Chapter 55 #2
The distant echo of Nyaxia’s amused laugh hummed in the walls, as if she knew this, too.
I looked down at myself, frantic. Then at Septimus. His body now slammed against the wall. Thastias hurled him like he was a rag doll. After all, a mortal body was a weakness, and Thastias barely had one at all.
Think, Kyrene.
I looked down at Zefiah in my hand. Stabbing Thastias had hurt him, temporarily. But the moment the blessed blade had left his flesh, it was like nothing had ever—
An idea hit me.
A mortal body is a weakness.
I sheathed Zefiah, careful to leave her easily accessible, and then reached into my second sheath and drew another shard of her blade.
This one was perhaps as long as my forearm, with jagged broken steel on both ends.
I flexed my left arm and winced at the shock of pain.
Zefiah’s healing was slow and weak, leaving me only barely able to use the arm.
But I didn’t need it for much, anyway.
Septimus landed a strike to Thastias’s face that seemed to barely do anything at all and paid for it with a vicious slice across his chest.
{What are you doing with that?} Zefiah said uneasily as I gripped her shard.
Do you really want to know? You’re not going to like it.
I let out a sharp whistle and drew Zefiah’s broken blade over my forearm, opening a fresh river of blood.
Both Thastias and Septimus froze, faces snapping toward me—pulled by the scent of fresh human blood. Thastias’s hanging jaw slipped a little farther down as his teeth grew—actually grew—another few inches.
But I swallowed my fear and looked past him, at Septimus. Blood smeared his face. His eyes were bright red, reflective in the darkness. I prayed he would know what to do.
Dripdrip, as more of my blood hit the floor.
Thastias’s nostrils flared. He surged for me, and it took every single shred of recklessness that Zefiah had ever accused me of to hold my ground—not only hold my ground, but run forward.
And Septimus, bless him, understood what I needed him to do. Thastias lurched to a stop, as if he ran into a glass wall, and I knew that if I’d looked up, I would see Septimus behind him, ropes of blood clawing back his ancestor, trying to buy me just a few seconds of time. Just one opening.
It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough.
I rammed Zefiah’s shard into his exposed chest as hard as I could, right over his heart.
A burst of godlight exploded between us. Thastias let out an enraged wail and broke free from Septimus’s grip. I rolled out of the way just in time to avoid his claws, though they grazed my arm, opening another fresh wound.
I pushed myself up to see Thastias lurching erratically from one wall to the other in fits and starts. Godlight burned at his chest, the broken piece of Zefiah’s blade wedged into his flesh, illuminating him from the inside out.
It wasn’t enough to kill him. Not yet. But it was a splinter of divine light that he couldn’t escape. A shard that would just keep driving deeper.
A darkness encroached at the corner of my eye as I grabbed Zefiah’s hilt and drew her.
Septimus was beside me, a cloud of black-red surrounding him.
Beads of blood streaked his face. He didn’t turn, didn’t look at me.
But his hand slid up my back, squeezing my shoulder.
A reminder that we started this together, and we would finish it together, too. With Thastias, and with Nyaxia.
Thastias collected himself, limbs reaching, contracting, reaching, contracting. He growled as he turned to face us. Zefiah’s shard burned, illuminating the stark white of what remained of his rib cage in sparks of gold. His blood popped and burst like water under the pelt of hail.
{Get—me—out—of—him!} Zefiah ground out.
You’re going deeper first, I’m afraid, I told her.
Dripdrip, as more of my blood hit the floor.
Enraged, Thastias let out a wail and charged at us.
Septimus and I, perfectly aligned, were ready for him.
I looked into the mouth of that monster and I ran at him head on, Zefiah’s jagged tip aimed straight at that shard of her. Septimus was beside me, blood flying out behind us like terrible, majestic wings—as if sheltering me.
With a roar of exertion, I made my shot.
I aimed right at that shard of light, jamming the piece of Zefiah deeper into Thastias’s chest—deep enough, I prayed, to hit whatever remained of his heart.
His scream shook the bones of the temple. Zefiah was ripped from my hands. He grabbed me by my broken arm, twisted. CRACK. Pain tore through me.
I was flying—
And then I slammed against something hard, sliding down. Everything went numb and blurry. Consciousness flickered.
{Stay!} Zefiah demanded, suddenly reinvigorated—suddenly hungry. {Stay awake, Kyrene. He is almost finished.}
Oh, I wasn’t going anywhere.
I dragged myself forward, fingernails biting into the mosaic floor. With great effort, I lifted my head, blinking hard, trying to clear my vision with limited success.
Septimus and Thastias were locked together, the divine light burning within Thastias’s chest. He was screaming, snarling, flailing, all while Septimus held him, more and more tendrils of black-red reaching for him.
And Septimus—he looked every bit a god himself.
His face was stone still, and yet, every muscle radiated seething fury.
He dragged Thastias close, hand rising to his ancestor’s face in a spiteful caress. He brought his mouth close to his ear. And he snarled, “I hope you never rest in the underworld.”
All at once, all those countless vines of blood surged, driving Zefiah’s shards straight into Thastias’s heart.
A scream of two thousand years of rage shook the world.
Hot blood rained over my face. I plunged into a burst of bright light, then inky darkness.
Zefiah let out a scream and then went suddenly silent.
A terrible feeling fell over me, something that went beyond logical thought, like the instinct that sent birds fleeing when a hurricane is near.
Thastias’s corpse splattered the floor. And splattered, really, was the only term for it. His body was more liquid than solid, pieces of fragmented bones and rotten muscle held together solely by the magic that had consumed him for two thousand years. Without it, there was little left.
Septimus was on his knees in the middle of it.
His head sagged. The puddle of blood around him rose like flowers blooming in wet soil, slow and elegant, curling around him in an embrace.
His hair hung in front of his eyes. His clothing was shredded, especially his shirt, which looked to have been victim of Thastias’s final strike.
That terrible dread rose and rose and rose, clutching my throat, even though I couldn’t identify why.
“Septimus.” I crawled closer to him. Up close, I could see glimpses of his flesh beneath his tattered shirt. The metallic white of the tiny shards of divinity he had embedded into himself, the swirling arcs of silver glowing slightly in the darkness.
And . . . red, too. Bright red.
An Heir Mark.
It adorned his right shoulder, vine-like twists of red moving over his pectoral and then down over his bicep, reaching his elbow.
Even beneath the blood and the remaining fabric, I could see that it was remarkable.
More complexity than any mortal hands could create with ink—every swirl of color constructed in hundreds of tiny, sharp lines. Beauty masking brutality.
I glanced at Thastias’s remains and realized why the House of Blood did not have Heir Marks. Because all this time, their original heir had been alive, trapped in a cage of his own making.
But if Septimus noticed the Mark, he did not react to it at all. His shoulders rose and fell heavily. His fingernails scratched against the floor, as if trying to get a grip that eternally slipped away.
“Septimus,” I said again, more urgently.
He did not respond. Didn’t even seem to hear me.
But someone else did, instead. A cool, ethereal voice floating from the darkness. So much closer than before.
“Such a tragedy. Another doomed love story.”
I lifted my gaze.
Nyaxia hovered above us.
“Seems there are so many lately,” she cooed, and gave me a devastating smile.