Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The blade smashed as if it had been made of nothing but glass. Steel shards flew like arrows in all directions. One sliced my cheek, sending blood spraying across Nyaxia’s outstretched arm.
Not a mark had been left on her. And I was left holding only a bladeless hilt.
Terror rose in my chest.
No.
Nyaxia looked down at herself. Then at me.
And she began to laugh.
No, no, no.
I seized Zefiah from the sheath across my back. There was no time to beg her to come back; no time to form words, even in my head. And yet, she burst to life in my hands. As if she couldn’t hold to her own promise now, when death loomed.
I brought Zefiah down.
And with a shatter that made my soul wither, Nyaxia casually knocked her away.
Zefiah’s shriek of pain drowned out everything else. She cracked in a barrage of sparks. Half her blade went skidding across the stone ground, burning in the dead brush.
No.
And then Nyaxia’s hands were around my neck, holding me up.
Her face was inches from mine. Her eyes were the night sky, swirling black and green and purple like distant galaxies.
And I was struck in this moment by how horrible her beauty was—the beauty of decay and death, the beauty of terrible natural disasters.
A beauty that was created only in pain. I knew it because I recognized it in myself.
Distantly, I heard Septimus’s voice, though I couldn’t make out what he said over the drone of my own rising panic. He wore that familiar smooth confidence, the kind he used to talk his way out of difficult situations, but it was so strained now. Too strained, over his fear.
Nyaxia’s mouth twisted into a cruel, delighted smile. “Oh. I see now.”
My ears were ringing. Zefiah’s moan echoed in the back of my mind. The rush of my own blood drowned out everything else. I couldn’t look away from Nyaxia’s eyes. They dragged me into oblivion, forced me to see every terrible pain in my past. One above all.
“Listen to how he pleads for you,” she purred into my ear.
And only then did Septimus’s voice cut through the haze:
“—can be useful, Dark Mother. Please.”
And gods, that word. Please.
He was begging for me. Begging for my life.
My heart shattered.
Nyaxia’s eyes sparkled with delicious cruelty. “Does he know?” she asked.
I could not speak. But my silence was answer enough.
She turned to him. “You have made a miscalculation, my wayward child. How fitting, that you shall understand what it is to put your trust in the wrong soul.”
At last, I forced myself to look at Septimus. The sight of him made my entire body clench with pain. He was lying in a pool of his own blood. And those eyes, bright red, still looked at me with such innocent, genuine confusion.
Even now, he believed in me.
“She lied to you,” Nyaxia said. “She is no hero.”
Look away, I begged myself. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t tear myself from Septimus’s face, pained, slowly sliding into betrayal.
“Shall you tell him,” Nyaxia said, “or shall I show him?”
I couldn’t speak. A tear slid down my cheek.
She let out a dramatic sigh.
“Mortals. Such cowards.” Then, to Septimus, she said, “This is not your chosen one. She was merely the one to kill her.”