Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The underworld stretched out before me, so close I could have touched the veil that separated realms with my fingertips.
It was silver, rippling softly, like the sea on a calm morning.
A great serpent wearing a golden skull face slithered over its surface, herding distant souls on their journey to the afterlife—so many of them, now, in a world so cruel and dangerous.
Beside her, a lioness, bearing her own gold skull, stood guard.
She looked up at me, as if preparing to usher me down.
I was ready. There was nowhere left for me to go. My hand reached out.
But I found myself being pulled away.
{Not yet, Kyrene} a voice murmured in my ear—an echo of an echo of an echo. Zefiah sounded so far away, voice straining, words pained. {No one gets to end you but me.}
But Zefiah’s power had been shattered. I felt her magic attempting to hold on to my soul, dragging me to the land of the living, but so too did I feel the intense strain of it.
Not yet, another voice said. I did not recognize this one. It sounded like a hundred voices layered over each other—young and old, male and female—in a single breathtaking harmony.
Not yet.
I saw a pair of white eyes staring into mine, watching with passing curiosity. I saw six wings framed against a rainbow-tinted night sky.
I was falling, falling. The underworld shrank into the distance, the lioness staring sadly after me.
And then nothing.
Septimus.
The name was the first thing to return. Consciousness crashed violently over me. I was still in Nyaxia’s grip. I was still watching Septimus’s devastated face. I was still halfway through a scream, which tore bloody from my throat.
I flailed, dragging myself upright, crawling over broken glass and metal even though I wasn’t even stopping to look, wasn’t stopping to think about where I was going. I could still save him. I could still kill her. I could still end it all.
I needed my sword, I needed to get to—
Septimus.
A faint thunder rolled through the earth. A distant flash of lightning illuminated the debris around me. I stopped, palms to the mud. Rain, now steady and gentle, plastered my hair to my face.
I was alone.
Nyaxia was gone. Septimus was gone. I recognized that I was still in Hegaella, or what remained of it.
The broken buildings and scattered cobblestones were unmistakable.
I was no longer at the center of the temple, instead in the city, perhaps near where Septimus and I had first arrived.
But I could see debris from the temple scattered around me—half of a gold altar lying just a few inches away, the faceless mask of a Sentinel statue staring up at the sky to my right.
In the distance, the gold light from Shiket’s place of death still throbbed, but now it had broken, spread out across a wider area, as if Nyaxia’s rage had ripped apart the ruins and scattered them for miles.
The soulless no longer wailed. Even the storm was now distant.
Everywhere I looked, there was only flat, dark, dead remains.
He was gone. She’d taken him or killed him. It was too late.
It was too late.
I squeezed my eyes shut and saw that devastation. That hurt.
{Kyrene . . . }
My heart stopped at the sound.
Zefiah’s voice was raspy and distant. Weaker than I’d ever heard it. My head snapped up, eyes frantically scanning the wreckage around me.
“Zefiah?”
My own voice sounded foreign. I crawled over broken stone. My hand lifted, and I called to her with every shred of my remaining strength.
Nothing.
“Zefiah!”
I thrust my palm out again.
Seconds later, several metal streaks dragged over the terrain, clanging and bumping off beams and jagged lumps of stone, before coming to a stop before me.
I stared down at what remained of the Blade of Retribution.
Her blade had been shattered into three pieces—six jagged inches jutting out from her hilt, and then a long shard of chipped gold, and then, finally, a little pointed tip.
It wasn’t all of her. Perhaps the rest had been pulverized into dust as she shattered or was lost in Nyaxia’s explosion.
She still glowed gold, though very weakly.
This pile of broken metal was the blessed blade that I had met ten years ago. The weapon so mighty that it had taken a nobody dying girl and made her a chosen one.
I stared down at what had become of Zefiah.
And just as she had, I shattered.
My sob clawed painfully from the inside of my ribs, like a monster tearing free. I had not cried in ten years—not once, not even when I kneeled over Valentina’s dead body. The sensation was unfamiliar to me, and it hurt, and I hated it, and yet I could not stop.
