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“And so,” continued the dryad, “the female born into the light was remade in the darkness. The dark fae lady.” The dryad smiled, tendrils of her ivy hair reaching out to caress Una’s cheek softly. “You are deserving of her healing gift. And far more than that.”
Una whimpered, her knees buckling. I rushed forward and caught her by the shoulders from behind.
“Are you all right?”
She glanced up at me and stood straight again. “Very.” Her eyes shimmered with glassy tears. “I was right. I will have the healing gift again. Greater than before.”
“So much greater,” agreed the dryad, holding out her cupped palms. “Now you must drink. And take the gifts the Goddess of the Wood has prepared for you.”
I noted she said the word “gifts” in the plural sense, but I didn’t question. There was a rightness to this moment I couldn’t explain.
Una patted my hand on her left shoulder then stepped out of my embrace. Locking my limbs to hold me in place, I refrained from going to her, always wanting to protect her.The last two times she’d ingested the god-touched texts, she’d experienced pain with the swallowing of power. She’d fallen into an otherworldly sleep after she’d drank Grindolvek’s blood. One that had lasted almost two days.
But this was what the goddess Elska wanted. It was what Una wanted, what she was destined for. So I kept myself still as she dipped her head and cupped her hands beneath the dryad’s, lifting them toward her mouth.
Rather than drink, she opened her mouth and inhaled deeply. The black swirling smoke twisted into a funnel, pouring into her mouth and down her throat. She gulped it all down, making a small grunt of distress before she crumpled to the ground.
She fell too fast for me to catch her. I lunged for her but a blast of wind knocked me back, lifting me off my feet and dropping me farther away. Keffa and Soryn and the rest of my Culled were on the ground as well. The dryad had not moved, now smiling down at Una’s crumpled form.
I was on my feet again, sprinting across the clearing, but Una’s body was lifted off the ground by invisible hands. I froze. Her legs, arms, and white cloak hung limp toward the earth while her hair floated wide, a beam of green light shining from inside her. It blazed through her dark blue trousers, tunic, and her skin.
“Gods above and below,” murmured Keffa close behind me.
Beams of green light shot from the tips of her fingers and the strands of her hair, piercing the darkening clearing where we stood. I shivered as a thin shaft of light traced across my chest, leaving a palpable sensation of deep comfort and serenity in its wake.
“Do you feel that?” asked Soryn.
I snapped my head to the side to find my second in command grinning like a babe, his hands pressed to his chest where several rays of green light crisscrossed there.
“Feels like heaven,” he said dumbly, his eyes almost drunk with the sensation.
I glanced around to see all of my Culled wide-eyed in wonder.
“She is ascending,” said the dryad.
My attention shot to Una, my heart stopping when I thought for a moment the dryad told me she would continue to fly upward, right into the clouds with the gods of the heavens. Vix knew she deserved it. But she belonged here with me. She was mine.
Then her wrists lifted, a rope of golden light encircling them. Una gasped out in pain.
“Una!”
I stormed forward again, preparing to use a whip of feyfire to drag her back down, but then her body began floating back toward the earth, the Goddess Elska’s light beginning to dim.
When she was within reach, I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back down to me. That powerful force drenched me in tranquil ecstasy. Not the kind I experienced when our bodies joined but the kind that could soothe the soul of any ill at all—a disease of the body or a sickness of the heart.
“Una,” I whispered down to her, hoping she had not fallen unconscious like before.
Her eyes fluttered open, glittering a vibrant purple with the new magick inside her. She smiled. “You can put me down.”
I set her on her feet. She lifted the sleeves of her blouse where her wrists were now completely encircled with runes. There was a finger-width cuff of gold—the size we wore on the base of our horns—wrapping her wrists above her bracelet of ancient markings.
“What is this?” she asked, voice quivering as she marveled at them.
I took the backs of her hands gently in mine and studied the rune sign first. The last ones to complete the circle made my pulse trip faster.
“The runes meanmother of all fae kind. But this sign that meansmotherwith the slight tail at the tip can also mean something else.”
Her brow pursed. “What?”
