Chapter 45 #2
Srana’s steel spider’s legs tangled, collapsed, sending her crashing to the earth. Her eyes landed on me. The apertures of her gearwork contracted, expanded, contracted, expanded, faster and faster.
I staggered out to the center of the courtyard. My body was broken. But I wanted the best possible view.
I gave her a vicious smile.
“You have—You have—” she managed.
It turned out I had no pretty words for her, either. Nothing but a savage, “Fuck you, you copper cunt.”
In the sky, Nyaxia purred, “Unwise to underestimate a fallen one, cousin. Or their hunters, for that matter.”
Srana was beautiful when she died. Her form simply fell apart, collapsing into countless shards of copper and silver and gold, gears and rods, plates and bolts. They transformed into fiery streaks of light as they fell.
I stood there, swaying, and watched it. The sky was dark. The rain pounded down in fresh sheets. Now, four different bolts of lightning cracked the heavens at once, all while Srana’s remains plummeted down.
I had seen no falling stars since the sun fell. But when I was a small child, my father once woke me up in the middle of the night to show me the sky lit up by them—hundreds of them, arcing from horizon to horizon. I hadn’t thought of this memory in a long time. Not until now.
A force yanked me backward, and I realized it was Septimus. He pulled me under the cover of what remained of a canopy, just before Srana’s flaming remnants pelted the ground like burning arrows, leaving little craters in their wake.
He was behind me, face tucked into the space between my neck and shoulder.
I found myself leaning into his embrace.
And it did, indeed, feel like an embrace.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had one that wasn’t merely a logistical precursor to sex.
Now, tears unexpectedly prickled my eyes.
The complicated emotions that I had drowned in my rage made a brief, uncomfortable reappearance.
“A lion indeed,” he murmured. “Excellent work.”
My arms tightened around his. I couldn’t make myself speak. But I didn’t have time to, anyway. Because then he said, “This is our chance. We do it your way this time, lyri. Are you prepared for your final mark?”
My eyes lifted to the sky, where Nyaxia hovered, preparing to approach us. I let out a shaky breath. “I always am. Are you?”
He laughed softly. “I don’t know if prepared is the word I’d use.
” But his fingers slid down my arm until his hand was over mine, fingers intertwining, and he clutched me, tight tight tight.
And my eyes squeezed shut and for one terrible moment, I was more afraid than I ever had been in my entire life—and I wanted everything to freeze, right here, before we knew what could or would happen.
Strange how for weeks I had been marching steadfastly to my own death, and now that it was here, I had found something in life to cling to.
Nyaxia smiled over the wreckage. The storm raged behind her, wind and rain and light swirling around her silver-dipped body.
It somehow seemed angrier than before, more dramatic above the reaching fingers of the flames from the temple.
The lightning twisted halfway in the sky, as if drawn to her by magnetic force.
As if already preparing to split the world in half.
“How sad,” she crooned. “Two of my cousins slain here in the ashes of their own hubris.”
She lowered, lowered. Shiket’s godlight had dulled in the aftermath’s of Srana’s death. If anything now prevented Nyaxia from approaching, she didn’t show it. Her star-scattered eyes sparkled with cruel delight as they fell to us.
“You were wise to tell me to save her, my child,” she said. “She has been useful after all.”
Everything moved in slow motion, second by second.
Septimus gave my hand one final squeeze. I felt his fear, tentative and vulnerable, shiver through us both. I felt it because it was a mirror to my own.
And then, just as quickly, it disappeared. He straightened and released me. He bowed his head as he approached Nyaxia, hand over his heart, a familiar smirk over his lips.
“It is only what you deserve, Dark Mother,” he said, striding purposefully across the wreckage. “And it is the purpose of my life to give it to you.”
Nyaxia let out a cruel chuckle. But she did not have time to speak.
Because Septimus lifted his hands and blood surrounded them, surging around her. She roared back. The rage overtook her instantaneously, as if it had already been there, lurking just beneath the surface.
I had no time to waste. I seized this distraction, and dove for the swords, sheathing Zefiah across my back.
The swords still burned in Shiket’s remains, standing in broken final watch.
I wasn’t sure which one to take. They all looked so different than they had suspended at Shiket’s back.
I grabbed the one that was closest. It was long, like Zefiah, but its shape was more elegant, the blade slightly curved, the hand guard smaller and more intricate.
It was an awkward shape for me after ten years bearing only Zefiah.
Her weight was now heavy across my back. I felt as if I was betraying her.
When I touched the blade, a shiver bolted through me, like a needle jabbing too deep and hitting a nerve.
Had it felt that way the first time I’d wielded Zefiah? I couldn’t remember. She had spoken to me immediately. But now, though I expected to hear a voice in my mind, a garbled mess of layered words immediately roared in my ears. Voices that were completely indistinguishable.
The other blades trembled, as if awakened by my touch. I thought they might surround me, as they had in Septimus’s vision. But they merely quivered in the ruin. The blade’s hilt burned in my hands, enough to sting.
Was that a bad sign?
I had never been an uncertain person. Stopping to question yourself was often more dangerous than taking the wrong action. But right now, I missed Zefiah so desperately that it hurt.
{Zefiah,} a distant, unfamiliar voice said in the back of my head. {We know that name.}
A different voice now. {But we do not know yours.}
There was no time. I whipped around. Septimus’s distraction had done virtually nothing to hurt Nyaxia. The sky now roiled with her displeasure. She seized Septimus, ropes of star-scattered darkness looping around his throat, his limbs, his torso.
“Betrayed by your kind twice,” she hissed. “I should not be surprised by your traitorousness. But I am surprised by your stupidity.”
You don’t need to know me, I said, as I dragged the blade from the wreckage. Light sputtered at its edge. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other swords sputter with the same golden light.
A good sign. It had to be. It had to be.
Ready to kill the Tainted Goddess? I told the sword, as I pushed my body into a run.
This was a question that would have earned a purr of pleasure from Zefiah. Instead, I felt an uncomfortable jolt down my spine.
{Who are you?}
{are you?}
{Who are—?}
{you-you-you?}
I’m the one who is going to use you to kill the fucking vampire goddess, I said. You’re welcome.
“Hey!”
My voice cut across the courtyard.
Nyaxia’s head turned. The icy hatred on her face was powerful enough to send the world into an eternal winter, and every shred of it was directed at me.
She tossed Septimus aside. He fell in a heap of bloody flesh, burns covering his skin. His breath was heaving. And yet, he managed to lift his head, and he looked at me with such pride, such delight.
Such utter confidence.
It made me feel it, too.
“I was at Vostis, you vampire bitch,” I snarled. “And I’m doing this for them. For the ones who died here when you sent your followers to slaughter them. For everyone you killed when the sun fell. And for the Bloodborn you’ve tortured for two thousand years.”
I lifted the blade over my head. It was difficult to steady it, as if it was being yanked in a dozen different directions. Its godlight burst from it in erratic flickers.
{—are you?}
{Who—}
{—you?}
I shut out the voices and drowned myself in my own hatred. In every injustice. Every innocent life lost. Every undeserved pain. And my own pain, too.
And as Nyaxia turned to me, mouth twisted in disgust, I lunged for her, aiming straight for her heart.
I heard the echo of a voice that had taught me to kill once, long ago:
Push right here. Really, really hard.
I threw myself into the strike. I pushed really, really hard.
And the blade shattered.