Chapter 46
“I’m going to kill her,” I tell Stellan. “The goddess with the silver-red eyes.”
He looks over at me. I’m twelve and can barely hold up even the smallest swords in his forge.
“And how are you going to do that?” he asks.
His doubt makes me sit up straighter, as if I could make myself seem more capable by adding a half inch to my stature. “I will cut off her head.”
“And if she has many heads?” he asks. “She is a goddess. She is a being of many forms. Of many faces.”
“Then I will cut off every head,” I say through my teeth. “And every arm, and every leg, and every heart she has, I will cut them off and up and I will burn them.” My voice changes, becomes something I don’t recognize. “I will burn them all.”
Stellan looks over at me. “And if you burn too?” he says.
I give him a rueful smile. “Then I’ll rise from the ashes, just like you taught me.”
The glimmering cave falls into focus the second I step through the arch. Goblets cover the ground, made of every metal. Some look like crystallized flame. Others look forged of ancient bone. Some are carved straight from priceless gems.
Most are piled high, in the corners.
The one blocking my path is made of pure, sparkling silver, just like my sword. I kneel. And the second I wrap my fingers around its stem, it begins to fill with silver liquid brighter than the sun, gleaming like a galaxy, swirling with shredded stars and melted down power.
Pure magic.
It doesn’t stop until it reaches the goblet’s rim.
I lift the cup from the ground. I test it, moving it to the side.
But the liquid does not spill. Even when I turn the goblet over completely.
One promise, finished. I got the magic. I will have my dragon take it to Kira’s sister, if it’s the last thing I do.
Now, it’s time to finish this.
One hand holding the goblet of magic, I use the other to reach for my starblade. I slice my palm across its glimmering edge. My blood spills into the sparkling dirt.
Then, I dig my sword into it, my mind filled with a name that’s haunted me this entire journey.
The gates are ruled by unbreakable magic. They cannot be opened by anyone—even the gods—outside of every fifty years.
Except, maybe, by the god who made them.
The god of journeys, and gates, and in-betweens. The god of the Questral itself.
“God of Travels.”
Great Houses weren’t the only thing I researched in Vander’s library.
I also looked up anything I could about summoning gods.
They can ignore calls anywhere besides their own land.
That’s why they make it so hard to get here—why the archway is closed to anyone but them, outside of the fifty days of the Questral.
A moment later, a goddess steps in front of me, looking just like she does in my worst memories.
Her pale skin gleams like my sword. Her hair is the silver of the gods; she shines with ethereal and otherworldly beauty. Hundreds of gems decorate her skin as if growing out of it, in a multitude of brilliant colors. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, stones I can’t begin to name.
All this emotion, all this rage, has narrowed into an arrow-like focus as I lift my weapon. I’m surprised my voice comes out steady, but it does. “Do you know who I am?” I ask.
She looks bored. Her perfect face is expressionless. “Of course I do. The one that didn’t burn. You’re here to kill me,” she says simply, glancing at the starlit blade in my hands.
I don’t care how she knows that. I don’t care at all. None of it matters.
“I am.” I take a step forward. “I have wanted to kill you every moment from the first time I saw you.” Every word is edged in rage, the sharpest swords I have ever forged. This unmatched fury uncurls within me, my veins lighting with its fire. But my voice is steady. “You killed my entire family.”
Not a single shred of regret passes across her glorious face. The gems that ornament her body simply keep shining.
I take a step forward. “My village. You burned it to the ground.” Hundreds of lives reduced to ashes. I take her in. “You don’t care, do you?”
“I’m a god,” she says flatly. “I’ve lived millennia. I’ve watched millions be born and die. I’ve watched kingdoms and worlds rise and fall. I don’t care about anyone, unless they threaten us.”
Us. The gods.
“So why?” I demand, my voice shaking with the question.
“Why me? Why my family? If you don’t care …
then why did you do that?” Why did you have to do that?
