Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Stay awake.
My every shred of consciousness reoriented around that command. Like the lion Septimus claimed I was, throwing herself against the bars of a tamer’s cage.
Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake.
{Stay awake,} Zefiah urged.
I forced my eyes open. Let my head roll to one side. Septimus was on his knees before Nyaxia. Their voices danced in and out, as if I was hearing them from a great distance.
“—fitting that they would die together,” Nyaxia was saying. She stood over what remained of Kajmar’s and Ix’s corpses. Pink flower petals now scattered forlornly over the dirt with every passing breeze. She kneeled and picked up a handful, a sneer slicing across the bridge of her nose.
“They smell like rot,” she hissed. “Even in death, ever the two-faced traitor. Tell me, did she know her lover had betrayed her, in her final moments?”
Septimus inclined his chin. “She knew, Dark Mother.”
His voice was hoarse. He could barely speak.
“Good. Fitting punishment for the one who once lured my husband to his end.” Then she nudged Kajmar’s severed head across the ground. It had turned to marble. It seemed almost funny that such a humiliating death—at the hands of a mortal—was now immortalized like the great epics.
“I shall take this home,” she decided. “I shall put him on my mantle and leave the hearts of every one of his acolytes there before him.” She smiled, as if imagining this. “I shall tell Egrette to move against his territories now. What a feast.”
My stomach tightened. A surge of strength bloomed in my rage. I thought of the towns we had moved past on our way here. Innocent people. Would they know to run? Would they know their god had fallen?
{Get up,} Zefiah begged, like a quickening heartbeat. {Get up. This is our chance.}
Septimus bowed his head. I could not see his face, only the outline of his back. “As you wish, Dark Mother.”
Nyaxia returned to him, then leaned down to stroke his chin—a mother praising a wayward child. “You have done very well.”
“It is my great pleasure to serve you, Dark Mother. And we have only just begun.”
I could hear the smug smile in Septimus’s voice. Could picture it rolling across those perfect lips.
We.
At that word, Nyaxia’s attention slipped to me. I forced my eyes open.
{Get up,} Zefiah begged.
“So, this is your great weapon,” Nyaxia purred. She leaned down. She was so close. So. Close.
“She has been useful indeed,” Septimus said.
“Perhaps such usefulness has expired. She is dying.”
{Not yet,} Zefiah growled. {Not until her heart is on our blade.}
Nyaxia observed me impassively. Would she recognize that we had met before, twice now? Would she know that she had brought me not one, but two of my worst days?
Of course not. Her eyes skimmed right by, like I was an animal carcass on the side of the road. Another dove crushed by a wagon wheel.
“No matter,” she said, rising. “You are resourceful. You will find another way.”
“She is not dead yet, Dark Mother,” Septimus said. “With your help, she can be saved.”
“At what cost? I can give you greater weapons.”
“Not greater than this one.”
He spoke just a little too fast. Just quickly enough that Nyaxia paused. A flicker of something on her face, gone before I could decipher it.
“Very well,” she said. “As a reward, because you have done so well, I offer you passage back to your home. And you will have the time to save her.”
She waved her hand, and a wave of strength rolled over me. Not much—it wasn’t healing—but enough that I could tighten my fingers around Zefiah. And as Nyaxia turned, lifting her hands to craft a door in the darkness, I sat up.
Zefiah was raised. Nyaxia’s back was turned.
It was an opening I only could have dreamed of.
{Do it!} Zefiah roared in my ears. {Do it now!}
I would not have another chance. I couldn’t waste this one.
I began to rise.
But Septimus caught my arm and hissed in my ear, “No!”
{Kyrene, strike her! Strike her now!}
Light sputtered and burst at Zefiah’s blade, desperate for blood. And it was so close. So close my entire body thrummed with hunger.
If I took the shot, I would land it. I knew it.
But Septimus whispered, urgently, “Kyrene. Not. Yet.”
And for some reason, a reason unknown even to me, I hesitated.
Why? The prophecy was bullshit. I might never get a chance like this again. Precious seconds fell away.
But my eyes slipped to Septimus’s, and in those threads of red, I saw myself reflected. I saw fury and hunger. I saw the vision he had shown Kajmar and Ix, of Nyaxia falling. And I understood that he wanted this just as much as I did.
Not yet.
Why did I listen? It was my only chance. And yet.
{Kyrene, there is no more time. STRIKE HER.}
Nyaxia rose slowly. The door hovered before us in soupy mist. She turned, and her gaze fell to us. Zefiah’s rage thrashed against the inside of my ribs.
“Am I not benevolent?” Nyaxia crooned, with a devastating smile.
The dregs of my opening slipped away.
Zefiah let out a shriek of rage as Nyaxia disappeared into the clouds. Her hilt slipped from my grasp, and with it went the wave of strength she brought me. Septimus scooped me up into his arms.
“Hold on, lyri,” he murmured.
But I couldn’t. I watched the sky go dark as my lashes fluttered.
The door, in a final cruelty, was so far away.
“Hold on.” It was a plea, a prayer. Hold on.
But I faded anyway. And the last thing I heard was Zefiah’s final scream:
{What have you done?}