“It’s been too long,” I said, scanning the black rock wall. “Surely someone should have emerged by now.”

A shiver went through Solara. “I’m just happy we’ve not seen those things that live in there.”

But Elysa was silent, her back ramrod straight as she stared at one break in the rock. The fissure Varian had used to enter the labyrinth.

My stomach twisted. “Elysa—”

She held up a silencing hand. “Look. Listen.”

I did as she asked. There was nothing, but then—light flickered at my fingertips, my power finding it before the rest of my senses. There was something. Something wrong.

I stood on the dais, watching over the heads of the crowd. Two figures emerged from the darkness.

Shocked gasps and murmurings sounded from the nobles and priestesses. Varian—bloody and bruised, but mostly hale—supported Aidon with a hand beneath his arm. Aidon’s dark head lifted a fraction and—“No.” The word was out and suddenly I was moving.

The ugly, inflamed wound at Aidon’s collar . . . My God-Blooded senses told me all. The sickly sweet smell of venomous rot rolled from him. With each beat of his already weakening heart, the noxious toxin spread through his body. Those extraordinary silver eyes dulled.

My hand lifted, hot with its rosy glow. But before my magic could touch him, could burn away the poison of death, long, manicured nails dug into my skin and icy hands yanked me back.

Do. Not. Touch. Him. Elysa’s voice hissed through my mind.

I can heal him!

Her hands tightened. Don’t be stupid. Arachne’s venom can kill a god. All you’re doing is making a scene. Making things worse for yourself.

I jerked violently from her grip, but a larger, stronger pair replaced her hands. “Allow me,” the Emperor told Elysa as he pulled my body firmly against his own.

I looked to Aidon, who hung limply from Varian’s arm, his dark hair falling over his drooping head in an umber curtain.

Then Varian passed him to two awaiting guards. They rushed him away to the shadowed recesses of the underground hall.

“Arachne’s venom will finish him shortly, my dear,” the Emperor said softly. “Then this will all be over. You shall have your victor.”

“Yes . . . Yes, of course," I said, mind desperately working. "I’m Varian’s. I've always been Varian's. But Aidoneus doesn’t have to die.”

The Emperor smiled. An indulgent father listening to the tantrum of an impetuous child. One of his hands drifted down my arm. Gently, he lifted my hand. Still aglow with my healing light, he studied it with the detached interest of a scholar. “You want to heal him? And interfere with the will of the gods?” he mused. “I think not.”

A subtle nod and Eryx was suddenly at our side. “See Lady Aurora to her chamber,” the Emperor ordered. “I want her well-rested for tonight’s celebrations.”

Cold, sweaty hands grabbed me, and just like Aidon’s listless body, I was dragged away into darkness.

I reached for another goblet of wine, pleased to feel Varian’s wary eyes on me as I drank from the blood-red depths of the glass.

I’d dressed myself for the celebratory feast, and it gave me no small amount of pleasure to know I’d done a piss-poor job of it. Parthenia, the little minx, was nowhere to be found.

So, I’d picked out the least flattering garment in my wardrobe—a shapeless, muted gray dress—thrown my hair up in a haphazard pile atop my head, and carelessly rouged my lips and cheeks. Then I’d polished off the decanter of wine in my chamber before Eryx’s greasy face finally showed up to march me to the feast. I’d stumbled after him down the halls, bumping into servants and giggling like a female half-mad all the way.

Perhaps I was going mad. Perhaps this had simply been the final straw. Elysa’s angry words during our fight had been spot on—I was weak. Too weak to stomach the truth of Doria. Too weak to be its queen. Too weak to be trusted with my own power.

I laughed at the thought, a sputtering cackle that had Varian extracting the goblet from my fingers. “Enough, Aurora!” my mate-to-be hissed under his breath.

I met his glare with a bitter smile of my own. Nobles lined our table, and they watched our exchange in fascinated silence. Some shared pointed, wide-eyed glances, excited at the prospect of seeing the legend of a mad Korai come to life. And we Korai did have quite the reputation for madness. Maybe I would be the next Mydia or Syrsee or Helena. They were right to think I’d lost control. Why should I care if Aidon was wallowing in a filthy dungeon cell, dying? A true Dorian wouldn’t.

But while the surrounding nobles eyed me, they also watched Varian. Watched him and wondered what their General Prince would do to bring his unhinged Korai to heel.

All those judging faces made me bold, reckless. “Tell me, darling,” I purred sweetly. “How did you defeat the beast?”

His lips pressed into a tight line, but Solara added fuel to the spark of interest I’d lit. “Even the thought of Arachne makes me cringe. It must have been a terrible fight,” she said, nose wrinkled.

