20 Imogen
Imogen
Cupped in Agatha’s hand sat a small piece of flesh—trimmed from her own thigh—in a small puddle of blood.
She perched at the edge of the pool, face set with determined focus, repeating the words to the spell I’d just taught her.
“Remember, perform the spell, then keep away from the water,” I said to Agatha. “I’ll be under the surface to see that it’s worked.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Theodore asked, glaring at the dagger I’d secured in my waistband. “Eusia wants to form a bond with you the way she did with your mother. Why would you get in and let her?”
I shook my head. “She can’t do it alone. There’s a spell, a ritual she’d have to perform to connect us in that way, and our bond prevents her from doing so. She needs a helper.” I shot Halla a scowl. “And she doesn’t have one.”
I set a hand to Agatha’s shoulder. “Are you sure—”
“Don’t ask me again, Imogen.” But Agatha stared at the surface of the pool, unblinking, breaths short and shallow.
“All right.” I kept my voice as soothing as I could. “Focus your intention on Eusia. On her death.”
Agatha gave me a tight nod.
Only some of Lachlan’s upset had eased. “And you’re certain she has to be back in that pool to do this?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know if she needs to be all the way in. But I’ve only performed spells on the water… and seeing as how this is Agatha’s first spell, it seems wise to be close.” I looked to Agatha. “Don’t go all the way in. Just your feet will do. I’ll keep those veins away from you.”
Her narrow shoulders settled, she gave me a grateful nod. Beside her, I set my feet into the warm water. I checked the dagger in my waistband once more, when I felt a hand at the back of my neck.
Theodore knelt beside me. Though his warm hand on me was our only point of contact, I could feel him everywhere.
My lungs grew tight, my skin warm. Halla still sat in the far corner, but Theodore was recklessly unabashed by her proximity.
He leaned in slowly, mouth so close to my ear that a shiver sped down my spine.
“Don’t make me come in after you, Immy.”
So instead of walking into hell alone, you will take me with you.
Bringing him down with me was precisely what I’d been trying to avoid. He needed to stay behind, so that I could keep him as my waypoint. As a beacon to guide me back.
His hand fell away in a rush, and he resumed his spot close to Agatha, ready to care for her when the spell was done.
I glanced around the chamber one last time. Halla still hunched in the corner, her empty gaze fixed on the far wall. Lachlan sat at Agatha’s other side, quiet and stern.
Then with a final steadying breath, I slipped into the pool.
The heated, slimy plunge was more unsettling the second time—the thick liquid, the tight walls. As I let myself sink, I felt the disruption of Agatha’s feet entering the water above me.
I fell for what felt like fathoms, down and down, before I drew near the veinous web.
It still hung lifeless, brushing against my body as I passed.
Once I was below it, the water’s pressure intensified.
The temperature dropped. No torchlight reached this far down, but as I sank, a new light beamed through the water below me.
I peered down at the single orb of sickly light. It reminded me of the spelled lights that Rohana had used in her windowless hut. Past it, not ten feet down, lay a gray, shriveled body.
Arms outstretched, I stopped my descent and stared.
The eerie glow and murkiness of the water made it look like the body twitched.
The spasm of a shoulder, the jolt of a too-thin leg.
A web of those same pallid veins stretched from the walls of the pool and connected themselves to the middle of the torso. Some attached to the sticklike limbs.
I began to lower myself further, but some portentous tightening in my middle stopped me.
I studied the body below me once more, trying to figure out why my skin prickled to see it—and then I realized.
Her hair. Hair she shouldn’t have. Long and dark, barely indistinguishable from the rippling shadows around her.
It covered her face, flowing around her head and shoulders like tall grass in a soft wind.
A spectral burn consumed my scalp as I remembered how magic had scorched it.
I’d pulled clumps of my own strands out after each spell I’d performed.
I floated lower, my heart wild and aching in my chest. I settled onto the slick floor of the pool beside the body and slowly reached toward its hovering tresses.
With care, I brushed them back. A shock of cold rushed down my arms, followed by a numbing heat.
My own face stared back at me. The eyes, darker than my own, were open and vacant.
Her lips were wider than mine, her jaw somewhat softer, but there was no denying that I’d been made in the very image of my mother.
As I cupped her slippery face in both my hands, I couldn’t call the sensation that rushed through my body shock.
Where else would my mother be, after all?
And yet, to see her, to touch her… I looked up toward the web above me, floating closer to the surface.
I followed the thick, ropy veins, noting the way they ran down the length of the pool, down to where my mother rested.
In the short time since I’d pulled Agatha from them, they’d begun to shrivel. Their ends turning black.
This was how Eusia had done it, then. This was the way she’d fed herself, the way she’d drained my mother so that she could stay alive and grow her own power. The clarity of it all sent a wave of sick through my stomach. The empress had taken Eusia and replaced her body with Agatha’s.
I keep it alive.
It. These veins and this vile pool that bound them. Their connection must have been symbiotic in some way. These veins carried life from one to the other.
I drew my thumb over Ligea’s sharp cheekbone.
Her skin was hard and slippery, like the flesh had turned to soap, but on that ridge of bone, down the line of her pert nose, was a smattering of tiny, iridescent scales.
I softly touched the curve of her nostril, her upper lip, and though her features remained still as a waxen figure, one of her legs gave a deliberate twitch.
My hands pulled away from her, my body jerking from the shock of her movement, but I couldn’t take my burning gaze from her. Could a spell bring her back? Could Theodore? But as I wracked my mind for a way to undo what Eusia had done, I was struck by the look on Ligea’s frozen face.
Anguish. Torment. Perhaps her heart still beat, but she’d died a slow, brutal death in every way that mattered. Eusia had emptied her.
The Great Goddess Ligea—powerful, terrifying, mesmerizing—had ended like this.
The queen lies drained of her divinity.
I’d told Theodore that I couldn’t let myself have hope we might one day be together, but in truth, I’d lied.
Despite how I’d fought to be rational, despite how I knew it was foolish and improbable, I’d clung to a scrap of that hope as tightly as a starving child would a stale crust of bread.
The possibility of a future with him was the faint glimmer guiding me through the darkness, but seeing my mother like this…
it extinguished that already weak light. It ground my meager scrap to nothing.
Tears clogged my throat as I took the dagger from my waistband. I tried to keep the questions from my mind—could she see me? Could she feel my touch?
The few parts of me that had somehow managed to remain soft were hardening with violent, blistering resolve.
I would take everything from Eusia—the Gods’ power she’d stolen, the Sirens she’d hunted.
She, and every one of her supplicants, would feel me like a coming storm.
They would crumple from the force. Self-sacrifice was no longer enough.
I wanted to watch the life drain from her with my own eyes.
I wanted her to know it was me who killed her.
With my dagger held firmly in my grip, I set a kiss to Ligea’s stiff cheek, and then I drove my dagger straight through her ribs until I felt it pierce her barely beating heart.