Chapter 36
Dreven
Iam pacing the ruined hall when Dastian manifests in a shower of gold-red sparks that singe the rotten floorboards. His usual chaotic glee is absent, replaced by a grim set to his jaw that I haven’t seen since we were banished.
“What did you do?” I ask, suspicion tinging my tone.
Voren materialises beside me, his pale eyes narrowed as he senses the sudden shift in the chaos that surrounds Dastian. “You smell of Order.”
“Worse,” Dastian says. “The Order’s seer, Taye. It’s Tabitha.”
“The Witch of Order.”
Voren goes utterly still, the air around him frosting over.
“She’s been here this entire time as part of the Order?”
“She knows we’re back,” Dastian continues.
My control snaps. The shadows in the hall explode outwards, slamming into crumbling walls and rotting stair bannisters. “Fuck!”
“Did she see you?” Voren asks.
“She did. She was as unpleasant as ever.”
“Fuck isn’t a strong enough word. She is going to blow this entire mission to hell,” he hisses.
“No shit,” I snap. “What does she know?”
“I don’t know if she knows we are heading back into the Pantheon realm to retrieve the crown tonight. But she does know about the Devourer because I told her. It was the only way to get her to stand down.”
“And did she?” I grit out.
“For now. She knows she can’t beat it; she knows we are all dead if we can’t. That ancient hag has a survival instinct greater than her hatred of us.”
“Small mercies,” I mutter. “This is a fucking disaster. What does she know about Nyssa?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t chat much about her. Although she did say that if Nyssa dies, her sister is waiting in the wings to take her place. It was… odd. Not a threat but almost a wishful thinking type scenario,” he says thoughtfully.
“Explain?”
He purses his lips. “It’s like she would prefer Rynna to be the slayer over Nyssa. Maybe she is more easily controlled?”
“Than Nyssa?” Voren chokes out a laugh. “Up until a few days ago, she was the most highly strung, play-by-the-rulebook slayer, like, ever.”
“Yes, but Tabitha’s endgame is not the same as the Order’s, now is it?” he points out.
“No,” I say, the word like a shard of ice.
“Tabitha’s endgame is absolute Order. A world cleansed of chaos, of free will.
A world where everything moves according to her design.
She must know Nyssa is fulfilling her true role with us.
She must know, or suspect, Nyssa is a variable the witch can’t control. ”
“But Rynna...” Voren trails off.
“Rynna is untested. Malleable. Tabitha would see her as a clean slate. A slayer she could mould into a puppet to serve her own ends, not the Order’s and certainly not ours.”
“Look, all of that is beside the point. Nyssa isn’t going to die.
We will make sure of it. Not to mention, she wouldn’t let herself know the world, all these innocents, will be erased if she doesn’t hold the line.
Her conscience remains strong, even if her desires, her true purpose, are pushing at the edges. ” I know I’m right. She wouldn’t dare.
“Her conscience is a leash of her own making,” Dastian says, shattering my train of thought. “We just spent the last twenty-four hours teaching her how to slip the collar. Don’t mistake her loyalty to a world she wants to save for loyalty to our methods.”
He’s right. Relying on her innate goodness is a fool’s errand. She is a weapon, and we have just pointed her at a new, bigger target. Her motivations are secondary to the outcome.
“Tabitha will go to the crypt,” Voren states, his voice flat and cold as a tombstone. “She will not interfere directly, not while the Devourer is a threat. But she will watch. She will wait for Nyssa to fail, so she can offer her own solution.”
“We don’t give her the chance. The plan has been moved up. We go now.”
“In broad daylight?” Dastian asks, an eyebrow raised in amusement. “How delightfully chaotic.”
“Dusk is hours away. We won’t wait. Voren, you will be our eyes. Watch the witch. If she moves towards the crypt, you will delay her. Dastian, you will watch the slayer’s cottage. We are not leaving her alone for a second longer. Go now.”
The order of their God of Shadows has been given, despite my reluctance to take on the role of the ruler of the dark gods.
It begs the question: who the fuck is moving into place to take over the light gods with Aethel dead?
So far, no one has come forth. Or at least overtly.
It is a problem for another time. At some point, I will have to pick up the mantle of my mother and rule not just the Shadow Gods but the Radiant Gods as well.
For now, that is a battle I will not pick in this war against the Devourer.
