The Blood of Gods and Monsters (Mortal Gods #3)

1. Kiera

Chapter 1

Kiera

11 years old…

M y feet drag along a stone floor. The smell of something wet and rotten enters my nose, but I have no energy left to flinch from it. My eyes are swollen and my limbs don’t react as the two men hauling me through the hall cut a corner too close and my foot catches on a crack in the ground. The toe of my boot gets lodged and nearly rips my foot off before the crack releases me.

Breath saws in and out of my chest. I’ve never felt so weak in my life. When was the last time I saw the sun? I miss it. I never thought I’d miss being outside. I never even contemplated a time when it wouldn’t be readily available to me.

The harsh burn of tears threatens to fill my eyes. I don’t even try to hold them back, but instead, I let them flow free and down my dirt smeared cheeks. I want to go home. The craving is so sharp and desperate that I choke back another sob as more tears fall.

“Here,” one of the men snaps. One side of my body sags as the man who had been holding me up there disappears. The creaking of metal fills the silence as the faint scent of urine burns my nostrils.

Lifting my head slightly—as much as I can manage in my current state—I spot the opening of a dark room. A cell. A shiver chases up my spine. There’s no window. No light. I bite down on the urge to beg these men to free me, to not hurt me. They’re going to, whether I ask them or not. I’m starting to learn that it’s better to just keep my requests to myself. Adults can’t be trusted. Not anymore.

The man who is still holding me drags me forward and then tosses me inside. My side hits the ground hard, and I let out a soft cry of pain as it rattles through my body. The brimstone cuffs on my wrists dig into the skin there, and somehow, it makes me feel even more tired than I know I should be.

I’ve always been sturdy. A strong girl, my dad had often praised me. His strong girl. I close my eyes once more, ignoring the physical pain as the emotional agony takes over all thought.

“Daddy…” My lips form the word, but it’s barely more than a gasping whisper. The last of my strength is sapped from me and disappears as the door to my cell is shut once more and I hear a lock click.

I don’t know how long I lie here like this, unmoving, uncaring, wishing for someone to come and take me away from this horrible place. I don’t care if that means I'll go to the bad place Dad always talked about. The place where villains in stories go. So long as I’m not here without him, anywhere would be better.

My mouth grows dry, tasting of dust and air. My head swims away from itself. I recognize that my body remains in place, but my mind … my mind goes to distant places. Far, far away.

By the time I come back to myself, there are clinking footsteps echoing up the stone walls, reverberating all around me. Too loud. Too much. I cannot figure out where they’re coming from. Then they stop and silence descends once more.

I sink deeper into the mind that has become my safe haven. The place that makes me forget … everything.

“Have you given up?”

The sound of another’s voice shoots through me like an arrow spearing into flesh and bone. I jolt and my eyes flicker open. I find that I’m lying on my side, facing the cell door where a woman now stands. She’s beautiful, or at least, I think so. Dad never really spoke about beauty much but to tell me that I was always beautiful, just like my mom. Whoever she is.

The woman stands there, head canted to the side and arms crossed. At her side, a boy with a bored face watches me. His face is of an olive complexion with a cleft in his chin. His hair is dark and shorn close to his head. Equally dark eyes glance up at the woman before looking back at me. His expression doesn’t change. Something vile reaches into my chest and grabs ahold of my heart. How can he not feel … anything as he looks at me?

The anger rears its ugly head in a way it hasn’t since the cuffs had been locked onto my wrists that horrible night and I had been forced to watch as my father was beaten and killed. Had this woman been the mastermind? Had she sent them? My upper lip curls back from my teeth.

I’ll kill her.

“Mother, do I have to be here?” the boy asks.

The woman scowls. “What have I told you about calling me Mother, Carcel?” she snaps . The boy ducks his head, but his face blanches in clear irritation and hurt. A selfish piece of me enjoys his pain.

“Sorry, Guild Master,” the boy, Carcel, replies.

The woman jerks her head towards the end of the corridor that lies outside of this cell. “Go back to training,” she orders.

Carcel doesn’t waste any time following the command. Without a second glance back at me—the girl in the dirty cell—he scampers off, and after a few moments, the woman and I are alone. She turns her attention back to me.

“Are you going to answer me?” she demands.

I blink slowly, confused by her words. “What?” I croak.

“Have you given up?” she repeats her earlier question.

That depends, I decide. Pressing my bound hands flat on the icy stone, my elbows shake back and forth with the effort it takes for me to sit up. I glare at her. “Did you send those men after me and my dad?” I ask instead of answering.

She tilts her head to the other side and continues to stare at me. “No,” she finally says. “I didn’t send them. They sold you to me when they found out that you were a Divine Child.”

My limbs nearly collapse. If she’s not the one responsible then it doesn’t matter anymore. I sink back to the floor and close my eyes again. A few moments pass.

“So, that’s it then, girl?”

My eyes reopen and I fix her with a dead look. “What do you want?”

“I want an answer to my question. Are you going to lay there and die in my dungeons or … are you going to survive?”

What would be the point? I want to ask her. Nothing matters anymore. My dad is dead. My only family. Unless she’s willing to let me go home, to let me return to the Hinterlands—the only place I’ve ever known—then I don’t want to survive. I want to die with my dad.