I grabbed Zefiah’s shards and attempted to arrange them in the dirt.
“It’s alright,” I choked out. “I can fix you. It will be alright. I can fix you.”
{I fear, Kyrene,} she said hoarsely, {that I will never again be what I once was.}
I stopped mid-movement. My hands tightened around metal until they shook, until blood dribbled over the jagged break of the blade. My eyes squeezed shut.
And in that darkness, I saw every regret.
I saw Septimus’s face when he learned the truth I had kept from him.
I saw Valentina, Mirie, Marko, the day I said my final goodbye, when I knew they wanted me to stay.
I saw the caged people who’d thought they found a savior and instead met their executioner.
I saw the girl in Kastivai that I failed to save.
I saw a million disappointments, a million failures. And at the end of them all, I saw the woman I had killed, the true Vindica Ultis, the night I met Zefiah.
And I thought, with sudden clarity:
The wrong woman lived that night.
My greatest mistake was not any of my terrible acts in the last ten years. It was fighting for my own life that night. That was my original sin. And now so many had suffered for it.
My sobs now came out in great, heaving wails, like a dying animal. My tears rolled over Zefiah’s glowing shards, watered-down pink with blood and rain.
She said softly, {I was there, Kyrene, and I do not believe the wrong woman lived.}
The truth of this statement—the fact that she believed it even though it was so clearly, obviously, factually wrong—made my sobs come harder.
I opened my lips to argue with her, but all I could choke out was, “I’m sorry.” It came over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
{Hush, Kyrene. Hush. Hush.}
My forehead lowered to the ground, pressing against what remained of her blade.
Her voice sounded so far away. I longed to curl up with her like a child in her mother’s lap, and I could feel her stretching toward me, as if she wished for it, too.
A comfort I did not deserve. My mother had died when I was so young I barely remembered her, save for the harsh words and harsher touches, but now, I missed her so fiercely.
And yet, in every invented memory I craved, every imagined comfort, she wore Zefiah’s voice.
{The first night I met you, I wished to protect you,} Zefiah murmured.
{I had been wielded by great warriors over the millennia.
Heroes that were written about in scriptures and carved into temple walls.
I was closer to their hearts than any lover, any parent, any child.
Sometimes, they began idealistic. But over time, it was all the same.
A year, ten years, twenty years wielding me, and blood ran into blood.
And yes, perhaps in that time I was well fed.
But some blood tastes like vengeance. Some blood tastes like rage. Some blood tastes like nothing at all.}
She paused, as if reflecting upon this, and in the tear-blurred darkness, I glimpsed her memories—memories of meaningless bloodshed and violence, death flattened to mundanity.
{It all tasted like nothing, Kyrene, because they no longer cared about anything at all,} she said. {Until the night I met you. From the first moment you wielded me, I felt it in you. A reminder of all that I had forgotten about my true purpose. Justice.}
A fresh tear fell to Zefiah’s blade, pooling in a carving of Shiket’s profile on the hilt. The truth of her words ached in my chest. And yet, they only reminded me of everything I had done to bastardize that purpose in the years since.
{The great warriors,} she went on, {defined what was just by what could be immortalized in a gold statue.
But you and me, that night. That was true justice.
I had forgotten why I had once found such beauty in mortality.
You reminded me. You cared so deeply. Yes, it was chaotic, it was illogical, it was bold.
It did not follow the paths of neat prophecies.
But it was genuine. I still find beauty in that, Kyrene.
And I was wrong to attempt to smother it in you. }
I swallowed thickly. Another tear streaked her hilt. I shook my head. “No. You were right. You were right.”
Because I had gotten myself wrapped up in a fairy tale.
The kind of stories that mothers told their children at night.
The kind of stories I let Septimus read to me.
Even he had told me that the happy endings only existed between those pages.
But I let myself believe in them—that anyone could be a princess, or a fairy, or a fucking hero.
That maybe, I could rip the face off the woman I’d murdered ten years ago and pretend I was her, instead of no one at all.
