My hand flicks from the piece of parchment to the ring sitting on my finger, to the men sitting in front of me. Two of the three? Are Mihr, Ether, and Gabe the three allied men?

A love divided.

Love?

I press my eyes shut. That implies something that I’m not willing to think about. The same pull tugs in my chest, but this time I ignore it.

Words swirl once again, imprinting behind my eyelids.

Warring clans? Lovers? Five sisters? Born beneath the stars?

I swallow them down, trying not to choke on them. Breathing slowly, I calm myself as much as possible with two dark angels sitting in front of me. And they are dark. They are death born in the arms of a twisted queen. They are someone’s final breath swallowed in the hollow bleakness of black jaws. There is no light where death is concerned, just like there is no sound where the dead reside.

I want no part of it.

“I can’t,” I say, pushing the piece of paper away.

“You can’t?” Mihr signs. His hands drop to the table when he sees my expression.

“I am not your saviour. I am not the person you need. Find someone else.”

“There is no one else. Our fate begins and ends with you,” Ether says. Guilt pulls at the purple shadows beneath his eyes.

“I don’t want this,” I say, but even as I say it a little voice in the back of my head tells me that is a lie. They may bring death, but you’ve never felt more alive.

Conflicted, that’s what I am.

Mihr narrows his eyes, they burn right into the truth of me. He knows a part of me is lying. “You deny yourself the ability to belong, yet I can sense a part of you is curious. No, it’s more than curiosity…”

“You don’t know me.” I stand abruptly, not willing to listen to any more. “Life is my calling, not death. I have fought death since I was a child. I’ve learnt to live with this curse, but that doesn’t mean to say that I will embrace it now.”

“You misunderstand us. We are not asking you to embrace death, we are asking you to help free us from it,” Mihr signs, standing with me.

I open my mouth to protest but am stopped short when he begins to sing. Right here, in the middle of my kitchen, the silent one sings to me. I didn’t think he was capable. Even Ether is as shocked as I am.

“Mihr…” he says, wonder and bewilderment matching my own.

My reaction is immediate and overwhelming. It’s as though Mihr has speared a knife directly into my heart and twisted it. But his voice is also soothing; the lament of a lover to his beloved, the soft cadence of a man filled with hope. A voice both pure and filled with an unimaginable, painful darkness. Yet, despite that darkness, it soothes me. A lullaby relaxing my muscles, comforting me. I feel safe. He makes me feel safe.

I am struck dumb.

Mihr’s voice is beautiful, perhaps not as heart-wrenching as Gabe’s. I guess it has a different kind of beauty. Even so, it calls to me, to a part I’ve tried to bury, but just like all the times before, my body begins to react. My skin prickles with a dangerous heat, my breathing slows to match the rhythm of his song, and my body sways to the sound. I shut my eyes in a futile attempt to block at least one of my senses, but it doesn’t help. There is no shutting off the sound, I can no more do that than stop my heart from beating. I sense Mihr’s approach, the air crackles with it.

I don’t move, I can’t.

The pull is too strong. I am captured by it.

I cannot move, even when I feel something delicate stroke against the skin of my arm. I fall deeper into the music as another featherlight touch brushes over my cheek.

Mihr’s voice soothes me, moves me. There are no words to the song. This is both a song filled with silence and full to the brim with meaning.

Emotion builds in my chest, cracking open my heart. I don’t know if it is joy or pain, happiness or fear that I feel. I only know that I cannot fight it. That I will only be free when the last note drops from his lips and even then, I’m not so sure.

For long minutes I allow his singing to wash over me. Slowly, with every note that passes his lips, with every soft stroke against my skin, I accept his gift for what it is. This isn’t just a simple act of him singing, this is so much more than that. A man who refuses to speak has given me his heart-song. He is giving a precious piece of himself to me so that I can trust him in return.

Finally, the song ends.

I open my eyes, swaying on my feet as he stands over me. His wings are wrapped around my body. They are not shielding me, protecting me from the elements like Gabe’s had, but holding me, comforting me. They glisten like a raven’s wings in the artificial light and this time Mihr doesn’t pull away when I touch them. They are soft, so very soft. I trail my fingers over the delicate fronds. My skin tingles.

“I saw you struggling with all that we’ve revealed, with the darkness you sense, but believe me, daughter of Celeste and Eos, missing daughter of Clan Vitae,” Mihr signs rapidly, pointing to me then pressing a finger against his chest. “We do not wish for this death sentence. We need to be free from it the same as you. Will you help us unlock these chains? Will you set us free? Will you help us live again?”

The soft wisp of air passes over my skin as his fingers move in speech. The feathers of his wings ripple almost imperceptibly against my back, yet I feel their touch burn through my clothes like they had beneath my fingertips.

Mihr isn’t asking me to embrace death after all. He is asking me to set them free, to help them steal back their lives. When I look up into his summer-blue eyes, a tentative smile pulls at his lips, two dimples appearing in the apple of his cheeks. Just like his singing, I sense his smile is another gift rarely bestowed on people. It breaks my final resolve.

“Yes. I will help you,” I say. “On one condition.”

“What condition is that?” Mihr asks, unfurling his wings from around me. I watch as they fold against his back.

“That you take me home to Ever Vale. I need to see where I came from.”