Chapter 49 #3
“You will never be able to kill her. Perhaps in another thread of fate, a different soul would have been able to slay her using Shiket’s remains. But that soul is not you, and that thread is not the one we follow tonight.”
My face heated. I felt suddenly exposed, with Acaeja staring into all my failures.
“Fine. I can’t kill her,” I said, “but I can do the next best thing.”
“Imprison her. Strip her of her power. She will be no more than a mortal, and she will never be able to escape.”
“How? Surely Nyaxia didn’t just leave the building standing, even if she couldn’t destroy the cage completely.”
“The temple has been destroyed, but one who can peer between the threads of fate could find where it once stood.” Acaeja showed me an image in her wings—a snow covered, rocky hill, and trees, and an arched door.
“There, you will find the shackles created for her, and the spells carved into the earth intended to cage her. There is a seer among the Bloodborn vampires. I met her once, some decade ago. That night, I allowed her to keep her connection to the Threads. Remind her of that night and tell her that this is why.”
A shiver darted up my spine. The image of a woman dressed in red ghosted across Acaeja’s wings. I recognized her immediately: Sylina.
I felt a powerful kinship to the flies caught in a spider’s silk. Right now, I was certain that I too was powerless to someone else’s net.
“Your lover, Thastias’s descendent, will be capable of utilizing the chains,” she went on. “Spill even a drop of Nyaxia’s blood, and he will be able to close the cage around her.”
“How are we supposed to do any of this while she’s watching?” I said. “She’s going to notice if we start poking around.”
“I have my own armies at my disposal. The Houses of Death and Night will move against the House of Shadow. It will create a distraction so significant that Nyaxia will be forced to shift her attention.”
Acaeja blinked at me, her wings now revealing me—me, in Nyaxia’s grip, flying back in an explosion of blue-white light. Gods, was that what I’d looked like? I found myself looking down at my body, amazed that I was in one piece.
“She believes you to be dead,” she said. “No mortal could have survived her rage without intervention. Nevertheless, I grant you temporary protection from her eyes.”
One of Acaeja’s twenty tattooed fingers reached out and touched my forehead, right between my eyebrows. Her touch was firm and shockingly cold, jolting through my entire body.
“How temporary?” I asked.
She let out a sound that somewhat resembled a chuckle. “Sometimes, it takes thousands of years for fate to move, and sometimes, it takes but a few hours. This is not a time for careful planning and considered movements.”
{It truly is a task made for you,} Zefiah said.
I squeezed her hilt hard, a bittersweet swell in my chest. She sounded so far away, and yet, there was such a familiar comfort to her insults. I sank into it.
Acaeja lifted her hand, and light glowed from behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see a door floating in the rubble, open to reveal purple, shimmering mist.
“Passage to the House of Blood,” she said.
My heart went cold.
Only now did it sink in that not only did I have to kill Nyaxia, I would need to go to the House of Blood to do it. Which would mean seeing Septimus again, and somehow explaining all of this to him in a way that would make him believe me.
And this challenge, more than any of the others, more than killing a goddess, seemed insurmountable. Honesty.
I turned back to Acaeja. “Will he listen to me? After . . .”
The words died in my throat.
After I lied to him. After I failed him.
He won’t. The answer seemed certain. He won’t listen. And he shouldn’t, after everything.
“It would be foolish for him to trust you now,” Acaeja said. “But love makes one do foolish things. True of gods and mortals alike.”
My heart twisted at that word. Love.
Was that what Septimus felt for me? What I felt for him? I didn’t even know what it felt like anymore, because I’d spent my entire life fleeing it. I had been so afraid of failing Valentina, so afraid of facing my own shame, that I had run from her. It was all I knew how to do.
{You are not running now,} Zefiah murmured.
Acaeja tucked her wings in tight, raising her hands. “Move quickly. He does not have much time.”
And in my next blink, I was alone.
I stood before the door she had opened for me. The mist gleamed with fragments of light, like little pieces of lightning. I looked down to see that my hands were trembling.
I brought them to my side. Touched Valentina’s weapon, hanging at my belt on one side, and then the fragments of Zefiah on the other. My hand slid into my pocket and pressed to the imprint of Shiket’s face.
I thought of all the lives that had been lost to this clash between mortals and gods. All the needless suffering.
I thought of Septimus’s voice, the first time he had brought me to the House of Blood. The conviction of it when he said, This will end with me.
“It ends with me,” I whispered to myself.
I stepped through the door.