Chapter 35
Elric moved her into a hidden part of their castle, his hands already twitching as shadows grew around them, readying himself for a spell. “I know that area,” he was already growling. “That’s not in Orenda.”
She’d only seen a little of what he had projected, but she could admit where Ajax had chosen to build had seemed oddly familiar. Like she’d seen that field before or had walked through it, or…
“Shit,” she hissed.
That field was here. It was in Inverholm.
It was a famous section of her city because, once upon a time, an artist had decided that her kingdom had too many buildings and not enough greenery.
It was a massive park in the center of her homeland.
At one time, there had even been trees. But those had been cut down for many of the homes that needed to be built.
Now it was a lovely blank canvas, just waiting for someone to build upon it.
But that someone never should have been Leon Bishop and the god who possessed him. They dared do this in her kingdom?
Rage boiled underneath her skin. She could feel it pressing against every part of her body, threatening to pop out in a wave of anger that she wasn’t entirely certain she could control. Jessamine had no idea what would happen if she let it free either.
Elric spun on her, his words quick and clipped. “If they are in this kingdom, we have very little time. He wants us to know. That is why he allowed that man to be caught, so we cannot—”
She interrupted him. “We have to go now.”
“We haven’t prepared anyone.”
“The coven is as prepared as they are going to get. You gave them all the magic you could before you died. We did everything we could for them, and they have been preparing on their own. You and I are gods.” She reached for his hands, squeezing them and trying to press her own bravery into him.
“We knew this time would come. And now we have to move.”
She could see the hesitation in him. Though he had been ruthless and prepared only moments ago, now he had to face the demon from his childhood. The man who had beaten him over and over again.
But this time would be different.
Jessamine tugged him closer to her until their foreheads were pressed together.
She pressed his hand to her ribs, so he could feel her slow inhale and long exhale.
Breath by breath, she grounded him. “This time will be different,” she said, knowing her touch alone wasn’t enough.
“You have me. You have a coven. You have done everything you could to make this time so obviously different that no matter what happens, we will win.”
“I do not wish to lose any of you.”
“Of course you don’t. But you won’t. We all have a future to fight for now, Elric.
A cabin by the sea. A romance with an old lover.
A life of luxury to return to.” She pressed her lips to his, the words shaking as she let the final desire free.
Because she had never told him this. She hadn’t ever dared voice it.
“A future to find as a god and goddess in a world who hasn’t met them yet. ”
Something dark and needy flared in his gaze. “You and me?”
“No throne will hold me down now, Deathless One. You made me anew.” She kissed him like she meant it this time. She pressed all her hopes and fears for the future into him, and he greedily took them all. Bit by bit until finally he drew back.
His ribs were still expanding a little too fast, but then he nodded. “And so it begins.”
“No, my love. And so it ends.”
Jessamine turned and raced down the stairs before he could change his mind. Her voice rose and rang throughout the dungeon. “It is time! My coven! We go to battle!”
And just as she suspected, the whooping cry of all the witches who had spent days sacrificing was all she needed to hear to fill herself with even more confidence.
This time, she would destroy anyone who stood in their way.
Ajax be damned. He had made himself weak, and she would show him why that was such a bad idea.
The coven thundered up the stairs toward her, all their magic already crackling in the air. But it was Sybil who shoved her way to the front, her dark eyes wild with rage. “Where?”
“The old park. He took the whole fucking thing for his pantheon,” Jessamine snarled.
Sybil’s expression darkened. Jessamine had never seen her look quite so angry, or perhaps so deadly. “He’s here? In Inverholm?”
Every single witch seemed to still. Jessamine could see the vibration of anger that jumped from witch to witch as they realized that not only was their enemy closer than they thought, but he was in their home.
The only home they had ever wanted to protect.
Pride burned in her own chest at their angry curses.
Because they had every right to be angry. They had every right to feel that ancient rage of every woman who has ever had a man do what he wanted, their own feelings be damned. It was time to take all of those memories and throw them into the face of a god who had denied them for years.
“We fight to the death,” Jessamine said. “And we fight with every ounce of magic burning inside of us. We fight because we know how much work it took for us to be gentle. I release you from that endless labor now, my sisters. No more gentle. No more kind. This is about revenge.”
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Elric had already spun up enough magic to summon a portal. She knew he wouldn’t put them in danger, and still her stomach churned. It was now. Now they were going to destroy… everything.
But she’d already unmade her kingdom. She’d already torn it apart, just like she had promised Elric all those months ago. Now she was going to take it back.
Jessamine stepped through the portal in the center of the park into chaos.
The once-green land was now barren. What had once been lush, thriving grass was now yellow and withered, crunching beneath her feet as she stepped out of the portal and into the park.
Even as she bent down and sank her fingers into the earth, she could feel the nutrients had been yanked out of the soil.
Her magic tentatively stretched into it, seeking out even a hint of something she could heal. But it was so dead. Beyond saving at this point.
She lifted her head at the sound of moans, looking beyond the immediate area and out into the wasteland.
There were so many people here, all of them writhing in pain on the ground.
They twisted back and forth, as though something was eating them from the inside out.
And perhaps there was. Ajax needed more power, after all.
These people were the remaining few Ajax hadn’t killed.
If he wasn’t careful, there wouldn’t be anyone left to worship him.
Far beyond the writhing, there was a crowd of people, their arms thrusting into the air, all clamoring for attention.
The pantheon was in front of them. All gleaming and golden in the light, that pantheon was a violation of a space that had once been Jessamine’s.
He mocked her by building his own place of worship in the center of her city.
She didn’t know what to do from here, but her magic tugged her away from the pantheon.
To the right. It was insistent that she had to go that way and not wait for the rest of the coven to join her.
