Chapter 39 #2
Benedikt and the flippant ease with which he can shatter any tension. The mischief in his smile after he shielded me with a kiss.
Even though I can’t have everything my heart might want, I’ve gotten more than I’d have ever dared to imagine. That’s some kind of gift, isn’t it?
I don’t know who I should thank for it, but I have to keep going.
Hold on to the strength and faith they offered me. Push through the agony.
Another step.
Another.
Veering around a couple of jagged chunks of marble, I reach the last stair left before the gaping hole. A faint breeze cools the sweat on my face, traveling up through the opening to mingle with the open air on the platform.
When I straighten up as tall as I can with my hand still pressed against the inner wall, I can see Wendos’s head and shoulders.
I’ve made it. I’m close enough.
Land a dagger in his back, and he won’t be tossing around any more magic.
Maybe he’ll die, but at this point I don’t feel I can be incredibly picky about how this confrontation ends. A whole lot of other people will die if he finishes the joint sorcery he’s attempting.
As I ready my hand, Wendos sucks in an awed breath. “Yes. Yes! It’s coming together— Look at all that stone coming crumbling down.”
A distant crash reaches my ears even all the way up here. I lose my breath.
It’s almost too late.
I whip back my arm and fling the knife forward.
At the same moment, Wendos takes a step to the side.
I clamp my lips against a noise of protest. The knife flies true—and smacks into the flesh of his upper arm that’s now in its path.
Wendos yelps and clutches at his arm. He wrenches out the knife and tosses it to the floor.
Julita lets out a cheer, but my heart has sunk.
It wasn’t enough after all.
“Fucking bitch,” Wendos snarls. “Pin her down. Stop her from moving. I don’t care how you do it.”
As he spits out several more words in that odd language, I’m struck again by the invisible projectiles that must be daimon. They hurl me to the side.
My chest bangs against one of the chunks of marble, the sharp edge raking down my sternum with the rasp of tearing silk. A new sting of pain flares across the skin beneath my now frayed bodice and undershirt.
The daimon heave me onward to slam me against the outer wall, swinging my broken leg so wildly I groan. Two, maybe three of them press against my body, resisting when I try to move.
No, no, no! Julita cries out, but no one other than me can hear her.
“Can we keep going?” the man on the floor asks in an unsteady voice. “The energies feel weakened.”
“I’m fine. I’m—” Wendos lets out a hiss of frustration. “I’m bleeding all over the fucking floor. How’m I supposed to concentrate— They’ll get loose. Torstem was counting on me… Fuck.”
Julita’s voice drops to a mutter. Ha. Serves him right.
I can’t see Wendos anymore, but I hear the scrape of his feet as he turns on his heel. I’d feel more victorious about his partial meltdown if his voice didn’t drop to a new frigid low.
“We’re so close. It’s happening—we can’t let the effort falter now. I need you. I need everything. For the All-Giver, for the way things should exist, for creating the world this is meant to be.”
“We understand,” one of the women says, but I don’t, not at all.
Not until, over the lip of the platform, I see one of the armless figures lurch toward the railing. She raises her face to the open air she must be able to feel even if she can’t see it.
“Hear me, godlen! I give my all to this man’s power in this moment, to letting him show the world his way!”
Her declaration rings out toward the sky—and then she pitches herself over the railing.
“No!” The protest bursts from my throat without any thought.
Julita’s presence freezes in the back of my skull. Sky, sea, and earth, what are they doing?
Even as a sickening thud sounds from the roof far below this tall tower, the other two figures call out their own words of sacrifice. Two more fleshy thumps of fallen bodies reach my ears.
I flinch, stomach acid burning up my throat. For a moment, I’m afraid I’m going to vomit all over my torn dress. The daimon won’t let me even buckle over.
They’ve offered a much grander momentary sacrifice than the blood-letting Wendos once inflicted on Julita. And a voluntary one.
Is it going to work? Will their fatal offerings actually—
Wendos’s dark laugh gives me all the answer I need. His voice rises. “That’s right! Listen to us. We command you now—all of you!”
He speaks his strange chant louder than before, letting it spill out into the thickening dusk. From far away, I think I hear a panicked shriek.
Oh, no, Julita murmurs. What do we do now?
I squeeze my eyes shut, my throat closing up too.
I can’t let Wendos finish this. The elite of the inner wards don’t deserve the horror he’s planning to rain down on them, awful as they can be.
And what if the daimon spill their destruction over into the fringes?
What will become of Zuzanna and her sickly son, Marta and her many lovers, Frida and Ewalin gossiping while they tend to the bees…?
My magic claws up through my chest. I tense instinctively… but this time I can’t dismiss it completely.
Could calling on my own power now really be worse than what’ll happen if I don’t?
I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. I have a monster inside me with a mind of its own.
Hopelessness washes over me in a wave, tinged with a strange sense of absurdity.
I’ve fought with myself for so long. Refused and refused and refused, no matter how my power hurt me.
But I’m the only one here. It’s the only weapon I have left.
How can this be the answer? How can I trust myself to make that call?
Unless… Unless I’m not entirely alone.
Someone was able to control it once before. Someone who might be watching right now over a temple that bears his and his siblings’ blessings.
Even as the temple itself quivers with a quake from below, both my mind and my body balk. Can I really count on the godlen, the divinities who broke souls like mine in punishment for crimes committed five hundred years ago?
What other choice do I have?
Wendos cackles madly between roughened phrases, and my resistance fractures.
I suck in a breath like a sob and will my mind to open. More and more, from the slightest quivering crack until I feel as if my fractured soul is reaching out toward the walls around me.
Godlen, I think, like I spoke in my head to the voice while I was dying. If you can hear me, please help me. Please guide my magic so I don’t do harm that’s undeserved. Let me stop him without ruining something else.
Please.
No one answers. But a tingle spreads down through my lungs as if ephemeral fingers have brushed over them with the lightest touch.
I might have imagined it, but it’s all I’ve got. There’s no time left.
There’s a rustle as Wendos swings his arm wildly, and I release my grip on my magic.