Chapter Twenty-Six
“Pull it together,” came the bite of Estrid’s scold.
I was deadweight, and I knew it. But I was the catalyst for the apocalypse, and without me, Apep would still be waiting for the fulfillment of prophecy.
I knew my presence was crucial, but at the same time, I understood how annoying it was to drag a human along who couldn’t even step through space without turning my stomach inside out.
I dry-heaved again as I stumbled after her. My foot caught on an off-white rock, ankle twisting as I struggled for balance. The word wobbled uncertainly. Muted sands and a cloud of dust kicked up as wind whipped off the ocean. A cloud passed over the sun, chilling me all over again.
“Where are we?”
Estrid stopped and looked around. She rested a hand on her hilt as she squinted into the distance. “I’m not sure,” she said, voice strained.
I made an unintelligible sound, then swallowed as I struggled for words. “What do you mean? Why did you bring us to—”
I’d known the valkyrie to be so confident.
I’d seen her in a state of righteous indignation.
I’d seen her drunk, I’d seen her in love, and I’d seen the bloodless stress on her face when Fauna and I had entered the den.
She was a shell of herself now as she said, “I brought us to Ella. I don’t know where she is.
I stepped toward her energetic signature. ”
“Are we in the Egyptian pantheon?” I asked. “Surely, you must know that.”
Estrid huffed as she led us up the hill.
We’d surfaced in a barren divot in the land.
I coughed as dirt coated my throat. My arm did little to protect my eyes from the rocks and sand that swirled in the dustbowl.
I stepped beside her as we fully assessed our surroundings.
Sagebrush. Dirt. Distant, desert-like mountains.
The topography gave me no clue as to our location.
For all I knew, we’d crest the hill to see the Getty in Los Angeles, watch the hot-air balloons of Cappadocia in Turkey, or look down over the Moroccan coast.
“Estrid?” I repeated at her silence. “We’re still on Earth, right?”
I’d never seen her hold herself before. Her hand grasped her opposite shoulder, thumb stroking the muscle as if remembering her arm. I’d never asked her how she’d lost it. It hadn’t seemed polite then, and it certainly didn’t feel right now. Something about the motion set me on edge.
“It sounded so safe when she pitched it,” Estrid said quietly, gravel crunching beneath her boots.
I huffed for air as I struggled on weak muscles up what now felt like an impossibly sheer cliff.
“The information came from a safe contact. We have common goals. Given our plans, we should have been natural allies.”
“Sekhmet was their mutual contact,” I said between gasps for air. I should hit the gym, even if I knew I never would. The sedentary siren song of sweatpants and television was too sweet. “But that’s not where they ended up.”
She focused her energy on reaching the top as my mind whirled. With a loud grunt, I joined her on the top of the hill and looked down at the pale blue waters below.
Something eerie and angular jutted from the rocks.
It was a far cry from Poppy and Dorian’s chic cliffside mansion, and I felt like I was looking at the slick black fortress of a Bond villain.
It had been built into the mountainside, partially entombed in arid rock, with the other half of the dark rectangle sticking out, its corners reflecting dully against the hidden sun.
Sekhmet. Ra’s consort. The desert sun. Chaos. War. Healing.
Her husband’s eternal nemesis was… “Apep,” I said on a strained exhale. “I know.”
“She made sense as an ally,” Estrid reiterated, jaw clenched.
“While you worked on opening human eyes, the rest of the rebels would keep at our mission with the deities. Time after time, Sekhmet put men in check. She destroyed her husband’s enemies—human and deity alike.
She protected the pantheon. She positioned herself against the snake god who was meant to devour the sun. ”
Estrid was right. She would have been a perfect ally for the apocalypse.
…but we were not looking down at Sekhmet’s home.
“Are they in there?” I asked, though we both knew the answer. The brush rattled its warning as we stared down at the King of Chaos—the god who was poised to unravel the world.