A chorus of encouraging murmurs ran down the table. How frustrating it had been, they all agreed, not to witness the bloodshed themselves.

With one last worried glance my way, Varian pasted a charming, courtly smile on his face and turned toward my sister. “I’m not sure it’s a conversation fit for the dinner table,” he teased.

Another spurt of scoffing laughter left me. “Dorians losing their appetites over a bit of bloodshed? Doubtful, my lord.”

Polite chuckles sounded around us as the other nobles waited for Varian to begin his tale, their burning curiosity palpable. But Elysa sat across from me, her attention a razor sharp prodding down the bond. What are you playing at?

I ignored her. “Come now. We missed out on all the fun. Tell us how you managed it.”

To my lover’s credit, his smile didn’t falter. “Well,” he began, “it wasn’t difficult to make it to the center of the labyrinth. Instead of hunting the beast, some competitors thought it a better strategy to hunt one another. Those fools did most of my work.”

A ripple of laughter sounded at that. It was all I could do to keep my hands, burning with Helios’ tethered flame, knotted in my lap. Dead slaves and males butchering one another in a bid for power. What kind of people laughed at such brutality?

“When I reached her lair, Aidoneus and I were the only competitors left.”

“What then?” Solara asked breathlessly. “What did you do when you discovered him?”

Varian’s eyes darkened. “When I came upon him,” he answered, “he was preparing to enter her lair.”

A male asked if that was when the beast struck.

Varian hesitated. “Truth be told, I meant to end him before the beast could. I wanted his death to come from a Dorian’s hand. From my hand.”

It was a subtle shift, a tightening of his jaw, and the steady pulse of a vein as it throbbed at his temple. Bloodlust. In the few short weeks I’d spent surrounded by so many Dorian males, the signs had become frighteningly familiar.

He sat silent a moment, lost to the memory of it. “We fought,” he finally said. “Aidoneus used what power he had left against me—a wave of his life-draining magic. Even weakened, that power . . . The blow knocked the breath from me, brought me to my knees. That was when she struck.”

I tasted the truth of his words. “She bit him?” I asked, voice shaking.

“Some of her children came, drawn to the sound of the struggle or the scent of blood. But while I fought the beast, Aidoneus took care of her children. Eventually, we bound Arachne with her own webbing. After that . . . Well, it was quick work to end her.”

“Weaving was her gift,” Elysa’s philosophical voice said, “as it was her curse.”

Varian raised his glass in agreement. The surrounding nobles followed his example, toasting his victory as I stared at the untouched food on my plate.

Truth, every syllable of every word. But there was something off. Like Selene’s slippery darkness, it just evaded my grasp. And yet . . . “If she was bound with her own spider silk,” I spoke, interrupting a young lord’s lengthy toast to Doria’s strength, “then how did she bite Aidoneus?”

He didn’t turn to me. Instead, he flashed an uneasy smile at all those watching faces around us. “I told you, darling. Her children intervened before we had bound her.”

“But his wound was not made by one of her children. It was Arachne’s venom—venom strong enough to kill a god—that I sensed coursing through him. And if he was injured before you reached him, how could a male with such poison in his blood fight off even one of the lesser beasts, let alone two?”

“The fight was chaos. I cannot account for every move the Myridian made.”

There it was. What I had been searching for. My mouth filled with the sweet poison of the lie.

Varian was a bred warrior, raised from the cradle to be a general. He wouldn’t miss a single move in such a fight. Even if he hadn’t seen Aidon, he was the grandson of Ares. He would feel the rhythm of the battle. But there was more. I knew there was more.

“But you realized he’d been bitten, at least at the end?” I pressed.

He shrugged. “Yes, of course.”

“So why not leave him to rot, as you left the other fallen competitors? Why bother carrying him back to the hall?”

A low growl ripped from his chest. Instinctively, the nobles shifted to place as much distance between themselves and Varian as possible. But I moved closer, sensing the truth that lingered on the tip of his tongue, begging to be spilled. Varian’s eyes cut to me and there was nothing left of the court-trained prince. It was the warmongering madness of Ares. When he spoke, I half-expected his words to frost the air between us. “There could be no doubt about his fate. I wanted all to see what becomes of those who challenge Doria’s strength.”

Another hint of sweet sickness. My stomach twisted, turning leaden. “No, Varian,” I breathed. “You wanted me to see. You wanted me to know.”

He watched me, barely a blue rim around his wide pupils. His breaths came fast and hard. Finally, he spoke to those around us. “The wine has gone to my lady’s head, I’m afraid.” At that, a nervous tittering sounded. Then he stood and reached for me, his large hands dragging me up from beneath my arms like an errant child. “If you will excuse us . . ."

