t was raining.

The earth was cloaked in a haze of dancing mist and fog, the light seeping between the foliage grey and dull, barely sneaking past the thick clouds. We'd walked nonstop--crossing magical gates I kept on summoning to skip months-worth of traveling--until my legs were sore and my bones were trembling.

But we had to keep going. It was already the eighth day and time wasn't on our side. Between visiting the temple and reaching the port, the three remaining days were suffocating us.

The only thing that appeased me was knowing that the temple was near; I could sense its magic pulsing in the air, calling the Armedes piece of me that could never be erased.

I trailed behind Aedis and the direwolf, a bunch of steps separating us, their conversation coming and going through my attention like waves. My Ealas was taking use of a wide part of my senses, tracking the heart of the wafting powers. The other piece was making sure the presence following us didn't take us by surprise. It seemed to intensify with each step we took, another pair of eyes adding to the watch. I could never see them, our stalkers.

Even when I felt them so close—as close as feeling a phantom breath on my skin—I was met with no one. Not physically, at least. They were wraiths; I'd come to this conclusion long ago, but it was the magic covering them that I couldn't remove with a massive piece of my magic hibernating that irritated me.

"He was one of your men.'' I heard Saél, still mounted on the direwolf, say to Aedis. "Hawk Archer. Did it happen that you knew him?"

Aedis didn't raise his head to stare at her, his body and face wrapped in his tattered cloak. Sleek and fast and silent, nothing more than moving shadows.

"I did. He was a man amongst the thirteenth team at my immediate command. Fought with him thrice, twice in Nevora, once here."

A heartbeat of silence fell between them, allowing the sound of falling rain to echo around us.

"Do you know them all, your men?"

This time, the Shadow stopped. This time, he met her eyes. And they were burning, smoldering with the memories that flashed in his mind.

"Every single one, either alive or dead, from the day I took my post as highest commander on all Ardoria's forces.''

He truly did. Every single name. Every single man and woman under his control. He knew their families, attended the fallen ones' funerals whenever he could afford. We had spoken once about it during the weeks succeeding returning from our quest. And there was guilt in his soul—guilt of knowing he was the one that sent them to their dooms. He said that knowing them, that seeing that their families were safe, was the least he could do for the price they paid.

I never asked another time, perhaps so I wouldn't force him to pull out that raw and scratched piece of him buried so deep. He never hid it from me, never tried erasing it from existence. But it hurt me in a way, seeing him in pain and unable to snatch that agony from his chest and tear it to shreds.

"Did he have a family?"

Aedis went back to walking, momentarily turning to glance at me, waiting for a signal to tell him we arrived. I merely shook my head.

"Do you truly want to know?"

Another silence poured down on us, merging with the rain. Our clothes were heavy, sticking to our skin and leaving most of it exposed to the coldness biting at our flesh.

And from my spot behind them, I observed as Saél eyed Aedis before drifting her gazes ahead, her vision lost in the intensifying fog.

She breathed in the scent of wet nature, hands clasping the direwolf's fur—now white—harder. "Perhaps the next time we meet."

Aedis only nodded.

And I halted.

I felt the magic in the air, the scent of it exactly like it had been in the Eye of Lamera: citrus, iron, and the salty breeze of oceans.

My heart skipped a beat and I could almost see the golden eyes staring at us through the woods, could almost see his handsome face with the hard jaws and scar running across the left side from down his eye to his right shoulder. I closed my eyes, feeling the string of light within me that was sunlight and gold—because the Sun was our shared symbol—stirring, searching for its twin. It pulsated the same way it did around Father albeit weaker, with less ardency and passion to it.

I allowed it to guide me, to fill me as much as it could even when it was compressed and hidden, squeezed deep beneath the black poison in my veins. My muscles tensed by their own, shifting and swaying in the middle of the woods, pulled only by that light. And when I opened my eyes, there was nothing.

I smirked. The Book of Astazan, Téors, and the information he held all came ringing back in my mind at once. The temple built by the First King, the one he constructed by his own, brick by brick, was not something to be open to all curious eyes. Only the ones worthy of it were blessed by its sight.

I turned to Aedis and Saél, the latter already dismounted from her ride, eyes searching her surroundings.

"Where is it?" The Shadow queried, a knife hidden beneath his sleeve, the tip slightly peeking out. Already prepared if the wraiths attacked.

"In the midst of heat and light,

Just there where the illusion is bright,

The first key is ever only right.

When darkness is bereft,

And life by death is theft,

The drip only comes down left.

But overflowed is the cup,

Hotter than fire it burns as I sup,

While it spreads within from up.

At last, it faints by its own,

My blood protected by the ocean crown,

And like a beast it snakes from down."

There was a sort of delight spreading within me as the words rolled of my tongue with ease, each syllable a key to the very riddle it posed.

Genius. Leander was a bloody genius. The riddle so complex yet so simple, the question and the answer existing within each other.

My companions only blinked, waiting to hear more. To be given the key to our destination. I grinned harder.

"What do you know about Leander?" I asked Saél, shifting my focus to her as I pulled the strings of magic drifting around us. Four of them, just like I anticipated.

