Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
The first time I had seen Shiket, I had thought she was the most magnificent being I had ever witnessed in my seventeen years of life.
I had never been religious. But the first time I looked into the face of a god, suddenly I understood all the ways that humans were merely pale imitations of them. Inferior in every way.
I was older now. Jaded. And yet, still, I fought a primal instinct to bow before Shiket. Her beauty was not that of a mortal, frivolous and impermanent, but the beauty of a mountain range at sunset: a natural phenomenon.
She was taller than any mortal being, and broad shouldered.
Her muscles swelled like smooth-carved marble, visible beneath her gold armor, which melted over every line of her form.
It matched the shade of her hair, bound down her back.
Her helmet obscured the top of her face, revealing only the strong angle of her nose and a delicate mouth and jaw.
Her swords spread out behind her like metal wings, pulsing gold.
There had once been six, three on each side.
Now, she had only five, because I held Zefiah in my own hands.
But when Shiket appeared now, materializing in the sky and lowering until she hovered before me, light pouring from her hands, I did not think about her divine beauty.
I thought about how pathetic she looked.
The gods had been at war with each other for a decade now—a decade that had ravaged the mortal lands.
The gods liked to pretend that they were untouchable, and indeed, ten years was a blink to them.
But now, I saw so clearly all the ways these years had left their mark on Shiket.
A scratch across her breastplate from, I’d heard, a run-in with Srana.
A nick in the sword on her upper right shoulder.
A missing gauntlet on her right hand—a gift that she’d likely given to some other chosen one.
Rings and jewels absent from her fingers, likely donated to the purpose of helping her build more Sentinels, which she crafted from her own blood.
The gods were not untouchable.
And they were not perfect.
Her mouth twisted into a cruel smile.
“At last, bearer of my blessed blade, you appear to me,” she said. “Tell me, what has been so important as to keep you away from me?”
Her voice dripped with sarcasm. The gods, I had learned, loved it just as much as mortals did.
“Me?” I ground out. “Where the hell were you?”
I felt Zefiah’s shock run up my spine like cold water. I had never spoken to Shiket this way. I was no acolyte, but I was not stupid, either.
She cocked her head. Her swords pulsed with her fury.
“How dare you make demands of me when you have been absent for so long. Now you at last call upon me, and yet you have no offerings. Nothing to show for your neglect.”
At first, I didn’t even know what she was talking about. Then I realized—the heads of those she’d sent me to slay. I had discarded them back in Yiferis and hadn’t thought about them since.
I choked a laugh. “That’s what you’re worried about right now? A few rotten heads?”
“The heads of those who had disrespected me. Such slights cannot be tolerated.”
I thrust my hand to our bloody surroundings.
“You want to talk about disrespect? Look. Look at what has been done to your temple. Your people.”
Shiket turned her gaze to the carnage, as if it had only just occurred to her to look. Her powerful jaw clenched. Her blades throbbed gold.
“Nyaxia.” The name rumbled from within her metal armor, echoing with fury. “It reeks of her and her fallen ones. This is her doing, and she will pay accordingly for it.”
The words echoed with the strength of the goddess of retribution. But my own fury balled in my stomach, hotter, exploding before I could stop it.
“You could have saved them,” I ground out. “Where were you?”
“I was otherwise occupied.” Her gaze turned to the horizon, looking at something a thousand miles away. “Acaeja and her ilk, moving against me across the sea. I shall have to plan my next move.”
Like she was talking about a game. A fucking game.
I jabbed my finger to Mirie’s corpse. “They bore the Gauntlet of Retribution. They bore your protection. So where the fuck were you?”
Shiket’s stare burned into me beneath the smooth gold of her visor. It reminded me of the way she had looked at me the first time I had met her—like her gaze was peeling me apart to judge the ugly mortal shames hidden in my guts.
But I wasn’t a desperate teenager anymore. Now, I had nothing to lose.
Shiket said, measured, quiet, “The gauntlet belonged to you. You, who bears the weapon of the Vindica Ultis. You, who I allow to bear that weapon. And you, who have squandered it, and yet expect me to rise to your protection.”
With each word, her voice rose, rose, until the final syllables made my hair fly back with the force of her anger. She swept closer to me. With every snarl, her gold teeth gleamed.
“So I ask you, one who I and I alone have made chosen, where were you?” she boomed. “Did you, selfish mortal, think there would be no consequences for neglecting me?”
Consequences.
Shiket loved that word. Her official title was the Goddess of Justice.
But I understood that she was really the goddess of revenge.
Now, this snapped into such brutally sharp focus.
This was not justice—to let hundreds of innocent people die because she had something more interesting to do.
Because she wanted to spite me for not killing her enemies fast enough.
I realized, then:
She loved this.
Because Shiket was the goddess of vengeance, and vengeance was useless with nothing to avenge.
She was thrilled that these people had died here.
It made the game interesting. It armed her with bloody promises to throw to her acolytes like a trainer tossing pieces of meat to their dogs.
Some followers were more valuable dead than alive.
She lowered her face to mine. My reflection stared back from her visor, warped by violent engravings. They fit over my features as if they belonged there.
“Put aside this childishness,” she spat.
“I allowed you to bear the Blade of Retribution because I saw that you understood the power of justice. Because I saw how you hungered for it. Let their flesh feed your fire and build the temple of your new mission around their bones. That is what the Vindica Ultis is. That is justice.”
I drew in a deep breath. Let it out.
She was right.
Those three words etched into the inside of my skull like letters upon a tombstone. She was right. In the end, it turned out I did believe in justice.
I heard my own words echoed back to me. The ones I used to threaten Marko. I am built for revenge.
At least I knew myself.
My fury rose, and rose, and rose, until it devoured everything else. I didn’t even know when I made the decision; only that once I did, it felt like inevitability. As if every choice I’d ever made, every twist of fate, had led me to this.
I really did think Zefiah might try to stop me as I gripped her hilt. As I lifted her. As I began to bring her down.
But Zefiah was a part of me. I was a part of her. And her words were fierce and certain as my own fury as they raged through me:
{I am the Blade of Retribution. How can I deny my purpose?}
Purpose. That’s what this was.
Shiket didn’t understand what I was doing until it was too late.
My strike was ablaze with Zefiah’s divine light, burning with godly power and pure mortal rage.
Perhaps ten years of infighting had taken its toll on Shiket; perhaps she simply had so underestimated me that she couldn’t even fathom the possibility.
But that blade cut through her chest like butter.
It’s not that hard to kill a god, I thought distantly. I’m surprised more people haven’t done it.
Light exploded around us. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears. Pain ignited as Shiket’s gold-clad fingers grabbed me, scorching us in a burst of golden flame.
But I kept pushing through that armor. Kept clinging to Zefiah, even as we burned up together.
I had spent the past decade wearing the title of Vindica Ultis like a costume. Using it, but never really believing it. Yet in my final moments of consciousness, when Shiket’s grip tightened and tightened, when she drew me close to snarl into my ear, “Traitor!,” a serene smile twisted my mouth.
I thought, So this is what justice feels like.
And then fire engulfed me, and then the pain, and then nothing at all.