Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
It turned out, even broken, Zefiah could, indeed, summon a god.
Or perhaps this one was already watching, already waiting. Because when Zefiah’s divine light burst in a blazing trail into the night, the heavens answered:
Acaeja, goddess of fate and sorcery, lowered from the sky.
I had met many gods now, and still, the sight of Acaeja nearly brought me to my knees.
Acaeja was fate incarnate. She was tall, wearing dark robes that billowed out behind her as if in a gust of wind that only she could feel.
Her eyes were large and white, seeing all.
Her wings, all six of them, extended across the night sky.
Each offered a window into a different fate.
Now, all of them depicted death and destruction, painted in the red blood of humans and the black of vampires.
She was the goddess who had the most to gain from my alliance.
The goddess, I suspected, who held the most interest in me.
The remaining gods of the White Pantheon would prioritize turning against each other, like Ix and Kajmar had.
But Acaeja stood alone, holding the territory of both human nations and the vampire Houses of Death and Night, at war with both the White Pantheon and Nyaxia.
Perhaps I was not the hero fate had chosen. But I might have something to offer her, anyway. A mutual interest in a mutual enemy.
I bowed before her. “Thank you for heeding our call, great goddess. I am so grateful—”
“Rise.” Acaeja’s voice was ageless, formless—young and old, male and female, powerful as the echo of thunder across the mountains. “I see your truth. There is no need to put on a performance.”
I huffed a laugh, then rose. I preferred to face the gods standing, anyway.
Still, I swayed slightly, and I wondered if it was because of my ever-growing collection of injuries or because my knees were buckling under the sheer weight of Acaeja’s presence.
I had never felt more naked than I did now, as that white gaze stripped me bare.
“I am glad that fate has brought us together tonight,” she said. “I have been hoping to meet you. You are the subject of much talk in our realm. This mortal who has slain four gods now. Already, cracks radiate through the White Pantheon. It is on the precipice of collapse due to your actions.”
Her wings depicted the deaths of Shiket, Ix, Kajmar, Srana, all rendered in smoky shadow. Then, she showed me Ysria cracking, falling to pieces. Showed me the silhouettes of the remaining gods, locked in battle with each other.
I tried—really tried—to stop the smirk from spreading across my lips.
Acaeja’s stare bored into my heart. “This pleases you.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I’ve seen nothing but suffering at the hands of the gods. Seems fitting that they should taste some of it.”
{Perhaps one might even describe it as justice,} Zefiah remarked, and fondness warmed my chest.
“Suffering is a part of existence,” Acaeja said.
“I have seen empires rise and fall. I have seen gods born and killed. And the suffering continues. It always shall.” The images in her wings shifted once more, this time to familiar marble buildings with red accents and gold peaks; rolling swells of ice and snow; rivers and rivers of blood; and an eye that I now knew so well, silver and amber intertwined, with a ring of red.
“Tell me, child. Why have you called upon me tonight?”
There was no point in dancing around it. I suspected Acaeja appreciated directness.
I said, “I want to kill Nyaxia. And I think you can help me do that.”
Her head cocked in feigned curiosity. I got the eerie impression that she already knew each turn this conversation would take, and we were simply acting it out for my benefit.
“Nyaxia,” she repeated. Unlike the other gods I’d met, Acaeja was unemotional.
It was unnerving. It gave me nothing to read, nothing to manipulate.
“The Tainted Goddess inflicts great punishment upon your lover’s land.
She intends to use him and his people as weapons.
Great suffering, indeed. Yet my own followers have already fought hers for ten years now, and still, our wars rage on.
What makes you think I have any help to offer you? ”
Her wings depicted the House of Blood, stained red.
Battlefields of vicious violence. Warriors clashing over blood-soaked sands.
My stomach clenched at the sight of it, complicated emotions tangling.
Relief, because Septimus was alive. Horror, because I’d brought him so much suffering.
Fear, because I might not be able to stop it.
I tried not to let my uncertainty show. Tried to look at nothing but her eyes.
“I should be asking you that question,” I said. “You see everything. Far more than I do. And so, I know you would not have answered my call unless you had a card to play.”
Acaeja’s mouth twisted into a fierce, brief smile. Her teeth were sharp, like those of vampires.