"The very basics of how he owned his crown."

I sat in my place, legs crossed and feet soaked in mud, the stickiness of it licking my skin. I pointed at her thin frame and she sat down, blood-colored curls flat on her face and streaked on her cheeks. Aedis remained standing, observing as he leaned against one tree.

"Leander's parents originated from Arelesia,'' I explained, going through more than what was taught in the Norms. This was deeper knowledge, the sort of it that wasn't given to anyone so randomly. And this very information, the one written in thousand-year-old scrolls and books, was our gate to the temple. "The geography of this world was different back then. Cantelot was a small piece of land connecting Arelesia and Rimelia together that partially drifted from them, housing poor families and deserters before earths surged from the bottom of the seas and formed the Cantelot we know. Back in that time, the people of one continent only married their similar, never stepping out of the outskirts of their lands."

I mentioned with a flick of my hand at the spot we were in.

"The king's parents eloped because the father was promised to another and came here—this very piece that was part of the liaison between the two other continents, far more north of this world than it is now. The father worked as a sailor from morning to evening and wood cutter with his sons from evening to night. His wife spent her days cleaning fishes and selling them in the nearest markets. Both Leander and Dearcious were wood cutters, too, chopping the trees that grew back to house this forest.''

I shifted in my seating, locking my hands behind my back, fingers slowly curling as I grasped the four tethers that were warm and unbearably thin threads of power caressing my consciousness.

"Their house was here, barely large enough to accommodate them."

"I thought his house was where the castle is now build,'' she voiced, eyes lighting up with mild curiosity. She was taught to hate him, to despise his name, to fight against his kin. But there she was, thirsty to knowledge, already trying—fighting—to throw behind the life she endured.

"It is quite a common belief," I countered, "which has no truth in it. The Ether Castle was built where Aether's ichor fell from the sky and into Leander's body two weeks after the other deities gave him their own share."

"Oh,'' was all that evaded her lips, her voice swallowed by the chanting winds.

"There is something that you should know.'' I stood, feeling water slip in my mouth as I spoke as the rain intensified. "And it is that every Ardorian blessed with Areles's water is immune to snakes. They don't hurt them, their poison don't kill them because Areles's very chalice is not filled with water. But venom and poison."

I paused another time, inhaling a rather deep breath. I remembered, as the last line echoed around us, that day the three-headed snake attacked us on the outskirts of the Shimderian Forest. Remembered how Mayra was so close to death. Remembered how the serpent swallowed Carter whole before he killed it. Remembered the words he'd told me right before he ended in its guts; the same information I just gave Saél.

"And Leander loved snakes,'' I added only after sneaking a glance at Aedis. He recalled that night as well as I did, recalled Liam and Taliana and the incident at the Dragon's den. "Some people grew dogs and cats as their pets. Some others raised hawks and falcons. And then there was the First King and his four snakes he loved quite much."

I rounded my surroundings, steps light and quick on the ground it was like I was walking on thin air. My ears picked a small shuffling sound: a branch snapping in the distance, a rumble in the bushes.

And then, a hiss.

I fisted my right, the tethers in my hand growing from invisible, warm threads to cold, moving scales. I tightened my grip even more as the snakes in my hand kept swaying and augmenting in size, all of them so long they trailed from my grasp and twenty-five feet into the forest.

They didn't attack me.

All along, the golden key to the temple was snakes, the word so visible by the hints. Drip. Snakes. Ocean crown, the latter signaling Areles whose favorite creature was a jewel-forged serpent.

I picked the first snake, its scales shimmering like molten gold even when there was no running light, and pierced it in the ground, fangs digging deep and dripping venom. The others followed in the order the riddle signaled, four streaks that swayed like ropes of gold and silver and copper and emeralds pouring their poison in the earth.

Right. left. Up. Down. The four of them forming the equivalent of east, west, north, and south.

The rain stopped. The fog parted like a curtain torn open. The earth cracked. And the temple appeared in a bursting mass of light as though a new sun was seeping behind the hiding spell cast on the place.

Leisurely, the enchantment wrapping the temple vanished, drifting away like a gossamer veil carried by winds. The temple was the same house Leander and Dearcious lived in, a tiny, two-roomed place to accommodate them. After receiving his blessings and before the war, Leander came back home after Dearcious's spies butchered both their parents and had their heads on spikes just in front of the door.

He rearranged the place, built the massive addition with stones and glass, the walls decorated with columns of emeralds and rubies and sapphires. The dome on top of the glass ceilings was made of pure gold with five dragons etched on it.

When the spell disappeared at once, when Saél stood and Aedis and I took a step toward the massive, double doors made of glimmering Nightbleed, something else flashed around us.

I spun.

I had summoned three knives already lined between my fingers and my sword, a long and sleek marvel of celestial steel—just like the material forming Siltheres's fangs, the bones of Aether's first angel—that my father and dragon gave me.

But the arrows were already pointed at us.

There were easily two hundred wraiths around us, the first fifty ones aiming their sharp, polished swords at us, the other fifty in front perched on trees with their silver arrows already nocked.

