms turned up. “So here I am.”

I search my surroundings for the Empyrium and their strange shifting body of many people, but there appears to be only the three of us in the room.

“This is the male you’re so attached to,” Zerra says with a sniff as she elegantly sinks to her heels and assesses him from head to toe. It takes a moment to process those words. Does she know who I am? Who Nadir is?

I reach out and grab her slender wrist. She feels as delicate as a bird, but the air around her is perfumed with the stench of chaos, and I would do well not to underestimate her.

“Can you help him?” I ask as she snatches it away.

She’s a god. Surely if anyone can fix this, then it’s her.

“Please. I screwed up. I lost control of my magic, and I . . .”

Zerra’s nostrils flare before she pushes herself to stand and takes two careful steps back, putting distance between us.

“I can help him,” she says matter-of-factly, as though she hasn’t just offered me a lifeline woven of glittering golden thread.