Tears sting my eyes. I imagine a world where she didn’t.
Where she left us alone. Where I didn’t have to trek across this beautiful and brutal world just to get revenge.
“Because of the prophecy,” she says simply, without a morsel of emotion. “You posed a threat. I tried to eliminate it.”
Prophecy. There’s that word again.
She thinks it’s about me. The paladin who was promised.
I step forward. It doesn’t matter, I know that. This is all about to end, but I can’t not know. I can’t not know why everything I loved had to be ripped away from me. Because I was right. Now I know for certain. It was my fault.
“What prophecy?” I demand.
The goddess’s lips just curl into a smile, like she finds my anger and ignorance amusing.
She still hasn’t summoned a weapon to this duel.
“You should be more afraid,” I tell her, voice echoing through this room that glimmers like we are sitting inside of one of the stones growing from her marble-smooth skin.
“Because even if you are the God of Travels, I can imagine opening the gates was not a small task. That’s a long way to go to eliminate a simple threat.
You were afraid of me. Now I’m here … summoning you to a duel … and you don’t look afraid at all.”
“No,” she says simply. “I’m not. Because I can smell your wants, human. I know everything you feel. Your emotions are like the strings of an instrument, and I have them all here, laid out nicely in front of me. Which is why I know there’s something you want even more than your revenge.”
My voice is full of rage. “I don’t want anything—”
“You want them back.”
The world stills. The rage in my blood freezes over. Everything goes very quiet. Because I would do anything. Anything …
“Of course I do. But that’s impossible.” My voice is a rasp.
“It’s not,” she says. “And, if you make an oath on your blood not to kill me, I will tell you how.”
A blood oath. I imagine it’s the same as swords, but if broken … I will break.
“You’re lying,” I say, the words trembling. I refuse to believe what must be a lie from this goddess I hate with every shred of my being.
“I do not lie,” she says. She tears one of the gems off her skin, and blood races from the spot. It’s silver, just like the swirling power in my goblet. She dips her fingers in it. “I swear on my blood that there is a way, and I know it. I will tell you … if you agree not to kill me.”
Impossible.
The need for vengeance pounds through my skull. Burns through my blood. I have worked years for this. Fought countless dangers, survived endless challenges, just for this moment.
I lift the starblade, wanting to end her. Needing to end her. But instead of throwing it through her neck … I drop it at my feet.
The words feel wrong. I never believed, in a thousand years, that I would be speaking them. But I do. Clearly. Desperately. “I swear on my blood that I will not kill you, goddess.”
It takes everything in me to step over my blade, to walk toward her as she smirks, placing her hand in mine.
Our blood mixes, and I feel the oath racing down my veins, straight to my heart. It’s done.
I stumble back, slightly light-headed, almost tripping, wondering if I’ve made a grave mistake. When I finally face her again, my voice is steady. “Speak,” I demand.
“Kill the God of Death, and you can bring back your family.”
The God of Death. The silver-haired warrior who steals brides, who rules demons, who is famed for his ruthlessness, and who put a bounty on my head.
“Thank you,” I say to the goddess. And I never thought I would be thanking the woman who killed my entire family.
Her gems blink back at me as she nods her head.
She turns toward the tunnel at the end of this cave, wide and tilted up, as if it leads straight to the stars. “But I’m not done with you yet.”
I reach toward the connection between me and my dragon, the one it spoke to me through in the skies. Are you there? I ask.
The same resonance responds, the wordless language that translates in my mind. Always, she says.
I have something for you, I say.
Come and get it.
With knee-shattering force, my dragon breaks through the arch, shattering the silver beams, and lands right behind me, shaking the ground. I can feel the steam of her breath above my head.
The goddess’s eyes widen. “You made a blood oath not to kill me.”
“I never said anything about my dragon.” I look up at my silver companion. “Eat.”
The goddess can’t even summon a flicker of power before my dragon swallows her and her thousand gems whole.