Epilogue
Chasina
“You are a Champion,” Deimos’ booming voice filled the council chambers so thoroughly I actually winced at the sound of it. “Given awesome power and immortal life in exchange for a duty. A simple duty, Chasina, and one which you have failed to complete.”
I bowed my head in supplication as I knelt on the cold marble of the council room.
Fourteen gods stared down at me from their place on the raised dais.
The council of eleven, Deimos himself, his sister, and one in chains.
He knelt as I did, eyes downcast and light hair falling over to hide his face.
I did not know him. I doubted I wanted to.
“My sincere apologies, Lord Deimos,” I spoke, keeping my eyes on the floor before me so as not to offend the sensibilities of the leader of the gods. “I have failed you. I have failed all of Pavos. I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit with a glad heart.”
“Punishment,” Deimos spat. “I do not wish to punish you, Chasina. I wish for victory. It was one girl. One half mortal girl that I sent you after whom you failed to retrieve at every turn. Are you so useless that a child can escape your clutches again and again?”
I grit my teeth but held my tongue.
“Her partner was with her,” I told him. “I saw him.”
The boy you let slip through your fingers, I thought bitterly. Deimos frowned, glaring at me in that way of his that told me he knew exactly what I was thinking and that I was going to pay for it.
“He’s a traitor and will be dealt with,” Deimos assured me.
He strode from the dais and stepped down off of the platform to approach me.
I knelt perfectly still as he circled me, watching me as he did.
My gaze flicked up to where Valin stood in the corner, still wearing his blood-soaked honor.
While I was here for a punishment, Valin would be claiming a reward.
I heard that his squadron had fought best in Pavos’ defense.
Good for him. He might finally rise above me in favor after all.
A white hot light flashed beside my head and I let out a shriek of pain.
I raised trembling fingers to the left side of my face.
They came away bloody. Deimos stood on that side of me.
He was speaking but his words were muffled, warbling.
I shook as I turned only to see a small stump of flesh resting on the floor beside my left knee. My ear.
In shock, I could only stare at the severed appendage.
“—so that you might remember the cost of failure, Chasina,” Deimos was saying.
He had crossed to my right side now, but I didn’t look up at him.
I could do nothing but stare at that bloody pile of flesh.
My ear. He took my godsdamned ear. “It won’t heal.
Wounds inflicted by Geist magic, the Light, cannot be healed by your Blessing. A bit of a clever loophole, that.”
I just stared and stared at the blood smeared marble beneath me, at the ear that would never be reattached, as blood flowed freely from my head. I was probably going to bleed out. I wasn’t sure I cared.
“Go,” Deimos commanded. “Flee to your luxurious mansion we provide you and remember, Chasina. The next time you fail to heed my instructions, it will be more than your ear.”
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I knew what disobeying a command would mean but I just couldn’t tear my eyes away from the ear.
My ear. Deimos reached the dais and turned back.
Seeing that I still knelt on the floor, he clenched his jaw and took a step forward.
But then strong arms were around me, lifting me and dragging me out of the council chambers, offering poor excuses for my disobedience as we went.
Valin stood me up on my feet on the other side of the door. Alosia was there, leaning against the opposite wall. She rushed forward when Valin let go and caught me as I swayed, holding me up as her gaze met Valin’s.
“Ear,” he said gruffly and I heard the intake of air as Alosia got a good look at where my ear had been.
“I’ll take her from here,” she assured him and he nodded, turning back and disappearing into the council chamber behind us, likely to claim his reward. Alosia led me forward, voice gentle as she spoke beside me. “Let’s get you home.”
My ear. He’d taken my ear. Two thousand years in his service, working my way up the ranks until I was his Chosen Champion, and this was what I had to show for it. Two failed missions and a missing ear.
I remained in a daze as Alosia led me out of the palace and into the streets. I didn’t speak at all until we reached the gates of my home. Finally, then, I snapped to attention. I couldn’t be seen like this, I realized. No one could see me like this.
“Thank you, Alosia,” I said, pushing off of her and regaining my own footing.
“Of course, Chas,” she replied, stepping away in understanding but not going so far that she couldn’t be back in an instant if needed.
I managed to hold my own long enough to make it into the house before stumbling.
As expected, Alosia moved forward to catch me, bracing me against one shoulder as she led me through the immaculate hallways to the sitting room where she deposited me into a plush chair and sent the servants away for tea, several herbs with complicated names, and medical supplies.
