his back. "I will not believe it. The storm… it showed us our nightmares, I think. It isn't real." She laid her head against his shoulder. "It can't be."
A shiver ran across her. Did that Shrivel truly live inside her, a coiling worm in her belly? Or was that merely her fear that nested in her soul? She did not know.
"El," she said, "thank you… for holding me. For pulling me from the darkness. I was drowning."
He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. "I told you, Lyana. I will always fly by your side. I will always look after you. You can repay me later by smashing those statues I carved of Solina." He sighed and laid his head down against the stone. "You were right. I was a fool." He shook his head, grimacing. "When the sphinx asked me about her, I couldn't lie… I had to tell her that I still love her, even now. Lyana, she killed my father and my brother." He looked at her with haunted eyes. "How could I still love her?"
She held him close. "Love me instead," she whispered, "and hold me for a while longer."
He kissed her cheek and held her, and stroked her hair, and their bodies pressed together until the pain and fear faded, until their whispers and warmth could drive away the memories.
Lights blazed from below.
Lyana and Elethor rose to their feet upon the pillar of stone. They gazed into the darkness below. Two eyes like stars cracked open, shooting pillars of light like the starlit columns of afterlife.
"Stars," Lyana whispered.
In the new light, she saw great shoulders of stone and a rising tail, and soon a creature unfurled in the shadows, larger than a palace, a being of rock and light.
The Starlit Demon rose before them in the darkness.
MORI
As they flew up the mountain, heading toward its granite peak, Mori wanted to think about the task ahead. She wanted to steel herself for battle, imagine seizing the Moondisk from its demon guardian, prepare for a long flight over the sea and back to Requiem. Yet as her wings stirred the cold air over mountainsides of pines, she only thought of Bayrin's kiss.
Stupid love-struck girl! she scolded herself. You think of kisses and love and romance while your people burn, while your brother and father lie dead?
She looked at Bayrin who flew beside her, his eyes narrowed, mist swirling around his green scales. Mori felt a chill invade her.
No, she knew. This was not how romance felt. Lyana had told her about love—she said how when Orin was near, she would tremble, her heart would flutter, how warmth would spread through her, how joy bloomed inside her. This felt different. Mori felt no flutter, no warmth, no joy.
She lowered her eyes. She felt shame. She felt unclean.
Would Bayrin love me if he knew my secret? she thought, soaring over mountainsides of chalk and leaf. If he knew how I let Acribus claim me, and how I didn't even fight him, how I… how his filth still clings to me? He thinks I'm just sweet Mori, the young princess, like from the fairytales… but I'm not her anymore. Not now. Not ever again. Her shame burned inside her like a demon child in her womb. Was that Acribus's child, a babe with cruel eyes and a white tongue, that festered inside her?
"Mori, are you ready?" Bayrin called to her.
No, she thought. No, I'm not ready to kill a demon. I'm not ready to fly over the sea again, to return home and find more dead. I'm not ready to face this world and keep flying. She growled, thought about the old heroines from her stories, and nodded. But I will do these things nonetheless.
She gave her wings three great flaps, filling them with air like sails, and soared toward the mountaintop. Bayrin soared beside her. Smoke streamed between his teeth, and the thud of his wings blasted her. They cleared the mountain's peak, and Mori found herself looking down upon an ancient ruin.
Pillars lay fallen and chipped. Their capitals were shaped as bucking elks, but smoothed with centuries of rain. An archway rose from a tangle of ivy and bushes, the wall around it long fallen. Bricks lay strewn. Shattered wood, snapped branches, and boulders littered the ruins. Wild grass grew from a smashed mosaic. Whatever structure had once stood here, nature was overgrowing it; the fallen bricks were more moss than stone.
"There was a temple here once," Mori