Chapter 86
Mariah’s vision blurred with red.
Sebastian and Ciana knelt in the ashes of her home, cries slipping from their gagged mouths. The mudae at their backs clicked their serrated claws, jagged maws grinning wickedly.
Behind her, someone muffled a cry that sounded a lot like brother.
Mariah’s heartbeat racketed against her ribs. Her magic rippled through her veins, spreading to her trembling fingertips. The air was tight and heavy, each breath she drew a terrible struggle.
It was all so horribly familiar.
And yet, she couldn’t tear herself away.
“Let. Them. Go.” Mariah’s snarl was low and fierce, carrying across the scourged meadow.
Kol chuckled, adjusting the dark lapels of his jacket. Even that sound was too familiar, too similar. Mariah’s jaw clenched so hard she feared her teeth would crack.
“Why?” The dark god spread his hands. “I brought them as a gift. An offering of good will.”
“They are not objects to be handed over as some bargaining chip. They are people. And they have nothing to do with this.” Her anger loosened her tongue, words falling to the ashen ground like droplets of water. “Let’s keep this between us.”
Kol tsked. “But that’s not entirely true, is it?
” His burning eyes flicked to Ydros. The earth god stood a few paces away, stoic and unreadable.
“You made them a part of this when you sent them to meddle with the affairs of a foreign kingdom. If it weren’t for my intervention, I’m afraid my friend here would have planned a much darker fate. ”
Ydros shifted, just the barest hint of movement, but it was enough to snag Mariah’s attention.
Not enough to distract her from her rage.
“And you made yourself my problem when you killed my mother.” Mariah’s fingers twitched toward her dagger. “It all comes back to you, Kol. Whether you want to admit it or not.”
“Another pretty lie from such a pretty mouth.” Kol’s smile turned dark, shadows pooling behind his shoulders like wings. “I did not kill your mother. I was still trapped in my prison. The only one responsible for her death is you.”
Kol’s words landed like a punch to Mariah’s stomach. She nearly staggered, the breath leaving her lungs on a flurried exhale. Andrian was there at her back, his presence as reassuring as it could be, but she refused to let herself reach out to him. Refused to show that sort of weakness.
Refused to let Kol know how thoroughly he had broken her.
“That’s not true,” she said, pushing the words out through her teeth. But they were too soft, too weak.
Kol ignored her. His eyes drifted down, halting near her waist. A curious expression fell over his painfully familiar face, the strong lines of his brow pulling together.
“What interesting new adornments you carry,” he said. “I wonder what you possibly could’ve done so wrong to earn the Mark of the Crieré on your skin.”
Mariah’s blood turned to ice, cooling some of her rage. “Or maybe they chose me to finish this.”
Kol scoffed. “The Crieré do not choose endings,” he said. “Only beginnings. Though I suppose some beginnings can be their own sort of ending.” His gaze lifted, red-gold refocusing. There was so much intensity behind his eyes, like staring at the sun and being scalded by its flame.
Mariah had spent her whole life beneath that sun. She watched it sink every day so two moons could rise in its place.
Her magic sang in her soul. Silver-gold threads curled around her heart, snaked through her veins, wound around her head like a crown. She pulled one of her swords free from its sheath down her spine, gripping her dagger in the other hand.
It was enough. Enough talking, enough breaking. All her broken pieces were sharp and jagged, and she was ready to wield them as her weapon.
“Beginnings or endings.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears—older and richer, like the grace of those two ageless goddesses was speaking through her, too. “It doesn’t matter what you call it. But I came to end you, Kol. Before you can end anyone else.”
She expected him to fill with the dark rage she’d seen in him at Khento. Expected him to launch at her, to shift, to do something.
What she didn’t expect him to do was laugh.
The rich timbre rang across the ashen meadow. The hairs on Mariah’s arms stood on end. Fear and alarm and anger roiled from Andrian’s bond, and her skin prickled with awareness as he took a step closer. Matheo stepped closer, too, notching an arrow to his bow.
“I am so glad you came, Mariah,” Kol said, laughter still thick in his words. “It was exactly what I wanted. And it is so very amusing to me that you think you’re here for any other purpose than what I intended.”
Mariah didn’t answer. She only tightened her grip on her dagger, balancing the familiar weight in her palm.
One strike. That was all she needed—
“Like I said,” Kol continued. “I am not here to end things. I am here to start things anew. Beginning”—his eyes flickered, that smirk tugging again at his lips— “with you.”
“Whatever you’re about to offer me,” she snarled, “I don’t want it.”
“Not even if it means the lives of your friends?”
Mariah’s heart stuttered. She glanced at Sebastian and Ciana—still bound, still kneeling, the claws of the mudae far too close to their throats.
“Bow to me.” The dark god’s voice sliced through the ash.
“Kneel to me and acknowledge me as your king. Help me bring this continent under a single, benevolent ruler. Do this, and your friends will be spared. In fact”—he paused, and Mariah loathed that gleam in his eyes— “I’ll even give you a throne beside me.
Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you beg for when you think no one is listening?
Someone to share in the burdens of ruling with you? ”
A curse slipped past Andrian’s teeth. Loathing swallowed the bond, hate and rage and fear.
Plenty of fear.
There was no way Kol could know that. She’d shared those feelings with Andrian alone, had peeled back the layers of herself for him to see.
But Rulene and Callamus had warned her of this. Of Kol’s ability to see into minds, to take the information he wanted and use it when he best saw fit.
“It wasn’t you,” Mariah pushed to Andrian. “He would know this about me no matter what. My thoughts are my weakness, Andrian. Not you.”
And her love. That had always been her weakness, too.
He didn’t answer, and she hoped that he listened.
“Unfortunately for you,” Mariah said, her words clear. “I already have that person. And he is most assuredly not you.”
Kol only chuckled. “I think you’re fooling yourself. I think with a little practice, you will learn to see right through our differences.” His eyes flashed. “I already fooled you once, after all.”
That morning. That dream.
Wrong. He was wrong. Sickness wound through her stomach, the same as it had that morning.
She lifted her sword higher, pointing the sharpened blade at Kol’s rotted heart.
“And you will never do so again.” Magic wound down the steel. “Not until the stars blink out of existence and the moons fall from the sky.”
Kol’s mouth twisted into a fake pout. “What a pity, then. I didn’t want this to have to come to a fight.”
“What a shame that I did.”
Mariah launched herself at the God of the Sun.