Chapter 23 Daesra #3
And then the leaves in the courtyard start to wither and fall from the trees.
Fruit shrivels on the branches. Colors start leeching away in an expanding circle around the god of death, and Pogli—who must have enough of an underworld creature inside of him to be affected—begins to whine in a high, piercing tone that’s louder than Isha’s indrawn breath.
Melé groans behind me and slumps on the stairs, bracing herself against the stone on shaking arms—which begin to turn gray at her fingertips.
I hear a distant scream—and look up to the windows at the top of the main keep, where I see a flash of red hair within.
I immediately release the roaring current of Isha’s aether.
Because he is the sun down here. The beating heart at the center of all the pulsing aether trapped in this dead place. Ripping him out of his own realm would destroy the entire underworld and everyone in it—including Sadaré and Melé, and maybe even Pogli now.
The tension in Isha breaks, and he falls to his knees. He’s more vulnerable than ever, but I can’t end him. He made sure of that, by keeping my mother’s soul from fading over all these years, and by killing the love of my life. He made vengeance impossible with the very act I wish to avenge.
How can I defeat someone I can’t destroy? I wonder despairingly.
As Isha braces himself on the ground, trying to gather his strength, I glance at the creature that is part Pogli, part Bereus—and something in me sinks.
Perhaps I can do to Isha what Pogli did to Bereus.
What Sea did to Sky. Absorbing the soul of a mortal leaves an impression, but absorbing the soul of a god would remake me entirely.
Because Isha is too strong for me to simply digest—and I can’t kill him anyway, not at the cost of the underworld and all the people in it.
It’s more that we would become each other… in one body.
Not even Isha threatened me with such a thing. He even said what Horizon did was an abomination. I can hardly stand the thought myself. But the cost, in this regard, would only be mine.
And his. Still a sort of death, but also a rebirth.
Slowly, Isha drags himself to his feet, his chest heaving. He takes one look at me, and whatever he sees in my face makes him stumble away from me, staggering over the bridge on one side of the fountain, toward the main keep.
For a moment, I don’t follow; I only watch his hunched retreat. Hesitating. Outside of my deepest fit of jealousy, I’ve never wished I could be like him. But I won’t only become him. He’ll change, too—becoming partly me. I can only hope I’ll make him better than he’ll make me worse.
Since I can’t kill him, it might be my only option. And this, my only chance.
“Stay here,” I say to both Pogli and Melé.
Pogli—or at least the creature who was him—growls at me like he did Isha.
Tears glaze my eyes as I stare back at him.
Quickly wiping my cheeks, I try to reassure myself that Pogli was the one to swallow Bereus.
It was the only way he could have won that fight, while Bereus would have had no reason to do the same—he would have simply killed him instead of absorb him.
And I have no doubt Pogli’s soul was the strongest between the two of them, even if it was a broken-off piece of mine.
Which means this creature is more Pogli than Bereus.
Or so I desperately hope. And not only for Pogli’s sake, but for mine.
“Please stay out here, Mother,” I say, making a show of talking only to her, so the creature doesn’t lunge at me. “I still don’t know what’s going to happen. You might want to keep away from me—whatever I might look like—after this. Get to the Blessed Isles.”
“What do you mean?” Melé cries, still trying to collect herself on the steps. At least her fingers are their normal warm hue again.
I don’t have time to explain. She would be horrified, anyway. I’m horrified. But it seems to be my only choice if I want to stop Isha. That’s why Pogli made his decision. Why Sea made hers.
I can only hope I’m as strong as them.
I launch into a run across the courtyard, toward the doors to the main keep.
Isha has already made it inside, but he hasn’t gone far.
I catch him halfway down the long rug that stretches through pale pillars of bone and statues that were once people—details that would be disturbing at any other time—to the dark throne on the raised dais at the other end.
He whips around in aggravated fury when my hand grips his shoulder—only to meet my fist as it punches straight into his chest. This time, I seize him—both his soul and his actual warm, slippery heart between my fingers, pulsing within my grasp, both physical and invisible. I don’t let his aether pass through me.
Isha’s eyes fly wide. Pure fear shines in their metallic depths—the first I’ve ever seen in him.
And then I start to draw him into me. The god of death releases a haggard cry, gripping my gold-slicked wrist in his hands, trying to wrench my hand out of his chest. But he’s too feeble now.
If I weakened him by striking at his roots in the underworld, I cut him off at the knees by channeling away as much of his own aether as I did.
My arm doesn’t budge. I’m the immovable one now.
And I will be forevermore.
Darkness starts to bleed up my arm in rivulets along with his golden blood. Seeping into me.
“Yes,” I hiss, his voice seeming to come out of me.
A rending scream behind Isha breaks my gaze from his. And suddenly Sadaré throws herself between us, trying to shove us apart. Even though the mortal force of her doesn’t budge either of us, I freeze.
Finally finding her after so long, after wanting her so badly, the sight of her wrests a gasp from between my astonished lips.
Pure longing pulls me back into myself—into Daesra, not whomever I was becoming—and thrusts Isha back into himself.
I let go of his heart. My hand comes free from his chest as he staggers back and nearly falls, the echo of her pained cry still tugging at my own heart.
She doesn’t want me to do this, I think, both relief and desperation warring within me. She doesn’t want me to become him.
So I won’t. I can’t do that to her after what she must have suffered. I’ll find another way, even if I can’t yet see it.
“Sadaré,” I breathe, my eyes locking on her, all my pain, hope, and joy in that one word.
“Get away from him!” she cries.
But she’s not talking to Isha, as she rushes to his side to support him, clutching his arm to keep him from toppling in his unsteady state.
She’s looking at me, and her beautiful green eyes are full of horror.