Chapter 32 Trapped #3
When he walks away, it takes every bit of Claudia’s strength not to chase after him, take hold of his hand, and never let it go for the rest of their lives, however long that may be.
After hurrying into her room, she leans against the closed door, trying not to scream.
She needs to collect herself. She needs to tell High Sage Triche to ensure that Cassius begins his own ascension trials in a matter of days. She needs to—
She stops. Time itself stops.
There, on her pillow, is Odette’s whole diary.
November 5th
I found a clue.
We went back to Starlake, and I searched through Cassius’s library again.
Finally, I found a book that gave me a shred of hope.
It said that the gods can be summoned with their given name.
If I could find Sidarphion’s true name—which is easier said than done considering that all evidence of him has been destroyed, and even the MacLeods’ personal library didn’t have an answer on it—I would be able to summon him.
And I knew just who to turn to: High Sage Triche.
He’s the closest anyone has come to godhood. Of course he would have to know the gods’ given names.
But I couldn’t simply ask him. I had to be smarter than that.
As a first-year, I’m not being taught how to cast yet, but I’ve always considered myself more advanced than most. I gave myself permission to learn faster than the others.
I stole a book from Professor Lamour’s classroom on linguistic magic, and I crafted the almost-perfect spell to get Triche to share the names of the gods with me.
For linguistic magic to work, the spell must be multivalent.
It has to, in some way, mean multiple things.
It can be palindromic, or an idiom, or even a poem.
Ambiguity, wordplay, and multiple interpretations are the pillars of our magic.
The more meanings or interpretations a phrase has, the more potent (and unfortunately unpredictable) the magic can be.
I’ve heard from the older Cygni that simple, short rhymes are the easiest place to start. Here is what I came up with: What are the given names of the gods? I know the titles are merely facades.
For someone who doesn’t really know what she’s doing, I think it’s quite clever.
I later spotted Triche across the Treaty, and his face was all red and flustered.
He was storming out, clearly heading toward something urgent.
I leapt from my chair and ran after him, catching up to him in the corridor.
When I forced him into a conversation, he was obviously distracted, which was exactly what I was hoping for.
If Triche was perfectly focused, he likely would’ve seen through my charm.
But something else was on his mind, which meant I had an opportunity to strike.
Like Lamour always says, it’s all about kairos. You must find the perfect timing, and that’s exactly what I did. I watched his eyes flicker and his mouth twitch when my spell echoed in his mind. I knew I had done it. I’ll admit it did not work perfectly. He didn’t give me the names outright.
But he did say this:
- The gods’ given names are not as secret as you might think, Miss Dufort. Look at them closely and you’ll see the truth for yourself.
I spent hours writing and rewriting their names, waiting for something to become clear.
And it did.
Of course.
Of COURSE.
The names of the gods are not names at all. They’re clues carved from their given names.
They’re anagrams.
November 6th
Diary, I have done it.
I have awoken the god of stars and nightmares, and I wish I had not. I have nothing that I wanted—no protection, no peace. Now I am a dead girl walking.
I now see why he was trapped. I see why he should stay trapped, and yet I am now fate-bound to free him.
I won’t write down exactly what I did. No one should ever be tethered to him the way I am.
But I will tell you this: I had to use all that I had—my body, my blood, and his name.
I was in the chapel alone. I sliced my palms and dipped my finger like a pen into my inky blood.
I lit the black candle with my magic and then pointed up toward the stars.
The tip of my finger burned. I screamed out for him.
His given name and his godly one. I wrote it in starlight, and the stars blinked back.
My head was then filled with this strange screaming coupled by burning.
It was as though every person in the world had their hot mouth pressed to my brain and they were screaming as hard as they could.
I’ve never heard anything like it. It was almost like I was hearing with my whole body—my open mouth caught sound from the air, my eyes vibrated from the spit of heavy consonants, and my hands wrapped around whole sentences.
That noise, so much of it, could’ve killed me. I felt it tearing through my brain. I feel the wounds, even now.