Inebriated, I struggled to find my feet. He dragged me from the high table and through the celebrating crowd.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, feet tangled in the folds of my unflattering gown.

The further we moved from the high table, the more wanton the revelers became. Few marked our passage, most caught up in the drunken spectacle of dancing, naked slave girls. The dice rolled to our left, sparking a cry of outrage that sent fists flying. Varian bodily lifted me out of the way. My feet didn’t touch the floor again until we made it to the safety of the terrace.

“Varian!” I cried as he lowered me to the ground beside the stone balustrade. “What are you doing?”

He took me by the arms and brought my face close to his. “I’m making a few things clear, my darling. Things you should have understood long ago.”

With Nemoralia come and gone, autumn’s hold on the land strengthened with each passing day. The night was clear and crisp, but the cool breeze was not the cause of the sudden gooseflesh peppering my skin.

Reading my fear, he softened a bit, hands loosening. “My father warned me,” he said so softly that I strained to hear his words over the sea breaking below.

“Of what?”

His jaw tightened, some of the blue returning to his eyes. “Of you.”

I snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”

He shook his head. “Do you remember the first time I attended Eosphoros?”

I nodded. Just as Elysa’s strength grew at Nemoralia and Solara’s at Midsummer, mine peaked in the spring with Eosphoros. It was a celebration of my mother and the dawn of fertile spring. And the way many celebrated that fertility . . . My cheeks heated. “Of course, I remember. You stayed with me. Danced with me even when the others . . .”

When his friends and followers had found a willing female to wander off with. At sixteen, I didn’t realize the significance of that choice.

It wasn’t until the most recent celebration that we’d started sneaking off like the others.

“I’d seen you only a few months before, at the winter solstice,” he said. “But you had changed. You’d shed the softness of childhood and grown into a queen in a single season. My father was pleased. After all, he’d planned our union for years. But when he realized my interest in you was deeper than your beauty, he warned me. He told me to wed you, to mate you, but not to love you.”

My throat grew tight, and I blinked against the threatening tears. “But . . . but you do.”

He closed the small space between us and tipped my chin up to face him. “Why, you impossibly stubborn girl, do you refuse to see that everything I do, I do for you? For you and for this empire. For the greater good of our people.”

And while that had everything within me going soft and loose. While it made me want to press my body against his and take everything he had to offer, still . . . a small voice within gave voice to my darkest doubts.

“But at what price?” I breathed.

“Aurora—”

Emotions too chaotic to name churned through me. “No, Varian," I said, shaking my head to break his grip on my chin. "What price does the rest of the world pay for Doria’s benefit? In the Trial, those humans . . .” A sob ripped from my throat. “Tafari, the man that I saved. His life was thrown away for nothing. Why serve Doria if that’s her truth?”

His eyes were hard as they searched my face. Breaths coming fast, he spun me to face the sea below. One hand—trembling with barely contained rage—released me to point at a faint, wavering glow just barely visible on the horizon. “Do you see that?”

I kept my silence.

“That, my darling, is what I wanted to show you. Do you know what it is?”

“You know I don’t,” I said, struggling to step away from the rail, but he held me fast. He pressed my body tight between his chest and thin slivers of carved stone. The only things keeping us from tumbling towards the rocky shore below. “Varian, please . . .”

“That is a Myridian caravel,” he said through gritted teeth, mouth so close that his lips brushed my ear as he spoke. “It disappeared after Aidoneus’ arrest, but it reappeared on the horizon tonight. A spy must be in our midst. Must have sent word that their lord is dying.

“That ship is finer and faster than any Dorian ship currently sailing. And it is one of the humblest crafts in their fleet. The strongest fleet in the Shards. Quite an accomplishment, considering every one of those countries is a maritime nation. We are weak where they are strong. And trust me, Aurora, Aidoneus means to exploit that weakness if he can.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because to remain strong, to remain safe, we cannot allow any threat to go unchallenged. And if Aidoneus had won you, had used you . . . Well, the Shards may have become a veritable force to be reckoned with.”

My eyes locked onto the warm glow of that distant ship. Did they realize just how close Aidon was to death? And if he died, would Varian allow them to sail away, unharmed? I knew the answer, and it chilled me to the bone.

Mistaking the reason for my fear, Varian pulled me close, backing us away from the rail. He bent, his face settling into the crook of my neck, where he planted a gentle kiss beneath my ear. “You must understand,” he said onto my skin, “why I do what I do if you are to be my queen.”

Queen, but queen of what? Queen of slaves? Queen of cruelty and needless, senseless death? Unable to swallow that truth, I shut my eyes and let the tears fall.