Chapter 47
Light, flaring as blips across the swath of the desert.
Calla doesn’t stop running. She doesn’t think she could even if she tried, given how she has picked up pace since Rincun, given how she’s torn into each pocket of whatever heavenly qi exists in this body.
If she has always been a god, why was she left to starve in Rincun?
If she has always been a god, why was she punished and made to feel so hungry, to want, to want so much—
The truth is that she understands. The godling of greed. This hunger is who she is.
Calla lands in the middle of battle as bright as a comet. Her screaming light follows after her in a trail, her body shorter than she’s used to, her shoulders sharper than she expects. She’s had no opportunity to change and put on battle gear. Her bare feet skid in the sand.
But she contains a capacity she would have thought unimaginable. Her qi keeps flowing and flowing, and it is nothing like wearing the crown. The most powerful object to be gifted upon the mortal realm could be crushed beneath her fingers.
Calla focuses on the handful of Weisannas before her, pulling them into the sand.
Despite her immense qi in this form, she still can’t convince herself that this is what she wants.
When the battle ends, when the rush recedes, she is incapable of walking off into the provinces and fleeing into hiding, living the rest of time immortal in this form.
Too many years have passed as Calla Tuoleimi—too much of her self is only real because she is Calla, because she has built her every ambition off this understanding. She needs to get back to her body.
Her body. This is only borrowed time. Borrowed power, just like the crown.
Calla pulls her qi, narrowing her focus on a struggle unfolding within the battle.
There’s Venus’s body, sustaining the godling of qi.
She’s stuck between two other members of the pantheon, held under a sigil’s control.
Movement flashes. Sinoa Tuoleimi is striding closer, and no longer is there any doubt that this is entirely Sinoa, this is an age-old queen shedding the mask she has worn as Otta for however long she needed until she was put back in the running for her throne.
Anton. He’s moving toward them too. Calla shoves forward, pushing Weisannas out of her way, but she’s on the other side of the melee.
Wounds open fast. Death strikes faster. Before Calla can barely push within range, get close enough to be heard, Sinoa raises her sword, and Venus Hailira dies with the godling of qi.
“No!” Calla screams out. Tangible shock pulsates in every direction around her, reverberating from her body. Her opponents and allies alike stumble. One of the rebels, clothed in white, snaps, “Watch it!” and Calla heaves in.
Where is August? Why is he not here? Calla fights because this is her war.
Because she maneuvered the throne away from August Shenzhi, who was named the kingdom’s heir by his tyrant father who razed her village.
All of this is true. All of this put the fire in her heart and drove her to win the games and seize the crown.
But she looks around, and she is distracted. She fights to keep the north free of conquest—and then she’ll calmly walk back into the capital ahead of August, who isn’t here?
Calla has started to panic. She feels it differently in this body. Rather than a physical clench in her stomach, it is an all-around nausea sickening her qi, and when a Weisanna shoves into her, she skids into the sand. It burns her elbow. It is harsh against her head.
Calla rolls and locks eyes with the Weisanna. It takes a thought. His throat splits open. He falls.
Enough. Enough.
The fighting across the battlefield has changed.
The two gods who, only a few seconds ago, had been holding Venus in place now appear confused.
The rebels and the Weisannas have resorted to using ordinary swords, some skirmishes devolving entirely into hand-to-hand combat.
Erwen is nearby—she’s yelling, issuing orders, formations.
A true general to her soldiers, intent on eviscerating the enemy.
In the middle of the battlefield, Anton turns to go. Calla’s attention drifts to Venus—her body, her head—then back again to Anton, who is no longer fighting.
“Anton!” she calls before she can stop herself. “Anton!”
The godling of qi is gone, taking her invention with her. There are no more sigils in Talin. They don’t work anymore.
Anton doesn’t stop. Either he does not hear her, or he isn’t able to recognize her voice above this chaos.
Calla pushes hard, leveling her way through the battlefield, and still it is not enough, still Anton is faster as he cuts to the other side.
She throws her hand forward, trying to control him.
He feels it, momentarily—more a touch grazing his spine than any proper grasp.
He spins around, and to Calla’s shock, he locks eyes with her.
Her new form, her colorless stare. Not a hint of color, only pure, blinding white.
Anton does not recognize her.
But across the field, Sinoa Tuoleimi does.
“Fuck,” Calla says. “Fuck—”
Sinoa smiles. She mouths, Welcome back. If Calla is here in this form, then her body must be elsewhere. If Anton is running off, the direction of his focus must be…
“Sinoa,” Calla shrieks. “Don’t you dare.”
But already Sinoa is murmuring under her breath.
Praying, praying, pinpointing her sacrifice despite their sigils going dark.
Calla ducks beneath a Weisanna’s swinging sword, tearing into the weapon and melting it so the Weisanna cannot swing again.
Before the kingdom remembered how they once communed with the gods, before anyone outside the Crescent Societies was smearing sigils across their chest, Anton had succeeded in jumping across the arena.
Anton had worn August’s skin using only sacrifice, no light flashing because blood ran so thickly.
There is enormous sacrifice across Actia’s desert now. When Calla finally clears through enough of the havoc to wrench her fist through the air, attacking Sinoa from a distance, she drops then and there. Calla lands a blow, opening a wound through an empty chest that does not bleed.
Sinoa is gone. She jumped. She leaves behind the vessel that was once Otta Avia—unmoving, unknown, and utterly dead, because Otta faded away years and years prior, her opportunity at returning having long passed.
Calla takes a shallow breath. She stays inert for a beat. Sinoa’s marked gods are no longer under control on the battlefield. They are fleeing, leaving the palace guards to continue combating the insurgents from Rincun.
“Charge!” Erwen yells. “Charge!”
Calla searches the battlefield for other gods and finds none.
Venus is dead. The other with the appearance of an elderly man must be too.
Her every desire screams to hurry, to haul Sinoa back and tear her out of the body she will have claimed—Calla’s body—but that would mean leaving the insurgents to fend for themselves.
The Weisannas are trained by the palace.
If there is even one standing, they will obliterate the enemy.
Calla pushes forward suddenly, striking a group of Weisannas and clearing the way for a smaller flank the rebels have formed. Erwen catches sight of the attack, and nods in gratitude from across the way. Calla grits her teeth, gathering from her endless well of qi.
She will offer the battlefield a minute more.
For Rincun’s sake. For her home.