Zefiah’s pain reflected my own. She said softly, {I wish I had not been.}
It was the only comfort she, or anyone, could offer. Because I, at last, had made a gamble I couldn’t pay. I had tried to save the world, and instead, I had damned it.
I thought of Septimus. Where was he? Back at the House of Blood, attempting one last time to save his people? Or had Nyaxia taken him somewhere else? If he was alive, I knew, he’d be fighting. Weaving words into a weapon any way he could.
His voice, unwelcome, drifted through my mind:
I’ve never been the hero. Hence why I’ve hired one, instead.
Gods, what a mistake. So many terrible mistakes.
I looked up to the darkened sky. Then to Zefiah’s pieces on the ground. I picked up her hilt, examining the steel jutting from it. Still plenty sharp.
We’ve walked a hell of a road together, Zef, I said. But I think we’re at the end of it. You ready to fulfill your vows?
A pang of sadness. {No. I am not. But I fear it is not my decision to make.}
I let out a frustrated scoff. This was why you protected me, right? So that I’d have a body capable of driving you into my heart when I inevitably failed. Well, you were right, and you were successful, and now you’re complaining?
{I think you underestimate your leverage and overestimate my power.}
A glint of confusion. My hand was already around her hilt. Already lifting the blade to my chest. But at this, I stopped.
“What?” I murmured the word aloud.
{Do you think I am powerful enough to have shielded you from the wrath of a god? In this state? You may not have died, Kyrene. But you are whole. Barely even injured.}
I looked down at myself. She was right. All my injuries were from the battle leading up to my failed attempt on Nyaxia’s life. No fresh ones. Not even a broken bone, even though Nyaxia’s rage had ripped a hole in the earth, and it had all been centered upon me.
A drop of blood rolled down my chest, coaxed by Zefiah’s broken blade. Death was so close. Probably the best thing I could do for myself or anyone else.
But my gaze fell to the debris that surrounded me. The light shifted above, and something glinted in the dirt.
I drew in a sharp breath and set Zefiah down. My hands burrowed into soil until they wrapped around metal.
I withdrew the object and stared down at it. A fresh wave of tears prickled behind my eyes.
The device was roughly the length of my forearm. It was crafted of copper and stainless steel, and by some miracle, it was not even dented even after surviving the fury of a goddess.
The machinist who had made it had been talented. Perhaps even a damned prodigy.
A stringless crossbow, small enough to fit on one’s belt. Just like I had requested once, a lifetime ago. Valentina had done such a fine job making it. An even better job wielding it in her final moments to punish the vampire who had killed her.
Even when she was doomed, she had fought for spite.
Just like I’d taught her.
I thought of the hazy dreams I’d had before I woke up. The underworld. The eyes. The wings.
I thought of Septimus, and his insistence on the importance of knowing exactly what powerful beings wanted and exploiting it.
No, I was not the Vindica Ultis. But I had still murdered four gods. That made me important. It gave me leverage.
I asked Zefiah, Who helped save me?
{A god, perhaps.}
Which one?
A distant spark of hope. {What an interesting question, indeed.}
My mind was already turning. The underworld now seemed very far away. I thought of Valentina and Mirie and Marko, and all the things I could say to them if I met them in another life. I thought of the justice of my own death, so close it already balanced at the tip of my blade.
But the possibilities pieced together, slowly, not quite fitting—like Zefiah’s shards. Still sharp enough to draw blood.
I was already damned. But I had one more shot loaded, one more silver bolt I couldn’t bear to waste.
And a hell of a lot of spite.
A familiar fire lit in my stomach, burning despite the blood-soaked kindling. I cradled the crossbow close, pressing it to my heart.
Zefiah, I said, I have a ridiculous question for you.
{Joy of joys,} she said, drenched in sarcasm, but I could feel her spark of delight. {What recklessness are we up to, now?}
Do you think you can you summon a god?
Her laugh shivered up my spine.
{When you talk like this, you remind me of a girl I knew once.}