CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
J ules knew instinctively that his power was a chrysalid not yet ready to unfurl. If he used it, he might destroy more than he could save. He was quiescent. Selene, on the other hand, was vital. Like life itself distilled. And as though jealous of that, the Imperium Bellum was becoming something less. His power swelled, lashing at the room around him, tearing chunks out of the stone and ripping up slabs of floor in disintegrating waves, destroying everything it touched. More powerful, more unhinged.
Jules watched Selene hungrily, eyes drawn to her as though he was a firefly battering itself against a lantern and she was the light inside. He would willingly die smashing his body to that light if he had to, just to be close to her.
Overhead, the dome creaked with the moan of a dying animal. One that had dragged itself somewhere quiet to die alone. He couldn’t worry about the architecture—even as it threatened to collapse in on them—Selene was battling for her life.
Cesare was syphoning his power direct from the Deathless God, drawing on it greedily like he might never get enough.
Jules stared at the captive God. A fiery thread connected him and the spear, showing him where to strike for a killing blow like the ones he’d always been able to see on the battlefield. All it would take was a shift in the spear’s angle, a slight twist, and an upward thrust, and God would be released from his suffering.
Humanity’s God.
And his father.
With an almost hysterical urge to laugh, Jules considered the quandary before him. Patricide or deicide, which was the greater sin?
He recalled Baliel’s words from the masquerade. He will not die , he’d said. I won’t let him.
Baliel was wrong, because Selene was too far gone.
If Jules waited, she would die.
To save Selene, he would need to kill the Deathless God himself.
Like a frisson of distant lightning, Jules could feel the faintest flutter of Baliel’s presence on the furthest edge of his senses. He was somewhere in the Vatican and moving toward them, but he wasn’t close enough.
‘ Dieu Immortel ,’ he breathed. ‘I’m sorry.’
He didn’t hear his words through his own ears—he heard them magnified via his father’s power and, distantly, through Selene.
Through their connection here in this strange chamber.
Through God’s blood and his own and the borrowed blood in her veins.
Following that thread of power he’d always been able to see, Jules reached for the spear. He experienced Selene’s moment of surprise and grief as he grasped the spear and threw all his strength into driving it home.
There were so many reasons he wanted to do this—so that Selene would not burn herself out, so that Cesare couldn’t grow so strong he could overwhelm her, so that they’d have a chance of surviving this and killing Cesare. But he also wanted to release the Deathless God from his suffering. Though it hurt to know Baliel was so near and he would never have the chance to save him.
As the spear broke ribs, splitting God open and spilling a waterfall of golden blood to the floor, a pair of hands closed over his own. Delicate pianist’s fingers with a will of iron behind them. Selene was nearly sobbing in pain as she leaned her shoulder against his. ‘Wait! We can free him.’
Through the faint connection, he could feel her desire to atone. To finish what her father started. To thwart Cesare. But most of all she wanted this because it was right .
Because what the Vatican had done was so horribly wrong.
He stumbled back with one of Selene’s hands on his chest. She grasped the shaft with her other hand and pulled, dragging it from her God’s body with one final vicious yank before flinging it away. The spear embedded itself a foot into the wall. A sound like the cracking of thick lake ice resonated around the space as fissures appeared in the stone.
Then the Deathless God stirred.
Terrible eyes opened, revealing no hint of sclera, only burning, roiling gold in first one pair, then a second.
Agony twisted the handsome face as his back arched and the skin of his stomach stitched back together. Muscles rippled, bunching, as he wrenched an enormous limb from the crucifix, pulling twelve-inch nails loose as his chains fell.
The ground shook when he dropped to the floor, his ankles buckling so he collapsed to his knees. Jules pushed Selene behind him. The Deathless God cocked his head and flames licked over his long limbs. The same magic Baliel had used at the masquerade seemed to manifest clothes from flame. Even though they were almost identical to Jules’s, they weren’t quite right, as though made from a second-hand description.
Standing, he pulled iron nails from his flesh as he strode past them, the four burning eyes utterly intent on Cesare. When he reached the Imperium Bellum, he grasped Cesare in veined hands and threw him through the chamber wall.
Unhurriedly the Deathless God followed.
Selene and Jules shared a look and scrambled through the hole after them, emerging in time to see the Deathless God tearing each of Cesare’s arms out by the root—the way a child might pluck off dragonfly wings—in the gold lantern light of a Vatican courtyard.
A high, uncanny sound tumbled from him as he tore out the last arm, throwing it hard enough to behead a statue. The Deathless God was giggling, taking insane glee in dismembering Cesare.
Finally, the Deathless God slammed Cesare into the stone by his shoulders. Once. Twice. When the Deathless God dropped him on the fractured stone, the Imperium Bellum was utterly still.
Moonlight trickled through cypresses, illuminating the Deathless God— Arius , Jules recalled—but there was no light of recognition in the Deathless God’s eyes when they settled on Jules. Only the pain of madness. Only the sort of emptiness left behind by infinite losses.
Something that was not quite hatred twisted his expression as he approached.
When their eyes met, his brows crumpled predatorily. He might snarl or tear Jules’s throat out with his teeth. Neither would shock him.
Jules stepped in front of Selene.
She was fading. Shadows crackled around her eyes where power had burned her sockets black. It was as though her body could barely hold it all, and flickering gold lit her veins as though burning her from the inside and Jules had the awful realization that it might be too late for her as well. A shadowy serpent twined around her bicep, the needles of its ribs slicing her skin to ribbons.
She had pushed it too far in her final stand against Cesare while he agonized over his choice to kill his father.
The Deathless God raised a hand, as though to grasp Jules’s throat in his fist, and a figure coalesced out of the darkness behind the fallen God.
Baliel seemed to sharpen around the edges and his youthful body changed—limbs lengthening, hair burning with blue fire. With terribly sad eyes, he looked from Jules to his son, bearing witness to the lack of recognition there. His blue eyes were dark with grief as he took in all Arius had lost. His grief was for Jules, too.
Between blinks, he was beside his son. Equal in size. He laid an enormous palm on his shoulder, the touch triggering a change in the captive God. The Deathless God’s eyes cleared and his perfect lips parted as if to speak.
Breath stuttering, Jules took an unsteady step forward. But Selene’s fragile weight against him held him back. Her breath was strained, whistling in a way that was deeply wrong. Still, he couldn’t look away from the man who had been God. Baliel’s blue flames engulfed them, their forms flickering. Jules bit the inside of his cheek.
The coiling flame on Selene’s sword was quenched by an explosive wave of energy like a collapsing star. She buckled. He caught her beneath her knees and cradled her against his chest.
Baliel shifted, and for a moment his hand reached toward Jules from the flames.
I’m proud of you. Baliel’s voice was indistinguishable from the crackling of the blue flames, and it might have been inside his mind. Jules tore his eyes away as Baliel and his father disappeared within the blinding fire. When the flame died, nothing remained but ashen footprints.
Jules dragged in a breath, relief and sadness warring for primacy.
Selene’s power was still a roiling, burning thing inside her, not yet emptied out after so many years. Her cheek rested heavy against his collarbone. Heavy as death. And in her cold, still body only the core of his father’s power burned hot.