Chapter 13 #2
“I’m learning this about you.” His fangs glinted in the firelight. “Very well. We can begin tomorrow. The healers will want my head for it, but who am I to argue with such hunger?”
Hunger.
Oh, I was hungry. I was fucking starving. I felt a sudden wave of something akin to sympathy for vampires. Because now I understood what it was to be so desperate for blood that the starvation pain sank into every nerve.
I had served Shiket for nearly a decade, and yet, it was only as Zefiah pierced her heart that I truly understood the euphoria of doling out justice.
The gods of the White Pantheon had brought us here. They had gleefully thrown themselves and their followers into this war. They had made countless innocents suffer in an eternal quest to soothe their egos and spite their fellow gods.
I would think about that when I killed them, one by one.
And then, I’d take everything I had learned from this vampire, every god-slaying weapon he’d hand me, and I would kill him and everyone like him. Then, finally, I would kill the goddess who deserved it most of all:
The goddess of vampires, Nyaxia.
And atop that mountain of corpses, I would drive Zefiah into my heart, and I would rest.
This path spread out before me, clear and unshakable. A path that would keep me away from that churning pit of self-hatred. A path that would keep me from drowning.
I smiled at Septimus. “It’s a pleasure to be working with you.”
Maybe Mirie had been onto something after all. Divine purpose, it turned out, was better than any drug I’d ever taken.
When Septimus was gone, I immediately collapsed onto the bed.
I noticed that folded up at the foot of it were my clothes, or what remained of them—they were in tatters, clearly unsalvageable, though perhaps my “rescuers” hoped to make the point that they hadn’t taken anything from me.
My dagger, sheathed, lay neatly on top of the rags.
And beside it, another glint of gold. At the sight, my throat tightened.
A pendant of Shiket. Seemingly untouched by the murder of its mistress.
I swallowed thickly, then sat up and strapped the dagger’s sheath to my hips.
After a moment of hesitation, for reasons even I didn’t fully understand, I snatched the necklace from the pile of ruined clothes, too, and shoved it into my pocket.
Then I sagged against the edge of the bed.
My muscles shook with the effort of holding myself up.
My body was in shambles. I looked down to see that my feet were almost entirely purple.
I pulled up my loose linen pants to reveal the welts traveled all the way up my calves, too.
Burns or bruises? I wasn’t sure which. Septimus, I’d begrudgingly admit, was right—it was a miracle I was alive. The death of a god was a cataclysmic event, like an exploding star. Zefiah had done well protecting me.
As if summoned by the thought of her name, her voice whispered through my mind: {What have we done?}
I dragged myself up and across the room to her. When I touched her, I jolted—even sheathed, the chaotic force of her presence was overwhelming.
What is wrong with you? I said.
But she ignored me.
{What have we done?} she moaned.
A bolt of animal fear speared me—because Zefiah was all I had left in the world.
I pulled her from the sheath, wincing slightly at the barrage of chaotic, panicked thoughts that jolted through me, threatening to sweep me away. I ran my hand over her blade, opening a shallow cut and smearing my blood along metal.
Zefiah! Snap the fuck out of it!
Sudden silence.
Then, {Kyrene.}
Like she was just remembering who I was.
Finally. I was beginning to think that I’d never get to hear you insult me again.
{Shiket is—}
A jolt through us both—an avalanche of images.
Everything Zefiah had witnessed that had been lost under the haze of my imperfect mortal semi-consciousness.
Shiket before us, glorious and terrible in her rage, a golden supernova sunrise in a sunless world.
Zefiah plunging through her heart. I’d been so overcome I had not seen the way the carvings in her breastplate had turned to run, their simplified swords raised, as the gold shattered.
The cuts on my face, I knew now, were from where those shards of metal sliced my skin.
I saw Shiket’s mouth open, her helmet masking her shock.
Saw the light consume her from the inside out, burning her up like paper.
Funny, how gods died so similarly to vampires in the sunrise.
I saw myself in a heap on the ground. I had fallen right beside Valentina, curled up around her.
Saw Septimus kneel beside me, his face covered save for his eyes, as if to shield himself from some invisible toxicity.
Two armored women were at his side. I saw them take me away, leaving the other dead among the ashes of a fallen god.
Countless images, rushing through me in a split second, and then gone.
{She is dead,} Zefiah gasped. {We killed her. We killed her.}
My hands curled around Zefiah’s hilt, so firm my knuckles whitened.