That night, the two of them felt fit for dancing.

    It had been a routine, Nilsa realized, that the godly parties had worked a particular way. It would start out calm and polite, nice instruments playing behind beautiful ballroom dancing. The gods could walk around, greeting guests like they actually had time or an interest in the business of the capital people. Then, later in the night, the music would run faster and the lights would dim as alcohol started to make its imprint and the Lords and Ladys who had been so collected only an hour ago turned into drunken animals.

    Caspian's party had broken that routine. His party started untame, and if Ronan's promise was true, it would end absolutely wild.

    There was nobody in the room over the age of thirty, and not a single gown in sight. They'd been swapped out for short, tight dresses that contained as many sequins and sparkles that could fit on the surface. The men didn't bother for suits, instead dressing in loose dress shirts and tight pants.

    "Perfect for dancing," Ronan told her.

    Nilsa knew that what they'd been through today had an effect on both of them. She tried her best not to assume anything, even when she had so many questions that didn't have answers. At the same time, it told her a lot. She didn't doubt his intentions with her, not one bit.

    The ballroom was fairly dark with just enough light seeping through that everything shimmered. It was oddly beautiful, the provocative dancing and the public displays of affection through a crowd of sparkles.

    "I think it would be a perfect time for such a thing," Nilsa replied, and Ronan didn't hesitate before moving them to the dance-floor.

    The fast dancing was almost enough to make her forget about that day in the Dark Room, what the shadow's whispered and implied about Ronan, things that had her in a loop of thought while she tried to pick together some explanations.

    She felt like she'd been intruding on his thoughts, especially when Gideon started to speak to him through the shadows. It wasn't real, but she hadn't realized that he'd been concerned about her mortality. She hadn't been thinking of her Archai skills, or specifically the skill that allowed her soul to jump from body to body. Even if she wanted to, the idea was absolutely terrifying, and if she was honest, she had no idea how to do such a thing. Rieka would help her. In the future, if Nilsa had one with the gods, Rieka would most likely urge Nilsa to switch bodies once this one started to die out, if not just to see it up close. Nilsa didn't like how it sounded, like her body was just a meat-bag that was waiting to be thrown away when her soul outgrew it.

    "What are you thinking about now?" Ronan mumbled against the curve of her neck. Ever since they'd left the Dark Room, they had kept each other as close as they could as if they'd suddenly be ripped apart like they'd been only hours before. Ronan had a hand on her hip that had rested there since they'd walked into the party, and Nilsa had a bracing hand on his shoulder while she danced.

    "I'm thinking that I'm glad I'm here with you right now," she mumbled back.

    "Other than what?"

    It was hard to hear each other over the loudness of the music, music that Nilsa had no clue of where it came from but enjoyed greatly. "Anywhere else," she replied honestly. "It's nice to be with someone, nicer than I'd thought it would be. I suppose I never realized how alone I've felt."

    He was quiet for moments before replying. "I understand. More than you realize."

    "I think I do realize." The Shadow Room was a monstrosity that allowed his own demons to haunt him, and he was forced to sit there and listen. That was torture on its own, the words. Nilsa didn't want to imagine what her own nightmares looked like while they whispered in her ear. She surprised herself when saying she wanted to go back, but she knew that she wanted to help him more than anything. Citali had been right. They had their own issues, and she was just discovering his.

    "I think you realize more than anybody ever has before."

    They left the party three hours later when their feet had gotten horribly sore and their heads started to pound from the great volume of it all. Nilsa wasn't able to get her dress off before she fell asleep on the bed, which Ronan explained was the 'Caspian Spirit' before he drifted off right beside her.

    He was gone by the morning, in which Nilsa wondered how he'd been able to get out of bed considering the massive headache she woke with. She'd kill for some godly healing powers.

    Caspian's game was plain and simple: he drugged them all with some powerful drug that made their heads spin and their feet stumble. The objective was similar to Gideon's: be the last one standing. This meant, the gods carelessly swung around weapons like they were toys, attempting to hit whatever blurry target they thought they saw. Apparently, the drug had side effects that left the gods seeing objects that weren't actually there, so while Gideon and Czarin tried battling ten feet apart, Thorin was off swinging at an invisible opponent a distance away. The game was won by Alaeca accidentally stabbing Caspian clean through the heart while she was attempting to kill some monster that she thought she'd seen.

    Chryseis had been livid, and the rest of the gods weren't too happy about how they'd looked like fools fighting something that wasn't actually there. Nilsa thought it was funny, and other than a few snickers that she hadn't been able to hold in once she saw the stab wound that Ronan had mistakenly given himself, was able to keep that opinion to herself.