“There is always another card, child. Such is the nature of fate. It is forged. Crafted with intention. And perhaps there is one I have been holding for a very long time. Perhaps it is one that could be of use to you. But you cannot expect me to simply hand it to you.”
“Of course not, goddess,” I said, with a touch—just a touch—of sarcasm.
“You have slain four of my siblings,” she said. “If I help you, I will need assurances that it is not my heart you intend to pierce next. Any weapon capable of ending Nyaxia is a dangerous one to put in mortal hands indeed. I would not be the first of my siblings to fall by betrayal.”
“You’re worrying about me betraying you? I’m a bounty hunter, goddess. I am doing you a favor by killing your rival. People pay me for this service. Perhaps it’s you I should be asking for assurances from.”
{Kyrene, do not be foolish,} Zefiah hissed.
Acaeja’s face remained still. Yet I sensed the melodic hint of a laugh in her words. “How arrogant you are. I must admire your boldness, even if it is fruitless. I must be assured that the weapon I am about to reveal to you will never be used to end me, you see.”
I cursed silently to myself. I had hoped to avoid getting myself wrapped up in this kind of deal, especially since I knew that all the gods, even the ones that were useful in the moment, were so fickle.
But nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose.
“Very well, goddess,” I said. “I swear that to you. As long as my pathetic, mortal heart beats, I will not act against you.”
Acaeja extended her hand, and as I made my vow, threads of white light looped around my own, then back to hers. She closed her hand, tucking it against her chest, and I felt a brief, powerful tug that reminded me uncomfortably of the yank of a leash.
“Very well,” she said. “Then let us talk business. My proposal begins with a story.” Her wings clouded over, and then the mist thinned to reveal the House of Blood once again—but it looked different, newer, than it had when I was there.
It was shockingly beautiful. The white stone was clean and smooth, newly carved.
The gold peaks of the palaces gleamed, lined with little gemstones that had been long gone by the time I would come to see them.
“Do you know, child, the origin of the curse that Nyaxia placed upon her Bloodborn children?”
“No,” I said. “I thought no one did.”
“No one left alive. The curse has done well ensuring so. The Bloodborn vampires live short lives. It is easy to forget what has happened two millennia before. And that is where this tale takes us today. Two thousand years ago.”
The images in her wings faded like milk stirred into black tea.
“I do not need to tell you the part of this tale that every living soul now knows,” Acaeja said.
“How Alarus, god of death, fell in forbidden love with Nyaxia, a lesser goddess. How he paid for his marriage to her with his life, when his siblings betrayed and executed him for it. How Nyaxia broke free from the imprisonment of the White Pantheon, only to find her husband already dead. How in her grief and rage, she returned to her husband’s mortal followers and turned them into what we now know as vampires.
A kingdom that must always be separate from those of her divine enemies, because they feast upon the literal blood of humanity. ”
I saw it play out across those wings—Alarus falling, Nyaxia weeping over his severed head, her rage as she tore her way back from the deadlands into the mortal realm.
“Nyaxia had three kingdoms that she ruled over in what was once her husband’s territory,” Acaeja went on.
“The first was a kingdom of warriors, split between two perpetually warring clans. This became the House of Night. To these followers, Nyaxia gave the gift of flight and the power of the stars.”
Figures with outstretched wings, feathered and membranous, took flight in Acaeja’s dreamlike visions.
“The second was a kingdom of scholars, skilled in the art of spy craft. This kingdom had been her husband’s favorite, and the most closely aligned with death.
To these followers, Nyaxia gave the gift of mind manipulation and illusion.
This became the House of Shadow, and later too, the House of Death—guardians of the underworld. ”
A mask burned in Acaeja’s wings, eyes closing, before fading back into the myth.
“Nyaxia took her time deliberating on the gift for the third kingdom. It was her favorite of the three. It lay closest to the lands of the gods. When Nyaxia had ripped through the veil between the deadlands and the mortal realm, blind with grief and rage, it had been into this kingdom that she stumbled.”
Mists clouded Acaeja’s wings, this time parting to reveal Nyaxia, on her hands and knees. Her mouth and chin dripped with blood. Figures surrounded her, falling to the ground in prostration.