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I step inside the double doors leading into Raven’s massive estate, then head down an elegant entrance hall that opens into a vast atrium. My heels click against the marble floor.

There, I stop in my tracks. People stream around me, as if used to this setting, but I only gape.

This must be the interior of the tower I’d seen from outside. Balconies wrap along its four sides. The atrium’s ceiling is open to the sky, and through it, I can see an ocean of stars and galaxies, the glowing band of the Milky Way.

But it is the massive white tree rising from the center of the atrium floor, branches extending out toward the balconies surrounding it, that leaves me at a loss for words.

The tree is whiter than snow, than ash, than light, stretching up so high that I can’t see its crown. Its base is surrounded by a circle of pale, shimmering moss and a pool of dark water, and ancient, gnarled branches curl out from the trunk, covered with pale, translucent leaves that filter the light from the starry heavens with a silver tint.

My eyes well with tears at the sight. I have never seen the Eternal Tree in person, but Raven has described it to me before. It is formed with the threads of every soul that has ever lived, each an indistinguishable fragment of energy in a sea of life. Those threads are constantly moving between this realm and the mortal world as souls are reborn and returned, which lends the tree a faint, shimmering countenance.

Like everything else in the immortal world, it should be a scientific impossibility. But here it is, and I find myself awed in its presence. Raven had once told me that the soul remembers everything. Every life it’s lived, everything that has ever mattered to it. And even though I’m still a fair distance from the tree, I can feel it pull at my chest, beckoning me toward its library of past lives.

Could I see those lives inside its bark? Is my mother’s soul in there?

Many of the guests are dancing, swirling across the marble floor like leaves on the breeze, their laughter and merriment echoing in the vast space. Here and there are pockets of Regents grouped together, talking among themselves or with their gods.

There is Dagger, the god of War, an imposing, bearded man dressed in a crimson suit. Snow, the goddess of Air, grins from where she’s perched on a divan, white dress glittering, her short black curls pushed back with a headband. Phoenix, the goddess of Beauty, lets out a peal of laughter at something that Jewel, the goddess of Wealth, is now telling her.

I don’t see Raven yet. My heart tightens, and my hands clench and unclench at my side, palms damp with sweat. I’ve been around the gods plenty of times, but it doesn’t mean I’ve ever grown entirely comfortable in their presence.

“Well, isn’t our guest of honor lovely tonight.”

I turn to see a group of gods and their Regents heading my way. One of them is Willow, the goddess of Earth, who is resplendent tonight in a pale yellow gown. She smiles at me as she touches my shoulder, and instantly I feel a trickle of that warmth seep into my body.

She nods approvingly at my dress. “How do you feel tonight, my dear?” she asks.

“Thank you, Lady Willow,” I say with a weak smile. “Well enough.”

At my expression, the goddess accompanying Willow laughs, her face androgynous and devastatingly beautiful. Scarlet, the goddess of Love, and one of Willow’s affairs. At Willow’s other side is Aurora, the goddess of Knowledge, as well as two Regents. I recognize one of them—Katie, Love’s Regent, a young woman who now exchanges a brief smile with me.

“Regent-Elects are always so nervous,” Scarlet says to me now, and I blush at her smooth voice. “You’ll do just fine.”

Aurora tilts her head at me. Her hair is cropped short, and her dark skin and light brown eyes contrast against her blue dress. “You’re Raven’s newest Harbinger,” she says. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re quite a little scientist, I hear.” She gives me a thoughtful look, her eyes so wise that they seem to pierce straight through my skin. “I would have chosen you as my own Harbinger, had Raven not already claimed you.”

A shiver dances up my spine at the thought of Raven claiming me first, of the goddess stepping aside. I bow to her, my thoughts spinning with questions I don’t dare ask. How did you die? Who were you, as a mortal? Did you believe in these gods?

“I didn’t know that,” I say instead. “I’m honored.”

A thin smile appears on her lips. “Maybe someday I’ll convince him to hand you over.”

The man beside her makes a dismissive sound, and my gaze shifts to him, a bespectacled gentleman with long hair tied up in a bun. This is Soren, a chemist turned Regent for Aurora, his eyes now flashing at his patron goddess’s interest in me.

“Regents grow younger with every generation,” he says. I can hear the clear dislike in his voice, the note of envy. He peers through his glasses at me in a way that makes me stiffen. This is the power of a Harbinger of Knowledge—the ability to gain insight to your secrets, to read truths about you that even you might not know.

“Age does not necessarily impart wisdom,” Aurora chides him coolly, her eyes still on me, and the man breaks his stare with me before bowing his head. She nods at me. “Raven must favor you, to have chosen you so quickly. Do you think you deserve it?”

Willow gives her a disapproving look. “No need to stress the poor girl out before her confirmation. Don’t you remember your own?”

“It’s been a few hundred years.” Aurora shrugs. “I only mean that it is rare for Raven to take such interest in a new Harbinger. You must think so, too, don’t you, Willow?”

At my confused look, Willow gives me a sympathetic nod. “She only means that your patron god detested his immortal role for a long time,” she says. “I miss Raven from his earliest years. His mortal heart was so strong.”

It’s always strange to be reminded that Raven had once been a new god, young and resentful and still full of human emotion, before centuries of immortality whittled away that mortal thread of light in him.