Page 120 of Fire to the Stars

“You and Diumadeus,” I say. “There must be something you can do.” I refuse to believe that fawna wasn’t a sign of good luck.

“You humans like to pretend we are responsible for your every fortune and misfortune. We are creators. Celestial sculptors, if you will. Gods by your definition, perhaps, but not omnipotent.”

“You havemagic.”

“Not at this moment.”

I waver. “So you’re not—”

“Cursing humans to destroy the mortal realm?” He blinks slowly. “No. I am not.”

“Then how do they have your magic?”

“They take it by force.” He gestures to the stone floor at his feet. “It is as you see.”

I approach the cell bars and hold my lantern to expose more of the ground. Several rivulets are carved into the cavern floor, too deliberate to be erosion. They run between the cell’s bars and combine to form a long dip in the ground at my feet, like a trough, the source of which begins near Noctu’s seat.

“Eau de vie,” Noctu says. “That is the name my fanatics have given to my blood.”

Eau de vie.Water of life.The words that I trusted my gut to follow, that I convinced Claire to place all her hopes on.

“Eau de vie”—I drop to my knees—“is your blood.”

“During the Dark Days, it was common knowledge thatmagic lives in the blood.” Noctu’s chains rattle as he settles back against the stone. “Now my worshippers harvest mine to drink. They skewer me through the bars with their weapons once per month.”

“What do they gain from your blood? Just healing powers and an animal form?”

“Immortality.”

Cold sweat drips down my back. “Immortality?”

“Yes. But without Diu’s blood to complete it, their immortality is as much a sickness as it is a boon. It requires maintenance, or their bodies will revert to their true age. For them, that means death.”

The cultist Marshal Bard arrested looked horribly sick with that pallid, veiny skin. He begged for eau de vie as if his life depended on it. But he wasn’t sick, exactly. That wasaccelerated aging. He needed his next dose of Noctu’s blood to keep his body in stasis. That’s proof enough that he’d lived beyond a mortal lifespan.

Plus the way he spoke the Old Tongue, like it was his default language…

The absurdity of it makes me hesitate, but I have to ask—just to confirm I’m not the madman most of Florent thinks I am.

“Are your ‘fanatics’ the original Immortals?”

“The very same.”

I reel. Ever since Ravinfort, we’ve been up against Florent’s very first sinners. Evil,greedycriminals who committed such terrible violence that the Gods ripped magic from their blood and cut their lives short. I reallyamlucky just to have survived this long.

“What if Claire drank your blood?” I ask, clinging to thatluck. “I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to ask. But she’s still within her normal lifespan, and it’s better for her to turn into a harmless owl than a dragon.”

“I cannot remove Diu’s magic. It is beyond my domain.”

“If she could just try it—”

“If she drinks my blood, she will become immortal,” he replies, “but doomed to suffer forever from two curses, not one. Even your weapons would not be enough to give her a mercy killing.”

Owl during the full moon. Dragon on Ignition Day. Fated to lose even more control of her body, and wake up in strange locations with no help or resources. She’d suffer at the hands ofgenerationsof people who loathe her existence, forever deprived of a normal life.

“Still, it’s your blood. Your magic. You define what it can do,” I say, racking my brain. “You made those cultists—Immortals—reliant on it. You made their owl form harmless, didn’t you?”

“No. I did not choose the way my magic manifested.”