“You can’t heal it,” I informed her bitterly.
“Not with magic,” she replied, moving pillows around to find herself a comfortable seat. “But I don’t just grow pretty flowers in my garden. Not anymore.”
She frowned. I didn’t ask any more questions.
“Did you see it again?” She asked a moment later, trying and failing to hide the wonder in her voice. “Sanctuary?”
I just stared at her.
“It’s been almost two thousand years, Alosia,” I replied. “Don’t tell me you’re still homesick for that shit hole.”
Her brows came together as she frowned deeply.
“That shit hole is where we come from, Chasina,” she reminded me.
Under any other circumstances, I would have laughed with delight at getting sweet, gentle Alosia to say the words “shit hole”, but my head was pounding too hard to savor the moment. I groaned, rubbing my temples as the servants teetered the room, tea, herbs, and bandages in tow.
“And what does that say about us?” I grumbled, reaching for the piping hot tea.
Alosia slapped my hand away before dropping a wad of clean bandages into the cup.
It absorbed the tea instantly and, before I could even groan in protest, she was crushing herbs on top of it.
I sighed, leaning back in my seat and closing my eyes, trying to ignore the painful throbbing as best as I could.
“Did it really fall?” Alosia asked then.
“The wards were broken when I left,” I replied, keeping my eyes closed.
“So I imagine that Fallen and her friends tried convincing the inhabitants to leave. Whether they succeeded or not, I couldn’t tell you.
We’ll know soon enough. I imagine Deimos will have my other ear if he’s lost his recruitment grounds. ”
“Adrian and Dante are the first recruits Deimos has gotten for centuries anyway,” Alosia muttered. “I can’t imagine why he should be upset about losing Sanctuary.”
My eyes flew open.
“Control,” I said simply but leaned forward, examining Alosia closely as she reached into the cup and gave the contents a stir. “You’re lucid.”
“I’m always lucid,” she answered with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. “You just never want to hear what I have to say.”
“Valin said a few months ago you went stark-raving mad and tried to heave yourself from the highest tower in the palace.”
“You’ve never tried to kill yourself?”
She looked up at me, brow raised in clear indication that she wouldn’t believe me if I tried to deny it.
I frowned but nodded. Of course I had. In almost two thousand years, we had all thought about ending it a time or two.
Alosia more than most, Valin less, but we’d all tried at least once.
Usually, another of us was there to stop it.
“Was he there?” Alosia asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Did you see him?”
I sighed, falling back in my seat again as she retrieved her poultice from the teacup and leaned over me with it.
“I don’t understand why you still ask about him,” I replied.
“He was my partner,” she answered, defensive on this subject as always.
“Exactly. He was your partner. Right up until the moment you pushed him into an abyss, thinking you’d murdered him.”
She brushed the poultice over my wound a bit harder than was necessary and I hissed in pain.
“Harlowe will always be a part of me,” she said. “Just as I will always be a part of him. It is natural, therefore, to wonder.”
“Wonder all you want but I have no answers for you. I didn’t see him. "
She frowned but reached for the gauze, wrapping my wound without a word. After some time, she slid back, admiring her work with a grim expression.
“At least it won’t get infected,” she told me. “But I imagine you’ll have some difficulty wearing sunglasses now.”
I snorted, leaning my head back.
“Thank you, Alosia,” I told her.
“This is what we do for each other, Chasina,” she reminded me with a shrug. “This is how we survive them. I may not like you but we’re here, together, for all eternity. Might as well be neighborly.”
I snorted again. Only Alosia would call the act of binding my missing ear after our overlords stripped me of the appendage for failing the mission they’d given me being neighborly.
“Where do you think they’ll go?” I asked, dreamily, as Alosia stood and made her way to the door.
Whatever she had put in that poultice was working already.
I felt a cool, healing sensation spreading through the left side of my face.
It was making the muscles there slack and the scent of it was reminding me just how exhausted I was.
I yawned as Alosia paused in the threshold and turned back to look at me, her brilliant auburn hair slipping over her shoulders as she did.
“All I know,” she started, seeming to return to that melancholy state we so often found her in lately, “is that this is only the beginning.”
Then she was gone and I was falling into my own abyss, praying that, this time, the drugs would keep the nightmares at bay.