Chapter Fifty #2
My eyes drop to the shiny, burnished stone at my feet.
The spot I know so well it’s almost as if all my years in the Cloisters never happened.
I am a child again, doomed to another unwanted baptism.
A numbness spreads over my skin, but I bite the inside of my lip until I taste blood, using the pain to focus.
My faint reflection wavers in the stone as I take a deep, steadying breath.
I am surrounded by those to whom weakness is one of the worst things I could show.
Not that I care what any of these assholes think, not now.
But the only way I can stick it to them is to try to maintain as much dignity as possible.
I’m probably not as successful in that as I’d like, given the pity I read on Nolan’s face when I succumb to the urge to glance his way.
Oh well. It’s not as if it will matter for much longer.
Caius steps to one side, giving me an unobstructed view of Tempestra-Innara.
Cool serenity paints their tired countenance.
No defiance of mine will throw them off now.
This is their time. The elevation, execution, absorption—all simply a set of rituals for the hundreds of eyes boring into my back.
Another bit of theater playing itself out.
“My daughter,” the Goddess begins. I loathe the love in their voice, the forgiveness I don’t want or deserve.
“A short time ago, you were entrusted with a secret, crucial task: to find a dangerous weapon acquired by the heretics and used against us. You were to retrieve it from them and return it here to me.” A calculated pause.
Or maybe a test, to see if I’ll challenge that weak fiction with the truth, damn a few more of their devoted.
I’m sure there are plenty more beyond the doors of the Cathedral who would elatedly take their place.
“Instead, you conspired to join with the heretics, to try to use this foul, murderous concoction against your own.”
“No,” I interject. “Not against my own. Just you.”
Caius steps forward, as if about to strike, but the Goddess gestures. He stops.
“Such anger,” the Goddess continues, “hiding such love.”
I begin to tremble.
“Daughter”—Tempestra-Innara’s voice pours into me like warm, honeyed milk—“I am so sorry. I failed to see the war within you, how it has poisoned your soul with such suffering, for so long.” They look around at the audience, to my blood brethren surrounding me and those watching from above.
“Lys needed not suffer in silence. None of you do. You all have my love. And if I have not fully earned yours, then it is I who have failed, not you.”
For the briefest instant, regret pricks me, needle sharp.
Then, I feel the sting of winter, hear the cracking of ice.
I see blood at my feet, feel it warm and sticky between my fingers.
My jaw tightens. “Horseshit.” A broken whisper.
Then again, louder. “Horseshit. I can tell you where those who’ve died in the name of your path would tell you to shove your love, your mercy.
You want our adoration—crave it. But underneath it all, you’re nothing more than a monster with a kind smile and a gentle touch, who forces us to be your claws and teeth. ”
I expect anger. Maybe even a blow or two. But the Goddess only smiles so sweetly, so patiently, that I want to scream.
They say nothing, only turn to Nolan and gesture for the reliquary. He doesn’t hesitate in handing it over, his eyes snagging briefly on me.
The Goddess considers the crystal vessel, blazing beneath their touch, with an almost respectful gaze.
“There is malevolent, blasphemous power here, created with ancient knowledge not meant to remain in this world. The creators of this horror are long gone, dead.” They raise the bottle up for everyone to see. “Which is how it is meant to be.”
In a blink of movement, the Goddess’s fingers release the reliquary.
It plunges to the stone floor and shatters.
And as the dark ichor that is the last vestige of Arcadius, the Green God, becomes a pathetic trickle on the Cathedral stairs, something in me breaks as well, giving rise to the mad desire to lunge forward, to lick that power from stones that already know spilled blood so very well—
The Goddess points a finger. In an instant, the flame appears, running over the blood as if it were lamp oil. It burns away, leaving only a dark stain in its wake.
Another piece of me crumbles. I slump to my knees, chin hanging to my chest.
“The weapon is destroyed,” announces the Goddess. “Taking its darkness with it. Soon, daughter, yours will be gone as well. Stand.”
I ignore the order. I am not a puppet yet.
But the guards are listening. Two of them get their hands under my arms and pull me up.
I expect to be dragged to the Goddess, but instead they come to me, gliding down the steps, hands held out as if to embrace me.
And—even now, I can’t fucking help it—I lean toward that gesture.
Long, thin fingers rise, reach for my face.
But instead of the soft touch I expect, I flinch as thin lines of pain scratch their way over my cheeks.
The hands recede, blood—my blood—painting their tips.
Tempestra-Innara anoints their lips with it, an inversion of my blessing years ago.
Or maybe simply a representation of the consumption that is about to take place.
Then, they slice a line across each of their palms with the same pointed nails.
It doesn’t make sense for a goddess to bleed, but they do. This time by choice.
When they come for me again, I can’t help it—I struggle.
The Cathedral Guard shouldn’t be enough to hold me, but under the Goddess’s engulfing gaze, I am half frozen, at the mercy of the waters rising around me.
Yet in that moment—that last, desperate moment of me being only myself—my craving for their touch suddenly splinters, broken as swiftly as the reliquary.
Muscles tense, warm defiance flooding my veins as I shift my eyes away, to the person who could have stopped this, to Nolan.
Because I need to; because I want him to see the difference between me right now and whatever it is I’m about to become.
And remember it.
Then Tempestra-Innara’s flesh skims mine and it begins.
A trickle at first, but rising like a swollen river.
Tempestra’s light… their warmth… their searing, ravaging divinity begins its inescapable feast. Nolan is gone.
The Goddess’s gaze bores into mine, eyes like mirrors, reflecting the consuming light enveloping me.
Mingled together, our blood sings.
No… it burns.
But there is still resistance, deep within. In a place where the light has not reached yet, far down where I hid those countless fantasies of deicide. Of escape to freedom. It is there for me to tap, to draw strength from as I try to push back the light, the flame, disentangling it from what is me.
I won’t simply give in. Can’t.
Shhhhhh…
A sense of irritated tolerance spreads, reaching across the bridge building between us. I shove it back, push it away…
Lys… shhhhh… soon it will be…
Stop. Please.
Already, the borders between me and them feel as if they are weakening, crumbling. And behind those walls…
Innara’s face shimmers in front of me and I see the separation, that schism between the divinity and the flesh, driven by Tempestra’s fire. Skin darkens, begins to peel and flake, bits rapidly turning to ash as the Goddess shrugs off their former avatar in favor of their new…
Oh. No.
Something in me thins beyond tolerance, a membrane tearing apart, opening me in full to the Goddess’s divine source. Every thought, every fear…
Every secret.
Surprise, Tempestra.
The recoiling that follows their discovery is borne on that surprise, like a rush of fresh air into my lungs as the searing light recedes.
Distantly, I feel one of my guards tighten their grip on me, though I’m not struggling, relieved as I am to still be myself.
The world clears slightly, Innara’s singed features tightening with Tempestra’s bewilderment.
Again, I feel the grip of the guard, fingers digging into my flesh meaningfully. Insistently. It takes every ounce of will I possess to turn my head, toward that helmed head, through whose slits I find Avery’s familiar eyes gazing back at me.
How—?
I don’t have time to understand more than that he’s here, and that if he’s here, the only reason must be to rescue me. To keep me and my crucial knowledge from Tempestra-Innara.
And that he’s too late.
I try to tell Avery this, to form the words, but only see his lips spread in an apologetic smile a heartbeat before I feel the knife slide between my ribs.