Page 148 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
‘Are they closed now?’ she asked, unable to stop her own smile from creeping in.
‘Most definitely not.’
‘That’s impossible! You can’t tell.’
‘I know you too well, little wolf.’
The teasing faded from her expression. She straightened slightly, something fragile flickering through her chest. She longed to ask him about herself, about who she had truly been, but the faint burn of her runes flared in warning beneath her skin. So she bit her lip instead and said, softer, ‘I promise I’ll close them if you tell agoodstory.’
‘That I can do.’
‘Very well then, Arden Briar.’ She closed her eyes at last and leaned her head against the warm stone, imagining him on the other side, perhaps mirroring her posture. She hoped he was. ‘They’re closed.’
Arden’s quiet chuckle drifted through the wall. ‘Do you know the story of how the world was created?’
‘I don’t think I do.’
‘They say that thousands of years ago the gods grew restless in their immortality,’ Arden began, his voice lowering as though the darkness itself leaned closer to listen. ‘So theychallenged one another. Not with swords or storms, but with creation. Each sought to outdo the other by shaping lands, forging seas, breathing life into creatures more wondrous than the last.’
His words seemed to ripple through the stone.
‘It was the Sun God who first drenched the world in light, casting day across the empty lands. But Nyx—the Goddess of Night—answered him with shadow and stars. She wrapped the world in darkness and silence, and the Sun God did not take kindly to being rivalled.’
A pause. A shift in tone.
‘Some say his anger was not born of pride, but of love. That he had once loved Nyx before Zeus. That Thanatos was his. There are whispers that Nyx and the Sun God had stood side by side in the beginning, until she left him for the king of gods.’
The stone seemed colder somehow.
‘And when Nyx bore Eris to Zeus, the Sun God’s jealousy turned venomous. They say he tried to kill the child. Tried to snuff out the reminder of what he had lost.’ Arden’s voice softened. ‘Nyx fled. She vanished into hiding, retreating from the heavens entirely. Zeus remarried in time and sired more children with his second wife, and none of them ever saw Nyx again.’
A breath.
‘The Sun God descended to the mortal lands in search of her, fury blazing in his wake. But mortals are fragile things, and sometimes… their fragility ensnares even gods. They say he fell in love with a mortal woman and chose to remain among her kind.’ A faint, thoughtful hum drifted through the wall. ‘No one truly knows the ending. Some believe he stayed for love. Others say that even now, he walks beneath mortal skies still searching for Nyx, chasing the shadow she cast across his heart.’
Silence settled between them like dust.
‘That is how the world began,’ Arden finished quietly. ‘With love, rivalry, and gods who could not bear to lose one another.’
Ylva snorted softly. ‘And you believe any of that to be true?’
Arden gave a faint laugh through the stone. ‘Why not? Stranger things have happened.’
She hummed in reluctant agreement, her thoughts straying unwillingly to the goddess Eris and the madness in her eyes. If gods walked the world wearing mortal flesh, then perhaps stories were not stories at all.
Before she could answer, the cell door groaned open.
Light poured in like a blade.
Ylva recoiled, squinting as several warlocks stormed inside. The air shifted, thickened, and then she felt it: cold magic snapping around her wrists and throat. Chains, not iron but spellwork, coiled into place with a sickening finality.
She gasped.
‘What’s happening?’ They had stopped chaining her to take her to Hagan. Something was different. Something had shifted.
‘We’re leaving,’ one of the warlocks replied flatly.
Her cell door swung wide, and she was dragged into the corridor just as Arden’s door opened opposite. He stumbled forward into the dim light, and for a heartbeat the world narrowed to him.
