46. Kiera
Chapter 46
Kiera
“ Y ou could have joined me.” Tryphone’s voice is no longer in my mind but before me as we circle each other. Nearby, from Nubo’s body, Kalix had procured a sword and slashes at Gygaea as she drags vines from beneath the ground to crack it and use as her own weapons.
“Had you only told me who you were.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t even know who I was until I came to the Academy,” I inform him. “Even if I had known, though, I wouldn’t have come to you. I would rather die with a sword in my chest or a dagger to my throat than live with your heels on my back.”
Tryphone’s body moves with the same languid ease that hides his emotion. Surely, he must be nervous. Things aren’t going the way he expected. Right?
“Your mother was a disappointment,” Tryphone continues, not bothering to respond to my words.
My bare feet move swiftly across the stone, little rocks and rubble from Gygaea’s call to the earth sticking to my soles.
“Then why didn’t you kill her?” I ask. “Why imprison her?”
He pauses as if he hadn’t expected that I’d know about her imprisonment. Then he begins moving again, only this time, his leisurely pace is a step faster.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. I hear the sound of Kalix’s sword cutting and hacking at Gygaea’s branches. Azai’s howl from the opposite end of the garden ricochets back to me.
“Where is Ruen Darkhaven?” I ask when Tryphone refuses to answer my question about Ariadne.
A glimmer of something—an emotion that appears and disappears too quickly for me decipher—crosses the God King’s face. “You shall never know, child,” he answers. “For I intend to kill you before he can come to your rescue.”
I freeze, his words revealing—before my mind can complete the thought, my body is catapulted into the air by unseen hands. They catch at my arms and legs, dragging me back down. Twisting my flesh back and forth until it burns.
Gritting my teeth, I reach for my own power and shadows burst from beneath my skin and at every corner of the garden. They wash over me in a giant wave, an ocean of darkness taking me into its soft cocoon of safety and ripping the invisible hands from my body. Claws rake across my skin, dragging me down, down, down.
I hit the ground and roll as a blade appears and the sharp tip slams into the stone, sending sparks into my eyes as I look back to see that it had been accurate. Had I not moved, it would now be embedded in my face.
Panting, I jump to my feet and refocus on the God King as he wields a sword at his side. “It must be convenient to have so many abilities,” I say, sucking in lungfuls of air as the shadows slither around my arms. They rope together, braiding themselves down into a whip. “It’s such a wonder that you only ever use them to be a selfish bastard.”
The sword moves for me, silver flashing as it swings. I dodge to the side even as my grip on the shadow whip tightens. I flick my wrist and jerk my arm up, aiming for Tryphone’s hand. Metal clatters to the ground and Tryphone wrathful curse echoes back to me.
Pain seizes my chest in the next instant, cutting off the sound of Tryphone’s anger and I scream as the shadow whip falls from my hand, dispersing as it hits the stone. Looking down, I gape and swallow down bile as a sword slices through my chest and out of my ribcage.
Red blood drips from the steel blade, rolling back towards me due to its angle. Tryphone straightens where he stands and there’s no mistaking the shock on his expression. Who is it? Who?—
“We are not doing this again, father mine.”
A whole new kind of pain lacerates my insides. That voice, that soft, strong feminine tone is one I recognize—one I thought … perhaps … maybe this time, I could trust her.
The blade withdraws and I collapse forward, more blood oozing from my body and spilling in a rush over the stone.
“Kiera!” Theos’ shout is followed by lightning across the sky. It tears through the air, slamming into a nearby statue and turning the entire upper half into dust. Bits of rock fly around me, falling onto my head, sticking in my hair. I cup one palm over the place between my breasts where blood gushes out while with the other, I hold myself aloft, trying not to collapse.
How could she?
“Daughter mine?” Tryphone’s voice is unsure as Ariadne steps around my fallen body to stand before the God King. Gone is the woman from the underground prison and in her place is a Goddess. A true Goddess crackling with power.
I gasp, each breath causing such agonizing pain that it threatens to force my mind into obsidian darkness. I cannot pass out now. If I do, all that awaits in the gloom is death.
In a movement so fast that their bodies become blurs, both Ariadne and Tryphone jerk away from each other as a figure appears between them. His chest bare and coated in blood, Kalix’s eyes are wild as he jerks his chin back and forth, watching the two Gods.
My breath wheezes from my chest. I cannot help it. Trying to breathe is squeezing everything inside me too tightly. Try as I might, the sound escapes, dragging his attention to me. Kalix’s eyes widen and then I see something inside him—an emotion I’ve never seen reflected in those jade eyes of his.
Fear.
Kalix is afraid.
“Kill them!” Theos screams. “Kalix! She betrayed Kiera! Kill them!”
