Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Ididn’t want to look at Septimus. And yet, I couldn’t look away. His devastation slid between my ribs, inch by inch. Nyaxia still held me, Zefiah’s broken hilt clutched in my hands, and I could not move.
Nyaxia turned to him as the remnants of the past faded. A smile of bloody delight stretched across her lips. She released me, and my legs collapsed beneath me. I fell like a limp mannequin.
“What a chosen one,” she crooned. “What a hero. Tell me, how long did she lie to you?”
Septimus’s eyes were tethered to mine, through the smoke and fire and Nyaxia’s divine rage.
He looked at none of it but me. And I could see in those eyes the version of him I had seen in Estrys.
He looked so young in his hope and heartbreak.
So old in his pain and exhaustion. A combination that I saw in myself every time I looked in the mirror, that I stuffed down beneath violence and false indifference.
Until right now, when that look brought it all back to the surface.
Say something, some innocent version of myself pleaded. As if there were any explanation I could offer; any words that could soothe this hurt. But that girl had died a long time ago. The woman I was now knew that words were useless. The incision had been made. The patient was already bleeding out.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” Nyaxia’s voice boomed across the heavens.
Her smile soured to a sneer. “What a valuable lesson for you, my child. Be wary of your trust. Be warier still of your heart.” The sneer deepened to a snarl.
The sky churned with blinding white light.
“And if you attempt to kill your goddess,” she hissed, “make sure you will not fail.”
She whirled to Septimus, who crawled now, dragging himself across the ruins. Her face went eerily calm—almost loving.
“Dark Mother—” he began.
“Hush.” She tilted his chin up. Then stroked his face, fingertips sweeping the silky strands of wayward white-blond from his forehead, then trailing down the contours of his cheekbone, his chin.
The very same path that I constantly found myself resisting.
The gesture was, at its surface, so jarringly affectionate, until I realized that blood trailed her fingertips.
“Hush, my child,” she purred. “I suppose I cannot blame you for being what you are. It is like blaming a serpent for striking. Blaming a songbird for flying. Blaming a lion for biting. Your kind are inherently traitorous. And I have tried to love you despite it. Tried to love you enough to erase your insidious natures. That is my own naivete. I saw it even all those years ago, when your brother stood before me as you do now. I saw that he was to betray me one day, and I put an end to him before it could happen. I should have done that with you. Stolen your breath in your cradle.”
That loving touch moved to his throat, her thumb pressing down, blood dripping from it.
“What will you do now, traitorous prince?” she murmured. “Shall you beg? Your brother did, you know.”
Septimus’s jaw was so tight muscle trembled in his cheek. His eyes speared unblinking into Nyaxia’s.
And he said nothing.
She let out a laugh that sounded like the heavens colliding. “Smart. It would not have mattered.”
She stood abruptly, letting Septimus slump to his knees, lifting her hand to the sky as her voice cut through the storm in a thunderclap.
“I shall do what I should have done long ago,” she said. “My punishment two thousand years ago was, apparently, far too lenient. Why should I offer you such long lives for you to use to betray me? You are better weapons as beasts, anyway.”
Septimus’s eyes widened in horror so sharp I felt it in my soul.
“My goddess—”
She barked a vicious laugh. “Oh, now you wish to beg. It is too late. You thought I would take your life as your punishment? Your life is worth too little. And you will hold on to it a little longer, cursed prince. You will hold on to it so that you may go watch what I will do to your kingdom, and so your people may look at you and know that you are the reason it happened.”
I was shaking my head, back and forth, back and forth, without even realizing it. I dragged my broken body forward. “No,” I choked out.
Nyaxia stopped. Turned, as if remembering again that I was here. A fresh smile of vicious, furious delight split her face.
“Oh, how heartwarming,” she hissed.
And then before I could move, she was looming over me, taller, bigger, arms spread, the storm swirling behind her; a physical embodiment of vengeance.
“And this is one more reason why you shall stay alive, my wayward prince,” she snarled. “So that you may remember this.”
Septimus’s eyes widened. He lurched forward, arm outstretched. I watched him as a single moment stretched to an eternity, a wrinkle between my brows. Because it was such an immediate, instinctual movement. Like he didn’t even think about it. Like he couldn’t have stopped himself even if he had.
After all of this, after I had damned him and betrayed him and lied to him, he still reached for me.
Nyaxia’s hands clapped together. White light, the distilled power of the stars, cracked through the air.
Excruciating pain tore through me as my body went flying.
And this, I was certain, was death.