The game has changed. Tabitha’s presence is a complication; it’s a declaration of war on a front I didn’t anticipate.
Dastian and Voren vanish without another word. Their obedience is a relic of a time before our imprisonment, a hierarchy we haven’t needed until now. The air in the hall settles, thick with the scent of their fading magic and my cold fury.
I don’t waste a moment. My shadows writhe, hungry for movement, and I let them take me.
The world dissolves into black and grey, and I materialise in the gloomy corner of Nyssa’s living room, the transition seamless and silent.
She is curled on her worn sofa, the black journal open in her lap, her brow furrowed in concentration.
The sight of her calms the storm raging inside me.
She hasn’t sensed my arrival, a vulnerability that both infuriates and satisfies me.
She mutters something under her breath, tracing a diagram on the page with her finger. “A realm that feeds on memory... what the hell does that even mean?”
“It means we’re leaving,” I say, stepping out of the shadows.
She jumps, the book sliding from her lap as her hand flies to the blade tucked into her waistband. Her eyes are wide, amber fire meeting my silver ice.
“Now,” I continue, my voice leaving no room for argument. “The timeline has changed.”
For a second, I see the argument forming on her lips, the stubborn refusal to be ordered around.
But something in my expression must convey the gravity of the situation, because she clamps her jaw shut.
With a frustrated growl, she shoves the journal into a small backpack by the sofa, along with a few other items I don’t recognise.
Her movements are efficient, economical, the ingrained discipline of a warrior overriding her anger.
“Are you going to tell me what spooked you?” she asks, shrugging the pack onto her shoulders and pulling her boots on with sharp, angry tugs.
I don’t answer. Explaining Tabitha now is a liability. It invites questions, fear, hesitation—luxuries we can no longer afford. Instead, I hold out my hand. “We’re not walking.”
She glares at my hand, then at me. “I hate it when you do that.”
“I know.”
With a final, put-upon sigh, she takes my hand. Her skin is warm against mine. I wrap my shadows around us, pulling the world into a cold, silent void as I draw her closer, feeling her body press against mine, and I breathe in the scent of her hair. She smells like shampoo and rain.
The world solidifies around us in a rush of cold air and the smell of damp earth. We stand in front of the crypt, the stone slick and black with rain. I release her hand, but the anchor between us hums, a low thrum of power that is a constant comfort. Nyssa remains steady on her feet.
“I’m getting used to that. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“Good,” I state, my gaze fixed on the heavy stone door I sealed hours ago and release the shadows. “It’s open. The fissure is all yours.”
She doesn’t argue, just pulls the blade from her back. The runes flare to life, casting an eerie blue light across her face. The steel vibrates, hungry. It knows what is required.
I watch her, every muscle in my body tense.
She is walking into our world, a place of gods and monsters where her mortality is both her greatest weakness and her only key to success.
She lifts the blade, her thumb tracing the razor-sharp edge.
There is no hesitation. She knows the price of admission.
She always pays it. She swipes the blade across her palm without a wince, the blood welling dark and potent.
She yanks open the crypt door as Dastian and Voren reappear.
“All clear. For now,” Voren mutters.
I nod once as Nyssa holds her bleeding hand above the fissure inside the crypt. It groans, a deep, resonant sound that vibrates through the soles of my boots. The seal she placed fractures, spiderwebbing across the stone before crumbling into dust, revealing the pulsing, golden tear in the earth.
It’s wider than before, more agitated. Light spills out, carrying with it the scent of ancient magic.
“Ready?” I ask, though I will never be ready to watch her walk into this. But we have no choice.
“No,” she says honestly, “but fuck it.”
I step through first, pulling her with me, Voren and Dastian following quickly.
The transition is violent, a wrenching sensation like being turned inside out and reassembled.
The air here is thick, heavier than the mortal realm.
Nyssa will struggle until she adapts. Until the Firsts’ power allows her to adapt.
Mortals, true mortals, cannot survive here.
The resplendent realm of the gods is no place for their fragile minds and bodies.
We land on smooth cream marble that gleams like liquid pearl under our feet, stretching endlessly in all directions.
Above us, the sky fractures into ribbons of light with colours that shift between molten gold and bruise-purple, then splinter into hues that would make mortal eyes bleed, colours that exist in the spaces between heartbeats, shades that whisper of both creation and oblivion.
“Welcome to the Pantheon,” I murmur into her hair. “Try not to die.”