31 Imogen #2
At the end of a narrow aisle were a huddle of guests, kneeling before a tall gilt shrine.
Sitting at its center was a small statue of a woman with a large gash running down the middle of her torso.
It gaped below her small breasts, and her fingers held the skin open as if inviting worshippers to look within the cavern of her body and marvel.
I gripped Theodore’s warm hand harder as I took in the statue’s hairless head, the delicately carved rippling skin that hung beneath her eyes.
Her arms were oddly thin, and her legs looked like they’d become one, as if they’d been bound together by a wrap of scaly flesh.
The shape of her bones showed through it.
The toes were too long, all webbed and crooked.
Just like that nekgya, endless years in the water had turned Eusia into something unrecognizable.
Before the altar, which was a wide wall of finely crafted gold and silver, studded with blue gems, sat a basin that collected the seawater trickling down the wall.
I studied the details etched into the gold—the depictions of crashing waves, of barnacles and urchins tucked into the edges.
Beneath Eusia, in morbid layers, I could make out tangled limbs and disembodied wings.
The nekgya. And just above her glittering statue was a wide circle.
It was well placed to look like a nimbus, adding to her ethereal gravity, but I could spot what it really was.
Her pool.
Revolting awe overtook me. It was brilliantly done.
The opulence, the astounding declaration of it.
Eusia had beaten death and Gods, she’d outpaced time, she’d overcome the indominable sea.
She’d spent hundreds of years remaking herself, hollowing herself out, changing again and again so that she might persevere. So that she might collect power.
How easy it must be for them to worship her, to excuse the misery and the pain and the true monstrosity of it all when it was clad in shimmering gold and dotted in brilliant gems. How could they not bow when they themselves stood to gain some of her hard-won power in exchange for mere drops of their blood.
I looked up at Theodore, who was quiet with fury beside me. I sounded utterly forlorn. “I don’t see how…”
He gave my hand a silencing squeeze, his fiery eyes stuck to Eusia’s effigy. When the last Obelian who lingered before the offering bowl at Eusia’s disfigured feet left, he finally spoke.
“I abhor her,” he said in a violent whisper.
“All she’s done and all she stands for. But if there is one commendation I am willing to give her, it’s that she is and has been abominably tenacious.
Not once has she faltered. And she’s still alive for it.
” Finally, he turned to face me. “We must be the same if we wish to defeat her and survive.”
Perhaps she’d never once faltered, but I certainly had. Time and again.
Warmth filled his desolate gaze, and he dragged it over my features like he so often had in the past. Memorizing, cataloging, revering. He spoke so gently. “I know you’re tired, Immy. After, when everything is over, we’ll rest.”
We. My eyes burned and I blinked against the sensation. “I’m not sure I’ll know how.” I could not think of a time in my life when I’d truly felt safe enough to attempt it. And I could not fathom how the life of duty I was meant to take up after all this—if I survived—would have space for it.
His thumb swiped over the back of my hand.
“We’ll learn together.” But I heard the lack of surety in the words, spun through their warmth.
The conversation we’d had the night before, the inability to see a clear path toward a shared future, hung around us like a noose ringing our necks.
I felt it tightening with each minute that passed.
The rattle and clink of armor made us turn. One of Theodore’s guards stopped and bowed. “You’re needed in the ballroom, Your Majesty. Wedding festivities, they said.”
Theodore nodded. Then gave me a look like he didn’t want to leave.
“Go,” I said, as reassuringly as I could, then added softly, “I need to look around.”
He caught my meaning. “Be careful. I’ll leave one of my men with your guards. Have him come for me as soon as you find anything.”
As Theodore left, I watched his broad shoulders firm and his chin tip back. That brooding air of inviolability and command fell over him like a cloak and I was filled with a mix of admiration and sorrow to see it. I understood what it cost to wear it. I knew how it stifled one’s breath.
“Your Majesty,” I called after him.
He stopped, and turned to look at me with dark eyes.
I reached up and took Nemea’s crown from my head. With my other hand I pulled the pins from where I’d tucked them in around his own gold-wreathed crown. His eyes turned bright, clinging to my every movement, watching every curling lock of hair fall, like I was something new and remarkable.
Finally, I took his crown from the top of my head and extended it toward him. “You forgot this.”
As he drew nearer, he never once looked at it. He reached out and plucked it from my hand. “Did I?”
I gave a breathless nod.
Slowly, he bent down and placed his lips to my ear. “It looks exquisite on you.”
I shivered, unsure how he’d managed to make the words so unbearably sensual.
He’d watched me like I’d taken the very dress from my body rather than his crown from my head.
His warm cheek scraped mine as he left. I watched him go, working to return my breath to its normal cadence.
Then, finally, I faced Eusia’s altar once more.
The large bowl before her statue was half full of blood. Of offerings. I looked up, watching the seawater trickle down from the line where the ceiling met the altar wall. I followed its descent to the narrow reservoir at the altar’s base. Clever.
With tight eyes, I awed again at the excellent craftsmanship of the statue.
It was so detailed I could make out the delicate lines of her fingers and nail beds.
It was impressive, the way the artist had been able to make the grotesque gash in her middle, and the way she held it open, look beautiful.
Heroic, even. Even the awful growths of skin beneath her eyes looked so refined, so frail, that they begged the onlooker to care.
It made one force their thoughts toward sacrifice and pain and gratitude.
It set my blood into a low, furious roil.
In a flash of anger, I snatched the offering bowl and flung the blood within across the altar wall, a shining slash of red.
It cut across the statue’s face, dripped down its ruined chest. The rest of it joined the falling seawater, and a moment later the water coming from above was tinged a dark pink.
Fingers shaking, I threw the golden bowl into the narrow reservoir and made my way for the door at the other end of the lightly glowing room. My body burned with resolve. Eusia was at the tips of my fingers now, and when I finally firmed my grip on her—
A hand grabbed the hair at the back of my head and yanked.
A terrible sharp pain struck the side of my neck.
My arms wheeled, my talons extending, but I could only slash them against the fabric of the person’s arms. I called on my power, which was ripping through my middle in a hot, dark surge, but whatever had been stuck into my neck began to creep beneath my skin, and through my veins.
The strange pain of it was consuming, fast-moving.
My vision began to break. My arms grew leaden.
Through the remaining moments of my hazy consciousness, I knew I was being dragged across the floor by my hair, like a doll in a child’s fist. Blurred above me, I saw Eusia’s blood-soaked statue.
I heard the trickling seawater. Then, with a jerk, my body was pulled through an opening in the golden wall of the altar and swallowed by the dark.