Then I heard his voice.
- Odette Dufort.
- Sidarphion. You are alive. You are awake.
I looked around the room, searching for a face, but the voice existed only in my mind.
- You are so afraid. I can taste it. Tell me what I can do to make that fear go away, he said.
- Someone here wants to kill me. I need you to protect me from them.
He moaned. It made my teeth rattle and my eyes shake.
- I’ll grant you protection and power beyond your wildest dreams. All you must do is promise to free me from the trap that has held me for the last century. It will be easy for a witch as powerful as you.
Every word he said made me feel like I was a star. Like I was as perfect as I’d always thought. It was validation for what I’d always known to be true, that I was different—better, smarter, stronger—than anyone else.
I am not a god’s gift to the world. I am the world’s gift to a god.
- I swear to free you, Sidarphion. I bow to you. I am yours.
- You, Odette Dufort, are my North Star.
Then came the worst. His voice slithered out of my brain and into my body. I felt it buzz on the tip of my tongue, felt it lick the underside of my skin. I hated having him inside me. It was like bugs crawling over and into my skin. Wrong, all wrong.
I felt his teeth shredding into my soul. He took an entire bite of it and swallowed it whole.
I knew then that I had done something wrong. All I wanted was for it all to be over.
- Tell me how to free you. I will do it now.
- I am bound to a cursed constellation of Dracoemagyl, the god who never was. So long as his blood still lives, the constellation cannot be undone. To release me, you must kill the last of his kin. Then you will burn the constellation, and I will be free.
Until that moment, I’d never asked myself if I thought I’d be capable of killing. But how hard could it be? Men do it all the time for less noble reasons than this, don’t they?
I was trying so hard to pretend that things were not already going wrong, but I knew I was in danger from the very second I heard his voice.
And then I thought, well, it’s either the case that I kill for him, or someone else kills me. I came to that chapel for protection, and godsdammit, I was going to get it, even if it bloodied my hands.
- Who is it?
- His name is Cassius MacLeod.
This is where my heart shattered. I felt Sidarphion’s sharp teeth inside me, ready to bite if I said the wrong thing.
I said the wrong thing anyway.
- I can’t. He’s my friend.
- You will.
He said it so calmly, so assured.
- No. I don’t accept. Keep your protection and your power. I will not hurt someone I love.
- You have already made the deal. If you do not fulfill the bargain, it will kill you instead. It’s him or you.
- Then it’s me, I said.
He hissed, his cold breath blowing over my heart.
- You say that now, but you don’t mean it. No one lays down their life for another. In the end, we all choose ourselves.
- You’re wrong.
I reached for his candle and tried to destroy it, but as soon as I touched it, it felt like I was bitten all over again.
Sidarphion laughed.
- You can be brave now, but you will change your mind when the pain of defiance sets in.
I wiped my bleeding palm on my robes and turned to leave the chapel. I couldn’t bear it anymore.
- You can’t hurt me. You are not Sidarphion anymore. You are nothing more than a voice in the dark. To the rest of the world, you are no longer real.
- You’ll see, North Star. You have already lost.
My bloody hand was pressed to the door.
- No, you’ll see, Dorian Ship.
But I know he’s right.
I am too afraid to fight.
The words blur on the page. Claudia can’t breathe. Can’t speak. Her entire body trembles with fear and rage and shame.
How did she not see? How has she been so naive?
Dorian Ship is Sidarphion. He is the god of stars and nightmares.
He wasn’t simply striking a bargain—he was stealing her blessing.
This is why she could defy Cassius’s curse of silence, why she’s tied to the origin and the end—she gave her soul away to the one who created it.
Dorian lied. He lied about everything. Claudia didn’t wake him at all.
Odette did. Odette’s was the first soul he tasted. His North Star. He tricked her into a sinister bargain—one that hinged on Cassius’s death. And when she refused, the bargain killed her.
Now, Claudia has taken Odette’s place in that fatal deal.
That means Cassius isn’t simply going to die.
Claudia is going to kill him.