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She’s nesting.
Or… fuck. She’s trying to nest.
Trying desperately to build something safe and soft out of the only materials she’s allowed. The only things we gave her.
The clothes on her body.
Her breathing turns shallow, and I swear mine starts mimicking hers. The tension in her shoulders builds and builds as her hands continue moving in that same repetitive motion that I’d do terrible things to stop.
She tucks one leg up under herself, then shifts and pulls the other up as well.
She hunches over. Curls into herself. Forces her body smaller and tighter, as if she can somehow create a nest out of that fucking chair if she just makes herself small enough.
And still, her hands never stop moving. Never stop gathering and arranging and smoothing the fabric of her clothes—a futile attempt at the hope that if she can just get it right, she’ll finally feel safe.
But she’ll never get it right. Because you can’t build a nest out of nothing.
And that’s all we fucking gave her.
Her breath hitches, and Riven reaches out slowly, gently, stilling her hands with his.
“Easy now,” he murmurs, his voice cracking with emotion.
Idril’s braid hangs in front of her face like a damn curtain, but I still catch the shift in her expression. One moment, she’s staring over his shoulder, eyes unfocused and glassy. Next, she locks her eyes on his and exhales a long, stuttering breath.
Riven holds her gaze. Neither of them moves. This isn’t a dominance thing. It’s Riven trying to understand something that Dax and I have clearly fucking missed.
A long moment later, his eyes close, and he hangs his head. His hands squeeze hers tightly, once. A single tear tracks down Idril’s cheek, carving a path down her face and over her lips. It hangs suspended on her chin before falling to the stone floor.
Dax glares at the spot where it lands with an intensity that makes my hackles rise. The air shifts again. It’s even warmer now.
There’s a heat that, as crazy as it sounds, seems to be coming straight from Idril. Her eyes are shut, her next words released on a whisper that’s saturated in an aching pain I can’t begin to understand.
Her voice shakes as more tears escape her lashes and fall down her cheeks. Despite the agony, her voice carries an underlying tone of importance that echoes through my bones.
“She will be born with a crown of starlight and carry fire in her veins. Her song will be the light that wakes the gate of sleeping kingdoms, and worlds will tremble when she takes her throne.”
Her eyes flutter open.
Slowly, like her entire body aches, she rises on shaking legs.
Riven stands with her, hesitating before finally letting go of her hands. She stands in front of three Alphas—two of whom actively hate her, and one she doesn’t know and can’t trust.
I can’t move. The moment feels strangely sacred. Sacred and terrible. My chest fucking aches at the look in her bright blue eyes.
She clasps her hands in front of her stomach.
“My Mother called her the Last Daughter,” she shrugs like it’s of no importance, but I swear the temperature rises.
Something inside of me reacts almost violently to her words, like they’ve been branded into my bones long before I ever heard them. I see Dax swallow thickly out of the corner of my eye, and I wonder if he feels the same.
“It was just a story. A beautiful one, about a girl who would be born one day to wake those beautiful, magical, sleeping creatures, and defeat the darkness that made the world forget them in the first place.”
She nods softly, almost to herself. “A beautiful story, but a story nonetheless.”
She lifts her gaze, and her chin rises a fraction. “Daxen is right.”
Her blue eyes meet his shocked grey ones. He hasn’t opened his mouth since he ripped her apart, and I doubt very much he expected her to back him up.
