The moon was a jagged shard in the blackened sky, fractured by storms that weren't made of clouds but of something older, hungrier. Lightning forked in colors Selene had never seen before—veins of crimson, gold, and black writhing like serpents above the mountain ridge. The air was charged with the scent of metal and burning pine. And beneath it all, that low, bone-deep vibration… the voice of the gods she'd just awakened.
She hadn't meant to call them.
She'd only been trying to save Kael.
He lay crumpled in the grass beside her, pale, his blood pooling in the earth like a map of some forgotten continent. His breathing was shallow, the kind of shallow that came before silence. Her hands were slick as she pressed them to the wound at his side, but the blood wouldn't stop. No healing salve, no magic herb—nothing worked. Not here. Not now.
And then she'd felt it.
The pull.
The ancient heartbeat hidden in her blood since the day she was born.
The forbidden part of her lineage—the one her mother had whispered about only once before she'd been taken away by the Ravenscourge.
Her father's side.
The gods had been bound in the time before language, sleeping under the bones of the world, sealed by the blood of a thousand warriors. But in her veins ran the same thread of gold that had bound them… and the same key to unbind them.
So she had screamed his name—not Kael's, not anyone's she knew. But a name she shouldn't have known at all.
And the sky had split open.
Now they were here. Not in flesh, but in form—ribbons of light coiling down from the heavens like serpents, faces half-hidden, half-changing, their eyes as deep as the first night. Their voices wrapped around her mind like silk and steel all at once.
"Child of Ash and Star," one whispered inside her skull. "You have awakened what was never meant to sleep again."
"You seek to save the boy," another hissed, its tone mocking but curious. "We can grant that… for a price."
Her grip on Kael's shirt tightened. "What price?"
The storm bent lower, wind roaring in her ears, trees snapping in the distance.
"Your bond," the first god breathed. "To him."
Selene's stomach twisted. A blood-bond wasn't like a mortal vow—it would mean her soul tied to Kael's forever. If he died, she would follow. If she betrayed him, her own blood would burn her alive.
And the gods wouldn't give this for free. There would be clauses in their gift—twists she wouldn't see until it was too late.
"Why him?" she asked, her voice nearly breaking.
The second god's laugh was like fire on snow. "Because he is the knife and the wound. The destroyer and the savior. His blood is already ours, though he does not yet know it."
Kael stirred faintly in her lap, murmuring her name, and Selene's decision was no longer a decision at all.
"Do it."
The world inhaled.
The storm surged downward, coiling around them both, light burning through her veins. She felt her own blood turn molten, racing to her heart before spilling into Kael's wound. The gods' voices rose in unison, speaking in a language older than fire, older than air.
When the light faded, Kael gasped like a man breaking the surface of the sea. His eyes snapped open—bright, too bright, flecked with molten gold that hadn't been there before.
Selene collapsed forward, dizzy, her own pulse now perfectly matched to his. She felt his every heartbeat like it was her own.
Kael's gaze locked on hers. For a moment, something primal flickered in his eyes—something both terrifying and magnetic. "What did you do?" he whispered.
She couldn't answer.
Because above them, the gods were still watching… and the smallest of their smiles promised that this was only the first of their demands.