Page 89 of Aïdes the Unseen

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A thousand lives slipped between us.

A thousand lives where she died before I found her.

I couldn’t bear another.

Not now. Not when I’d heard her beg me—please—and meant it.

A treacherous part of me whispered,Take her.Not to this apartment. To the threshold. The river. The Underworld.

Lock every other god out. Seal the gates. Let themchokeon what they could not have.

But I couldn’t.

Iwouldn’t.

I’d never caged her before. I would not start now. Even if I burned for it. Burned for her. Always would.

Her voice reached me—soft, uncertain. “What is it?”

I looked up at her, held in the gravity of her presence. Not a queen in this form, not a goddess—but something more dangerous: a soul still choosing, still waking.

“If there’s anything I can do…” I swallowed the roughness from my voice. “Tell me. Whatever you need.Name it.”

She didn’t answer right away. The puppy lifted his head from her foot, watching me with something close to judgment in his inky eyes.

And then?—

Irina leaned forward, barely a breath between us. The city blurred behind her, the storm outside forgotten. She stared at me like she had lived this moment before, like it had followed her through lifetimes and dreams, all the way here.

“I think…” she whispered, fragile and true. “I only needyou.”

The world dropped away.

The gods, the war, the buried memories still clawing to be free.

None of it mattered.

For a single, incandescent moment, there was nothen. Nosoon.

Justnow.

Andher.

Chapter

Seventeen

IRINA

It was too much.

Everything in me felt like it was unspooling. Memories that didn’t belong to me and yetdid, thoughts layered with emotion so deep I couldn’t tell where I ended and somethingotherbegan. A low, steady hum echoed under my skin like a song I hadn’t heard in centuries.

I didn’t want that ancient earworm. Not right now. Not yet.

I didn’t want gods or myths or magic.

I didn’t want truth folded into riddles.

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