Roots that had been identical to the ones that had wrapped around the bone chains.

Had my near-death done this to the trees here? And the deformed woods outside of the hunting cabin? Had the potential loss of my mortality been the storm that swept through the woods and changed the trees of Aios to blood trees? How, though? And why? And had it impacted the goddess who slept here somehow? The one who Casteel and Kieran believed had awoken to stop me from plummeting to my death?

I hoped not.

Despite the uneasy nature of the mountains and the brutal pace, exhaustion dogged me, and I began to sink farther and farther into Casteel’s embrace. Each time I blinked, it became harder to reopen my eyes to the beams of sunlight streaking through the gaps in the leaves overhead.

Under the blanket, I curled my fingers loosely around Casteel’s arm as I shifted my gaze to where Kieran and Delano ran side by side ahead of us. My thoughts wandered as my eyes started to drift closed. I had no idea how long I’d slept after Casteel gave me his blood and we arrived at the cabin. I hadn’t thought to ask, but it felt like I’d slept for a while. But that sleep hadn’t been deep. Not all of it anyway because I had dreamed. I remembered that now. I had dreamt of the night my parents died, and those dreams had been different than the ones before. My mother had pulled something from her boot—something long, slender, and black. I couldn’t see it now, no matter how hard I tried to remember, but someone else had also been there—someone she’d spoken to, who had sounded nothing like the voice I’d heard in the past—the one who had spoken with my father that I now knew belonged to Alastir. This had been a figure in black. I knew I had dreamed more, but it kept slipping out of reach within my tired mind. Was whatever I dreamed old memories that were finally revealing themselves? Or had they been implanted there, becoming a part of my imagination because of what Alastir had claimed about the Dark One?

But what hadn’t felt like a dream, what had felt real, was the woman I’d seen. The one with the long, silvery-blonde hair, who’d filled my mind when I was in the Chambers of Nyktos. She had appeared when I was no longer a body, without substance or thought, floating in the nothingness. She had looked like me a little. She had more freckles, her hair was different, and her eyes were odd—a fractured green and silver, reminding me of how the wolven’s eyes had looked when they came to me in the Chambers.

A bloody tear had slid down her cheek. That meant she had to be a god, but I knew of no female gods who were depicted with such hair or features. A weary frown pulled at my lips as I tried to sit up straighter. She had said something to me, too—something that had been a shock. I could almost hear her voice in my mind now, but just like with the dreams of the night at the inn, clarity frustratingly existed on the fringes of my consciousness.