I bared my teeth, showing the sharp edged canines of the Windreapers. Aedis's back was pressed against mine in a dance of shadows, both hands full with weapons. Even Saél was holding a sword and dagger at my left, though her hands were gently trembling under the weight of their steel.

"Back off,'' I warned with a feral growl, skillfully crouching to ease my leap so I could jump would they attack.

The sword holders took a step forward, stance ready. Two hundreds to three. We could take the first half with ease, slaughter down the swords and lances and shields. But then there was the other half, the archers that would shower us with pointed tips the moment we moved. And the fact that I would never hurt a wraith.

They served the nature and the Armdeses, servants to the Gods. But they didn't know who I was, didn't know I was their princess and leader. Even when they first began tracking us, it was after leaving Sorcha's lands. And when we were at the cottage, I made sure they couldn't see because some eyes were far more curious than others.

"Approach no further,'' commanded the man in silver armor in front. The leader. Like Nuaira, he had that faint, green hue glowing around his skin that was veering toward the translucent bit. His eyes were black and his face was adorned with runes on the temples and a small, white-colored jewel in the middle of his forehead.

The majority of them looked like this, the amount of them with no jewel scarce. Like Nuaira. They were the ones she mentioned, the ones turned into souls of nature to redeem themselves.

"Be gone.'' I tightened the grip on my sword as it looked there was no escape than to fight.

The leader almost huffed a laugh, his sword rising, the movement followed by the many fellows behind him. "You shall never enter this temple. We serve light, and you,'' he snarled, voice morphing into a disgusted tone, ''will be nothing more than chopped flesh and bones once we are done with you."

I dared laughing. Dared throwing my sword and knives away, the weapons vanishing the moment they hit ground. I stepped forward. The army of wraiths did too, the impact of their feet on ground rattling throughout the woods.

All along, I whispered down the bond between Leon and I, 'I need to get into that temple.'

He didn't reply with words, instead I felt a quick squeeze running from my mind and brushing my hand.

I grew my claws as I held the leader's eyes, my wings bulging out of my back and unfurling in a massive art-piece of flesh and muscles and bones and scales.

The wraiths launched. It was like the world moved along the thud of their boots, like the winds receded to the battle cries tearing from their throats in guttural sounds.

If only they knew who they were attacking.

The first five soldiers that aimed at me, I knocked their swords down in a swift twirl of my limb. I thrust from this side, I kick from the other, and had them spread on the ground. Uninjured.

I leaped, wings flapping with mightiness as I jumped over them in an arched position, my eyes staring at the sky before I twirled in the air the way a bullet did. Like a hawk lunging to its prey, I darted to the temple, ripping through the protecting barrier sealing the steps before the doors.

My fingers clutched the swirls of decoration adorning the upper frames, arms lifting my weight up as my wings disappeared. I tried my wings very little since Sorcha gave them to us, and each time, I enjoyed the sensation of being carried by air. Enjoyed the rushing winds hitting my face and running in my hair.

I heard the clamor of steel falling above each other along the shocked breaths. And when I climbed the Nightbleed door and sat on the crystal edge rounding the dome, I stared down at the army of flickering green light. Stared at the heavy lines of their faces. Stared at the turmoil in their souls.

No demon could place a foot in such a shrine. And neither could dark magic. Arowcinders or no, mask or no, the temple only showed the true form of its visitors.

The wraiths knew now, who they were fighting.

The archers lowered their bows, the lancers pierced their lances in the mud, the sword men threw their arsenal. They all kneeled, leaving the road clean for Aedis and Saél to enter through the magic. And when they rose, when they stared at Leon and me, they placed their right hands over their hearts.

The leader remained on ground, the only one still kneeling to the crown. "Forgive us, Princess,'' he beseeched, neck craning backward so he could see us.

"There is no harm or rancor," I voiced as I carefully rose, wary of how I shifted on such a slim and smooth surface. "You are free to go and continue your duty protecting your posts.'' I centered my eyes on the jewel-less faces. "And to accomplish your orders.''

They blinked, chins lifting as they very well knew what I meant. Their auras were different than the rest, more flesh and reachable and trapped in a reality lost between life and death. A few of them fell for Nuaira's same weakness, a few others had other crimes on hand. Each mind was whispering its past, each soul pouring memories until it became hard to see them with clear eyes. All the words, all the voices, all the far cries rang over each others, buzzing in my ears like a beehive.

The small army stomped in the mud and saluted before retreating in the forest, lines after lines of ghost-like soldiers walking away in perfect order.

Soon, there was no one left but us and the direwolf roaming around, looking for the three bodies that had suddenly gone invisible after piercing the snakes.

I tore a gap in the magic, powers drifting to the direwolf and guiding it inside. It was until it fully squeezed itself through the hole and came running at us, sniffing and panting as it jumped on Saél and then licked all of Leon's left leg, that I jumped.

It came to me, circling around my feet and I caressed the spot behind its ears as I took the steps to the double doors.

They opened by their own with the push of an invisible zephyr, allowing us in.

And inside, there was someone already there, kneeling on the ground.

Leander.