Chapter 61 Baz
IT HAPPENED QUICKER THAN BAZ could stop it.
In truth, he was too shocked by Atheia running at him to even think of stopping it.
Because this was his sister—this face he hadn’t seen in almost a year, except in dreams and nightmares and hellish hallucinations.
He knew it wasn’t actually Romie; there had been no trace of her as Atheia and Sidraeus clashed in a dance of power, two deities circling each other like predators, a thousand years of rage brewing between the two and no way to put an end to each other.
And there certainly was no trace of her as she drove the knife into Baz’s middle.
He couldn’t understand it at first, why she would turn on him at all. But when he saw Sidraeus doubled in pain, he realized she’d hurt Baz to get away from him—a distraction she was using now to kill the gods.
Anger flashed on Clover’s face. A flicker of betrayal. He was supposed to kill the gods, not Atheia. Whatever truce had been between them was broken. Atheia wanted to claim power for herself, to end these gods that had been so very ready to sacrifice her.
As blood pooled out of him, as Kai reached for him, trying to stop the bleeding, desperate words and angry tears spilling from him, Baz could see with utter clarity how this would all end.
Baz would die here by his sister’s hand.
Clover would kill Atheia, and by extension, Romie.
He would destroy what was left of the gods.
He would squash Emory like a fly and get his army of restless souls to devour them all whole.
What is hope in the face of a tyrant god? What is hope against the kind of destruction there is no coming back from?
Chaos would win, just as Equilibris said. The damage was irreversible.
But Baz had practice reversing things that would otherwise be irreparable.
Reaper magic he could send back into the hands of an unsuspecting Tidecaller.
Collapsings he could stop by reverting silver blood back to red.
Unhallowed Seals he could undo so that magic flowed again in the veins of those who had been cut off from it.
He reached for Atheia with his magic. Willed the threads of time to pull her back, away from the gods, away from Clover, until she was standing in front of him with her dagger brandished toward him, its surface unbloodied, the wound in his middle yet to be inflicted.
Before she could plunge the knife into him, Baz said her name.
“Romie. Please.”
She faltered, pausing. He fought back tears.
Part of him wanted to gather her in his arms and never let go, to assure himself she was really here—that she hadn’t died at Dovermere like he’d spent all those long months after her disappearance believing.
She had simply disappeared through a door to other worlds, and now she had returned, and everything could be right between them again.
For a moment, he truly believed this was his sister.
She looked the same, after all. But her eyes shifted colors like a prism, the curve of her mouth like a cruel dagger, and Baz was suddenly reminded of the hallucination he’d seen on the path between heaven and hell, where Romie had bled Emory and every Eclipse-born of their silver blood.
Where she had sliced his own neck open with another dagger.
If his sister was still in there, if she still had some form of control over Atheia, it was clear that she no longer did in this moment. That Atheia alone held the reins.
And yet, she was still hesitating. Still had not plunged the knife into him.
“Romie, I beg you, if you’re in there—don’t let her do this.
Don’t let her destroy you by destroying those you love.
” Baz swallowed thickly. “We can go back home and be a family. It’s not too late for that, Ro.
Everything you’ve done—everything she’s done through you—it isn’t your fault.
I forgive you. We all forgive you. There is nothing to forgive. Please, just come back to us.”
Those kaleidoscope eyes glimmered with anger, her knuckles white around the dagger she still held. Power gathered in her free hand, Reaper magic dark and foreboding, as if death by knife would not suffice.
Baz’s stomach fell. It was too late to get through to his sister. But at least he had tried.
He closed his eyes, breathed one last “I forgive you,” and waited for death to strike.