    Ronan, though unwillingly, left for whatever mission he had an hour after the game, leaving Nilsa to wander around the palace as nobody had summoned her yet. So, when she opted to travel to Rieka's study, she was shocked to find the goddess in the middle of a rearranged study, the goddess looking  no less than insane as she ran from table to table when a new idea popped into her head. Nilsa had never seen anything less organized.

    The tables had been situated into a large circle that trapped the goddess inside. There were hundreds of books open on the tables, and even more pieces of parchment that had half of a sentence written before the goddess had gotten distracted. Other items littered the tables too, but Nilsa wasn't able to name them.

    "What is going on here?" She questioned.

    Rieka ran across the circle to flip to a page of one book on a table before rushing to a piece of parchment that only received a few messy words before the goddess was moving again. "I'm figuring out what the hell that poison is."

    Ever since the day at the lake, there hadn't been any progress in Rieka's search for answers, and if there had been, it wasn't significant enough to tell Nilsa. "Do you have any leads?"

    "Many," the goddess answered. Her inky hair had fallen out of its tight bun and down her face. She hadn't bothered to apply the usual cosmetics to her face after Caspian's game, and while Nilsa didn't mind, it was particularly out of the ordinary for the goddess to wave off such a thing. "But I doubt any of them are going to work."

    Nilsa  exited the study to quickly whisper something to a palace worker before she returned, pulling up two chairs before a table before sitting in one of them. "Come here," she said. "Sit down with me."

    The goddess scoffed. "Sit? I don't have time for such a thing."

    "No, but you have a cluttered mind. The goddess I know would say that you won't accomplish anything while your mind is occupied elsewhere." Rieka's mind was all over the place, all over different pieces of forgotten parchments to different books which she struggled to find through the mess.

    Rieka stilled, bracing her hands against a table before closing her eyes and sighing. "I've taught you too well, Maistell." She gave the books one last glance before sliding over a table to meet Nilsa on the other side. She sat down, resting her head in her hands as she slouched in exhaustion. The goddess hadn't been at the party last night, and the last Nilsa had heard, had been up all night in the study. If Nilsa had to guess, half of Rieka's stumbling during the games had been from being sleep deprived.

    "Have you considered resting?"

    Rieka shook her head. "I can't sleep while I know that I don't have answers. Velpavane is coming, and I don't know when, and I will not leave us defenseless when they do." Nilsa didn't think they were defenseless by any means. They'd found a suitable match, but it didn't mean that their abilities were any less effective. They still had fight left in them, enough to defeat Velpavane and have plenty left over when they did. "My siblings are expecting something, and I will not rest until I give them such."

    "Nobody is expecting anything," Nilsa countered. "You are not alone."

    "I am expecting something." Rieka was her own shadow. Ronan had many that haunted him, but Rieka walked around with her head as her enemy, always fighting for her to do better. Nilsa could see that much.

    "Then we will find something, but nothing is going to be done while you run around like you've just discovered your feet."

    Just on time, the palace worker entered the study with a tray of drinks, and Nilsa mumbled a thank you before they rushed out.

    The goddess gave the amber liquid a golden glance. "Are you telling me to indulge in drinking in the study?" Rieka barely let a crumb into that study.

    Nilsa shrugged, grabbing a glass and holding it out in a cheer. "If you won't, I sure will."

    Rieka looked at Nilsa with something that almost looked judgmental before picking up a glass of her own and clicking it against Nilsa's before taking a large sip of it.

    "When's the last time you ate?" Nilsa questioned.

    "Two days ago," Rieka answered without missing a beat, "but I've just let you break my rules, and I will not let you do it any further."

    "I'll take what I can get." She gestured to Rieka with her glass. "Talk to me, Rieka."

    The goddess scoffed. "I've been told you give excellent advice, but I'll pass."

    "Why so?"

    "Because nobody has waited around to talk to me about such things before and I don't know why that would change now."

    Nilsa smirked. "Really? Because what I've gotten, is that you're talking to me."

    A scowl. "Don't play games.

    "I'm not. I'm giving you a break, maybe spike up some ideas in that brilliant mind. You ask me why that should change, and I say because someone is here to talk to you."

    The goddess hesitated before locking her jaw. "You're changing things, Archai." Nilsa waited. "I'm afraid it will be my fault if my siblings die in this war."

    "Why?"

    "Because I am the goddess of wisdom and knowledge. I am supposed to know about these things. I should be able to find out what this is, and easily. I remember everything, and somehow this has slipped me? The very thing that is supposed to save the lives of my siblings and my parents? Possibly you, if it came to it, Nilsa. I can handle a lot of things, but the death of family is not one of them."

