ORIANA

Reality was unbearably plain; naught but a crudely hewn passage that turned on itself, scarred by overlapping runes I couldn't decipher. A threadbare rug tried its best to break our fall, but my skin was determined to depart from my knees, the sensation all the more excruciating for the fact that my body had just been born again. Every nerve sang with excruciating awareness, a sensation shared by Rana, if her cursing to my left was any indication.

I took great comfort from her presence. Not eviscerated, then, though it had been an uncomfortably close thing. The evidence of our close call was already fading away, but Rya's Blessing reassured me it was very much real. No sooner than I registered the sting of the graze it was whisked away by a laving tongue of heat; only bloody patches on the ancient wool suggested I'd ever been injured by the time I made it to my feet, and they were only the freshest of many. A cruel rite of passage for those who survived the Final Sunset.

"You made it through." Kyara's voice was cold and harsh. "Both of you, deemed worthy."

I assumed the disappointment in her tone was aimed at me: the outsider, the upstart. Which was why my eyes narrowed on the High Priestess, because how was it that she was here, accompanied by a Sun Warrior no less?

The armoured giant had put away his sword in favour of fresh linens, white as freshly fallen snow, and oddly cool like it, too. The robe was a balm to my flushed skin as I slipped it on; the air in this dim chamber was uncomfortably humid, like the Blood Moon cooking hut used to be when we were making several vats of soup at once.

Rana heard the creak of metal and stuck out both hands — in the wrong direction. All my organs sank, twisting into a tight knot as I took the robes on her behalf and helped pull them over her head, dismayed by her reversion to blindness. The scarring was gone, but it seemed her sight had not returned in this realm.

Then I remembered the ease with which she crossed the chasm and I wondered. Her senses were keener than the edge of Sebastian's blades; if she was pretending infirmity, what was she hoping to gain?

"When were you going to tell me there's another way in?" Rana asked plaintively.

Kyara's back stiffened. "When you were deemed worthy, as I was."

"You're only worthy if you walk through the falls," she rebutted. "Touching it doesn't count."

The High Priestess's cheeks turned the ruddy colour of a plum. "How dare you."

"And what about him?" Rana pressed, fumbling for the pale strip of silk the Sun Warrior offered next, twin to her mother's. Refusing the warrior's help, my friend tied it sloppily over her own eyes, a hint of her old irreverence showing.

The Warrior stepped back. Light from the falls glinted off his elaborate helmet, wrought to mimic the shape of a wyvern's head. "No," he said gruffly. There was something eerily familiar about his voice, but the way it echoed in his helm frustrated my attempts at recognition. "I did not pass through the falls."

Kyara pursed her lips. "Of course you are worthy," she said imperiously. "Rana, your father is the oldest of flames. Chosen by the Goddess Herself for his exceptional service in past lives —and this one. It is only right that he should be here. At my side, and yours.

Rana's skin turned ashen. "So you're him."

The helmeted response was eerily inhuman. "Aye."

"Want to tell me where you've been the past fifty years?" she barked. "How could you leave me alone with her?"

"You speak as though it were a choice," he hissed.

"You left! Of course that's a choice!"

"Laying eyes upon the Goddess is as much punishment as reward. When you were born, you were quiet. Sickly. Rya's power threatened to burn clean through your infant body, so I left to seek a medicine woman in the west who could achieve great miracles of healing; I thought perhaps that she might be of assistance."

"Why not go to the phoenix?" she asked.

"And risk the like of Rya's power overwhelming you? Nay. I needed a counter magic. Something grounding, cooling — to say nothing of that beast's true colours. But I was waylaid on my journey," he explained, turning to face me. "Trapped deep under the ground, in cold-blooded flesh. It wasn't until Red broke the river-nymph's curse that I was able to return."

Horror dawned on me. The voice. The bearing. The timeline. All of it matched up. "Sol?"

Honey-blonde locks spilled from the helm as he twisted it off and tucked it under one arm. There was no mistaking those bushy brows; the hawkish glare; the stubborn set of his jaw, so like my friend's that I almost staggered to see them side by side. By the Gods.

Kyara's fingers twitched. "His name is Solas."

Did I detect a hint of jealousy? It was absurd enough to that I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing, but the urge was doubly powerful for the shock of it all.

"My name is whatever she desires," Sol snapped.

"Hold up a second." Rana's words were choked, as if her throat didn't want to relinquish them. "Aren't you the guy who told Sebastian to go fetch?"

"My mistake," Sol said, shrugging one shoulder. "I assumed he was trained."

A cold fury swept through me, but Kyara's blustering anger beat me to the punch. "You overstep, Solas. That girl is not your charge. By divine right, I am."

Sol bared his teeth. "Nay, she is my liberator — and you my jailor!"

"I did not send you away," she snarled. "You left. Do not blame me for wandering into a fool's trap and —"

"I did everything for you!" Sol roared. "Gave up everything, and you didn't even search for me!"

"Of course you did. I am your High Priestess!" she shrieked. "It is your duty!"

"You are a pretender. Rya's Blessing passed clean through you and did not take. May our flame wither and die, for my soul now belongs to another!"

I was not prepared for the gauntlets that clapped my face, squishing my cheeks together uncomfortably as he dragged my head up so high that my neck strained to be pulled so far from my body. Sol mashed his lips against mine before my mind could catch up with the humiliating reality of his kiss; my body froze against my will and I hung there, dazed as a beached fish. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

A choking sound came from someone — Rana, perhaps? "Rya's tits."

By a cruel twist of fate, or complete mockery of luck, sparks showered around us as Sol pulled away, his eyes gleaming with triumph. It was only when molten globs of feathers landed on his spiny pauldrons that I realised somebody — something — was passing through the Final Sunset.

First came an enormous paw, with sterling talons that reminded me of a hawk. They shredded the ancient carpet like cobwebs as the creature pushed through the wall of flame, fangs bared in a silent snarl of pain.

Haloed in silver, exuding icy waves of power that made gooseflesh speckle my skin, a hair-raising mix between a wolf and bird passed through the flames. Magnificent wings were tucked against its back, but the monster shrank before I could admire them in full, colour and form melting and merging. Only one thing stayed true: the bloody glare he fixed on Sol.

"Get your fucking hands off my mate."