I part my lips and cough, blood bubbling free, flying out to land on the ground and collect in dots around me. When I next try to raise my head and see Kalix’s decision, they’re gone. They’re all gone and a fog of white rolls in.
I don’t know how and I don’t know who—but someone has called forth the Void of the In Between and all of the creatures that reside within it.
Rapid, shallow breaths. In and out. My body locks up as I drag my barely living corpse across the fog. I ignore the suggestion from before to remain still in this place. If I stay still, I’ll die and I cannot die. Not yet.
“Theos!” I croak out the name. “Kalix!”
There is no response. Instead, all I hear are the distant sounds of metal-on-metal clashing back and forth. Grunts. Curses. And something worse … slow footsteps.
I drag myself away from the approach, whimpers creeping past my clenched teeth as each movement seems to tug at the skin of my open wound.
Come on, damn it. Heal. I silently order my own body as if it will listen. What’s the point of being a Mortal God, of having these powers if I cannot use them, if I cannot heal myself?
A tree appears out of the gloom and I crawl towards it—on my hands and knees and then on my side when those give out too. It seems so close and yet so far away, but I grit my teeth and close my eyes and continue the slow forward movement. I don’t stop until the bark is under my nails. Only then do I open my eyes.
Relief is short lived though as I look up into the branches and freeze. The white wood of the large tree is shriveled and thin, stiff and smooth to the touch. Bark shouldn’t be smooth. I run my hand over the surface of it, testing the texture. It’s not just smooth but tiny little hairs dot the trees exterior.
I glance up and up and up some more and horror to my horrors, a face appears over me. Open mouthed, screaming, pained and crying out in silence. I clamp a hand over my mouth to keep myself from screaming along with the face only to accidentally shove my own blood over my tongue.
Malachi. Enid. Several other faces I don’t recognize line the trunk of the tree. The petrified tree … just like the wood used during the Cleansing ceremony.
Memories strike at my mind. Like vicious little fangs, they sink into the soft weakness of my thoughts and tear through to find what’s inside. Flashes of bodies, those same bodies as before appear behind my eyelids when I slam them shut. My body on top of Ruen’s. Kalix on top of mine and Theos … oh dear Gods … all of us, together as one. Moving in sync.
Fires erupts behind my eyelids and I choke back a sound, swallowing it into my throat before it can emerge. I remember it all now—the Cleansing, the sex, the insanity that had befallen us. As the memories seep back into me, my limbs grow heavier and sag under the weight of tiny pin pricks. Almost painful, but not quite, the sensation is accompanied by the swell of power in my chest. And though there is relief at feeling my own abilities return to me, the horror of what we’d done remains.
Oh … Gods … we’d rubbed the ash from that wood into our skin. It wasn’t wood at all. It was them. Their bodies, devoid of life and power.
Leaning over the nearest root, I grip tightly to its surface despite how the texture makes my skin crawl, and I heave. Contracting and releasing, my body expels the nothingness and bile in my stomach and the bile.
Sick.
Twisted.
Taboo.
None of them deserve to live. The Gods are worse than animals. Even most animals shy away from eating their own young.
“Kiera!” I’m so wrapped up in my horror that it takes me a moment to recognize the voice in the fog.
Lifting my head away from the root, I look up as the footsteps that I’d been running from before emerge from the clouds.
A sob escapes me. “ Ruen .” His name is a whisper on my lips. I don’t believe it, but he’s here and his arms close around me, lifting me away from the tree and against his chest.
He’s not completely healed—the flesh of his chest and the wounds on his face remain—but he moves far better than he had on that stage hours before.
“Fuck, this is complicated,” he growls, twisting one way and then another.
“How are you here?” I’m ashamed at how breathless I sound.
I’m supposed to be an assassin. I’ve trained. I’ve sacrificed. How am I the weakened one?
Midnight eyes settle on my face as Ruen comes to a stop. “Caedmon,” he answers me. “Caedmon and Ariadne.”
I shake my head, my vision blurring. “Ariadne betrayed us,” I murmur, my words slurring together. I drag my fingers through the blood over my body. “She stabbed me.”
Over me, Ruen’s face clenches with displeasure, but he sucks in a breath and hefts me closer. “Trust me, Kiera,” he says, holding me infinitely closer. “She hasn’t betrayed you—this is all part of the plan.”
How can he believe that when I’m fucking dying? I want to grab him and shake him, punch him, kick and scream at the unfairness of it all, but my energy is waning and the darkness is coming again.
“Ruen…” I try to beg him to help me, to slap me or do something to bring me back. If my final Darkhaven hears my plea, though, it goes unanswered as he carries me into the fog once more and the darkness takes me over.