She could almost hear it whispering to her. It was time for them to fly on their own. They would do what was right. She didn’t need to tell them that they needed to help those people. They were prepared. Sybil was capable, and she knew how to wield the weapon of the coven with deft hands.
So she left. She walked where her magic wanted to go, pausing in front of a woman crawling toward the pantheon on her belly. Every inch of movement looked excruciating, and she clearly was still fighting to get back there.
“What are you doing?” Jessamine asked. She knelt beside the woman, placing her hand on her back and easing the pain for a brief moment.
The cloud lifted from the woman’s expression, but she was still trying to get back to the pantheon. “My sister,” the woman wheezed. “My sister is so sick. He said he would heal her.”
“Ajax cannot do that. No god can do that.” Except her, Jessamine realized. She could heal them.
“Ajax promised,” the woman whispered, still clawing her way back toward the crowd. “He said if we could survive it, if we fought our way back, he would do it. He said…”
A wave of fresh pain made the woman curl in on herself, and still, somehow, she was crawling.
She was forcing her body through endless pain just to get to his side, and Jessamine realized this was the plan.
He had lied to these people. He had brought them all the way from Orenda, promising them that he would fix their families, their loved ones, the horrible things that happened to them, and all of it was a lie.
All of it.
Her heart turned brittle in her chest. Jessamine glanced around at these people who were not hers, but realized that they could be. All it would take was a whispered word, and she could be their goddess.
“I can heal your sister,” she said, setting her hand on the woman’s back again. And the muscles in her back twitched, seizing for a moment before releasing.
“Please,” the woman whispered. “If I don’t get there first, someone else will take my place.”
“I am telling you that I can help you. I will save your sister. All you have to do is trust me.” Jessamine didn’t know how people worshipped the gods. She never had.
Her mother had never been devout for any god, nor would she likely have been if the gods were still alive. But these people believed. She wondered if it was that belief, that fervor, that gave the gods their strength. She just needed them to look at her like that and she could actually help them.
A snort interrupted her thoughts. Jessamine flinched, and the woman groaned with the pain before slithering toward the pantheon once again.
She looked up, and another woman stood there.
She had her arms crossed over her chest, wild red hair billowing in the breeze, and her clothes were…
odd. Stitched together from several outfits, it seemed, giving her the impression of a patchwork woman. Both new and old.
“You really think they’ll believe you over him?” this newcomer asked, obviously not believing that anyone would.
“They should. I am a goddess.”
“A new goddess. It takes time to gather a following. Time for people to trust you. After all, what goddess would try to stop the person helping them?” The woman lifted her foot and placed it down on the hand of a young man crawling beside her.
When he cried out in pain, she merely grinned.
“In this case, the old ways are always best.”
“Who are you?” she asked, nerves gathering in her belly.
The woman grinned. “Maiden, Mother, Crone, I have many names and many faces.”
Oh.
Fuck.
It wasn’t possible. But now that she was really looking at the woman, Jessamine could feel it. This was a goddess standing in front of her. A real-life goddess, one who had been around for centuries and who was still gathering her power, but had plenty of it.
“So he raised at least one of you,” Jessamine replied matter-of-factly. “Good for him. At least he’ll die knowing he accomplished something.”
“He’s got me now, dear. He won’t be dying anytime soon.”
The Many-Faced Mother was the stuff of legends.
Jessamine remembered that she had control over the earth just in time to leap over the giant chasm in the ground that suddenly formed where she had been standing.
A group of peasants tumbled into the darkness, their screams echoing in her mind until something in her just… snapped.
She was tired of this. Over it. So tired of gods taking advantage of people who loved them.
Her magic coiled tightly in her chest until it exploded.
Gold strands burst out of her. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Each of them an impossibly straight wire that stretched out twenty feet and just… hovered there.
She could feel it. The anger and rage that strengthened them, but also the certainty that she was right.
Words tumbled from her lips, damning in their shapes and forms. “You never cared for anyone who worshipped you. These people laid down their lives, begging you to help them, and all you saw was someone who sacrificed for you. They were begging for your help, and you took from people who had nothing left to give. You are not a goddess. You are a leech, and I will burn you from this realm.”
The Many-Faced Mother started to laugh, but then froze as those golden tendrils that had burst from Jessamine’s chest started to cut her.
They suddenly became sharp as wire, slicing through flesh and physical form.
Spearing through magic, flaying it until it peeled away from her body strip by strip.
There were no screams from her. No terror. Just the sight of a goddess meeting justice for the very first time and falling to pieces at her feet because of it.
She watched as she killed a goddess without the help of anyone else.
Just her. Just the realm they walked on, tasting its vengeance for the first time, and she could feel how hungry the land was.
Drops of the goddess’s blood hit the ground, and flowers bloomed where it landed.
Then it was a gush of blood and gore and the earth soaked it up, spreading greenery and lushness and life from the sacrifice Jessamine made to it.
When it was done, the golden wires faded as if they had never been there at all.
The sound of footsteps startled her, tore her eyes away from the smudge of a goddess leaking out onto the ground. Elric was suddenly there with her. She thought, for a moment, to worry he would judge her for the death of his sister.
But of course he didn’t. Her god merely wrapped her up in his arms and pressed his lips to her hair. “One death,” he murmured. “And now, many more.”
She had never wanted to be a goddess of justice, but…
maybe that was part of life. Part of living.
Not just taking what was thrown at her and enduring.
Not just assuming that everything that happened did so for a reason.
Instead, maybe life was about grabbing at the visceral, raw meat of time and squeezing it for every drop of blood she could wring out.
Nodding against Elric’s chest, she turned toward the pantheon and took a deep breath. “We do this my way, right?”
“And how would you like to do it?”
“Bloody and horrible,” she replied as she stalked toward the pantheon. “I want to hear him scream.”