The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(101)

His wolf.

“That’s mine,” Nok said stupidly.

“It is,” she agreed. Then she cocked her head. “You hurt.”

“I . . . excuse me?”

The woman smiled and gestured for him to come closer. He did so, not without trepidation. In the pale, overcast light of the Inbetween, she looked even paler than she had inside, almost translucent. He had the strangest sense she was somehow drifting out of sight, impossible to catch in his focus. Like trying to look at someone under the slippery duress of twilight.

He thought of the ghost stories whispered among the Kith children in his youth—demons in the dunes, tricky ghouls emerging like vapor from the walls of caves. Eerie women like smoke in the night, coaxing foolish young boys to their deaths. A shiver tripped down the notches of his spine.

She’s just a woman, he told himself. Just a very tall, very pale woman. Don’t be stupid.

He took another step toward her, as though to prove to himself that he was not afraid. He focused on the wolf—his wolf—at her side. It was not afraid; why should he be?

Vrea stroked an idle hand over the animal’s broad head, and Nok felt the tips of her fingernails on his own scalp. “You hurt,” she said again.

“No,” he protested. “That is . . . what?”

Vrea smiled her slow smile. “Allow yourself to feel it, Nokhai. The hurt.”

“I—”

The priestess slid closer, soundless and solemn as night. He willed himself not to take a step backward. The wolf stayed behind, and for a moment he thought he saw it flicker, like a mirage.

“When you have lived as many lives as I have, you start to understand hurt differently,” Vrea told him. “Hurt and loss. And love. You recognize how short it all is, in the entirety of everything. But nevertheless, hurt is still hurt. Love is still love. They are real—insistently so—no matter how brief. And they must be heeded.”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nok said, flinching.

She stared with eerie, bottomless eyes, not unkindly.

“Forgive me,” she said, her voice languid and low. “I’d forgotten. Humans have such shame about their feelings, don’t they? And yet, they have so many of them. It must be very tiring.”

“I . . .” He frowned. Humans? What was she?

Just a woman, he reminded himself. A tall, pale woman.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he said tentatively, “but why did you want to speak with me?”

“Of course,” she mused. “You must be exhausted. Your body is still healing. I will be direct.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Nokhai, you are an odd creature. The only one left of your kind.”

“The Ashina?” he blurted. “I’m not the last. Nasan, my sister. There’s two of us. And there are a bunch more Gifted—”

“No, Nokhai. Not an Ashina. A Pactmaker,” Vrea said. “Do you know what this means? The magnitude of your importance?”

“No. That is, yes, I know what it is. But, I . . .” He thought of his mother. His father. They never would have—they wouldn’t believe it. Tears stung his eyes. He was suddenly bone tired. “I-I don’t want it,” he said, hating how young and small he sounded.

“People rarely want the things they get,” Vrea said, her voice never losing its evasive, lilting quality, borne between cheer and melancholy. “But nevertheless, that gift is yours, and you must choose what to do with it.”

She sighed. “These are the final days of Yunis. It has been foretold by our Mother and Father, the Ana and the Aba. Shen was displeased, troubled, when our little brother offered to leave this place, this Inbetween, to live among the earthbound, but I was not surprised. He is the third of the Triarch, closest to the earth, and I think he specifically, our little Jin, has always longed for it. He tires of this place. And humanity intrigues him.”

“What do you mean these are the last days of Yunis?” Nok demanded. “Are you saying you’re going to lose the war?”

And does Lu know?

“Will we lose the war?” Vrea repeated, smiling faintly. “That has not been told to me, not in so many words. What I do know is we should be prepared for the end, whatever that may mean. And that is in part where you come in.”

“Me?”

“After the imperial scouring of the North, and the breaking of all your Kith Pacts, the beast gods—the Gift Givers, as you called them—came back to the Inbetween, their ties with the earth and its people—your people—broken. The gods are like ghosts, here. It is not where they belong. They need a people. That is their purpose. And once the days of Yunis are over, I fear their spirits will be lost forever. Perhaps this means they will return to roam and haunt the earth as phantoms. Or perhaps they will die, as only a god can. Which is to say . . . ,” she paused, cocking her head. “Very painfully. It has been a long, long time since a god has died. Longer than the stretch of my memory. From what I understand, it pulls a great deal of energy from all the realms when it happens. It can be quite . . . cataclysmic.”

“Cataclysmic?” Nok repeated. “Like, an earthquake?”

Vrea considered. “Perhaps. If an earthquake could happen not only to the ground, but to the water, the air, the very blood in your body.”