    "It wouldn't be your fault. You did not poison the river, nor are you the one holding the blades."

    "But I can stop it. I know I can."

    Nilsa agreed. The goddess could, and she fully believed that she could and would find a cure for the poison. She'd find a way out of them. It was up for time to decide whether or not all the gods made it out in that process. That was something the goddess might not be able to control. "I agree, but do not blame yourself for something that has not ever happened yet."

    Rieka shook her head. "I try, I really do. I miss being a cold-hearted bitch, that's for sure." They chuckled. "But Velpavane has taken that from me as well. It's almost a blessing, you know, to be able to feel again. I haven't worried, truly worried about something for a long time."

    "And when was that."

    Rieka paused. "I suppose I could tell you. You know him better than I might by now." So it was about Ronan. "When my brother and I were still mortal, he was a thief, stealing whatever he could to help pay for our rent and our food. He didn't care what it took as long as we survived, but I worried every day that he was going to get caught, that somebody would have a knife in their hands the same time he had his down their pocket."

    Nilsa could barely see him as a thief, but she could understand why he'd done such a thing.

    "When Lennox offered us immortality, I immediately planned on saying yes. I'd nearly forgotten about my brother due to my dire thirst for knowledge and resources, and he only accepted the offer to be with me. I realized that I made a mistake somewhere while saying yes when I saw what his powers did to him."

    Caspian had told Nilsa that Ronan's powers were different than theirs, and Nilsa was just now figuring out why. None of the other gods' enemies were themselves.

    "He turned off, and in the span of two months, he changed. He used to smile and laugh like he didn't have a care in the world, and then it was like I was talking to a ghost."

    Nilsa didn't fully agree. She still saw that in him, especially when they were alone with nobody else to bother him. When it was like that, it reminded her of when Johnathon and Marge were only sixteen and fully in love, childhood friends who had grown to something more. Nilsa, only two years younger, aged right beside them without anybody, and until Ronan, she'd been okay with that.

    "And then the poison came, and when you'd dropped down during our training with Caspian, I'd thought the world had gone to hell."

    Nilsa raised a brow. "I remember you saying that I was a research project not too long ago."

    Rieka rolled her eyes. "We both know that it's not like that anymore. You're the closest thing to family we have outside each other, and if you'd died right there and stayed dead, it would leave a mark on us forever, and I'm ashamed to say it, but Velpavane might have been able to kill us easily without you."

    "I'm not the one fighting on the front lines."

    "No, but your death would have started our demise. I thought that Ronan was going to go with you the moment your life left your body, or else he'd nearly kill Chryseis to convince her to bring you back."

    Ronan had mentioned Chryseis quite a bit whenever Nilsa got herself into a bit of trouble, and it had taken a long while to realize why.

    "You are family too, Rieka," Nilsa said. "I used to be alone in this kingdom with nothing but an Archai inside my head and an extraterrestrial watching my every move. I'd hated you for ripping me away from that."

    "You're not helping."

    "But," Nilsa continued, "that's different now. I'm glad I met you and your siblings. I'm glad that I'm not alone anymore."

    Rieka stayed silent. "I felt bad when Gideon ordered us to take care of those villages and I saw what damage you'd been taking care of before you arrived. If you weren't being hunted down by Velpavane, I might have let you go, but Ronan would have gone with you."

    Nilsa bit her lip. Everything was advancing so fast, especially when they all thought that they were going to die at any minute. "No hard feelings." She set the glass on the table. "Shall we find that cure of yours?"

    Rieka hummed. "I thought you wanted to talk about my feelings."

    "We can do that later, after you're able to sleep tonight."

    Rieka waved her hand and the both of them appeared in the middle of the enclosed circle of tables. "Give me your best shot."

    Nilsa circled the space, observing the books and parchment as she did. "Czarin spoke of witches. Have you checked there?'

    "I've checked that and more. I don't think it's a spell, or even a curse. I think I can't get it because it's a particular witch, one I haven't heard of before, or one that's not coming to mind."

    "Do they have their own special abilities?" Admittedly, Nilsa didn't know much about witches other than some horror stories that she'd heard during her travels. Some called her a witch for her abilities, but it wasn't being implied literally.

    "No. They have clans, their own entities that they worship in order to get their powers. They can individually specialize in different magic, but they can't differ too far from the path. Entities will only offer up as much power as a witch can handle."

    Nilsa recalled her prophet training where Rieka and her spent hours naming different beings that could be sending her prophecies, all until one clicked. "Feel up to some suggestions?"