The woman, tall and straight backed in her leather trousers and cream-colored tunic tucked into the high waistband, clucks her tongue as if she’s disappointed by my lack of response. “I had hoped that you and I could have a good working relationship, girl, but if you’re so pathetic that one little bad day will leave you to give up this easily, I suppose…”

One bad day? I sit up again and the room spins. I ignore it. “My dad is dead!” I yell. “And you bought me like cattle. What do you want me to do?” I’m a freaking kid. This isn’t fair. None of this is fair. Fresh tears prick at my eyes. I want my daddy.

The woman steps closer to the bars and turns those cold brown and gold flecked eyes of hers down on me. “I want you to fight your way back to the surface, girl,” she states. “I want you to make a deal with me.”

I glare at her, untrusting. “A deal? What kind of deal?”

Her arms unfold and fall to her sides. “Do you know what you are?” she asks me.

Of course I do. I’m special. My dad told me that I was a girl made of two different worlds, born of a love for both.

As if she senses my thoughts, the woman nods. “You are a Mortal God, child, young and so powerful,” she tells me. “If you agree to my deal, then you can be free.”

Free? Why can’t she just free me now? “Let me out,” I snap in response, struggling to drag myself closer to the bars. I’m not far, merely a few feet, but it feels like miles until my fingertips brush the edge of the cold metal.

The woman’s chuckle might be close to laughter, yet it is anything but amused. She bends down, crouching low on her feet as our eyes meet closer this time. “That’s not how the world works, little girl,” she says. “It’s give and take.”

“You took me!” I yell at her, the fingers of one hand wrapping around the bar in front of me as my other hand hangs next to it, trapped in the cuffs still. “So give me back!”

She shakes her head, the dark swath of brown hair held in a ponytail at the back of her head swishing with the movement. “I bought you,” she reminds me. “I didn’t take you. If you want your freedom, you’ll have to pay me back.”

“I…” I don’t have any money.

The woman nods, understanding what I don’t say in that uncanny way of hers. “So, a deal is the only way you can get out of here,” she tells me again. “Will you agree?”

I bite down on my lower lip as it trembles. When listening to the fairytales Daddy had told me, there had always been a hero, always someone who comes in at the last moment to save the damsels in distress. Now, there is no one. This isn’t a fairytale or a story. This is real life, and no one is coming to save me. I have to get up and do it myself.

“What do you want me to do?” I lower my head as I ask the question.

When the woman replies, I can hear the triumph in her voice. “Work for me,” she says. “Become one of my assassins—I will train you, feed you , and ensure your protection—in return, all you have to do is survive.”

I lift my head again and fix her with a suspicious glare. “That sounds too easy.”

She throws her head back. This time, when she laughs, it’s a full-bodied sound. Her throat moves and her shoulders twitch as she laughs. It goes on and on until finally the sound drifts away and she glances back to me, lifting one hand to wipe away a stray tear of mirth from beneath her eye.

“It won’t be easy,” she replies. “It’ll likely be the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do. Being an assassin is no simple task. To be what you need to be in order to survive, you need to become everything that you fear. I can’t promise that you won’t suffer loss from this moment onward. I can’t promise that you’ll get that vengeance that I can see so clearly reflected in your eyes, child.”

My head ducks again, hiding the truth she’s already seen. The woman reaches through the bars and tucks two fingers beneath my chin. She lifts my head so that my eyes are level with hers once more.

“I will teach you everything you need to know to endure this world. I will teach you to be colder than ice. To walk through fire without flinching. To seduce and destroy with a mere glance.” My breath catches in my throat, but she continues. “I will teach you to rip this world apart with your bare hands and teeth.”

“Why?”

She pauses at that, as if surprised by my question. The closer she is now, the more I realize that her eyes aren’t just green. They are flecked with spots of gold and brown. They remind me of quiet mornings in the forest of the Hinterlands.

“Because,” she finally says, “someone did the same for me once.” She pulls her hand away from my face. “And because I can use you. Remember that, girl. Nothing in life is free. If you want to live, grab on to any reason. Death cannot be taken back, but life has a way of changing a soul. Altering you in different phases to fit everything that it throws at you.”

I stare at the woman, my eyes aching from so much crying that it hurts to keep them so fixated without blinking. Still, I stare. In the fairytales, girls are soft and sweet. Girls are saved. This woman doesn't look like she needs anyone to save her, and I want that too.

She moves to the cell door as if she already knows my answer. Maybe she does. She seems to know my thoughts better than I know them myself. The lock clicks open and the bars swing outward. The woman stands in the entryway and holds out her hand to me.

“My name is Ophelia,” she says, introducing herself at last. “Will you make a deal with me, young God Child?”

Using my hold on the bar to my cell, I drag one foot up and stomp it into the dirt and stone floor beneath me. Then I do the same with the other until I’m standing on shaking legs. I stumble, catching myself on the side of the cell as she just stands there. Ophelia doesn’t reach out to stop me from falling and she doesn’t move any further into the small cramped space.

Ophelia waits for me because this needs to be on my own power. I need to make the decision. Inhaling sharply, I lean away from the bars, my bound hands grazing her fingers until she closes her hand around one of mine.

“Yes,” I answer. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

Her lips curve into a smile that sends tendrils of fear skittering down my spine. I mentally stomp on that fear.

Become what I fear, she’d said, and I wonder if she knew that meant I’d become someone like her. Will I become someone like her?

“Good girl.” Ophelia tugs me forward and out of the dank cell. It’s not freedom. I know that. But it’s a start and a start is all I need.