Chapter Fifty-One
Fifty-one
When you strike, strike true. An enemy is never more dangerous than when in the desperate haze of survival.
—PRIOR PETRONILLA
THERE ARE GOOD WAYS to be stabbed, at least in terms of survival. Ways that are the least likely to result in damage that can’t be repaired, missing those vital organs and arteries.
That’s not how Avery stabs me.
The divine light breaks away fully, releasing me, the comparative darkness of reality so thick it might as well be night.
Or maybe it’s simply shock.
Either way, I fall. I simply… slip, plunging away from Tempestra-Innara’s reach to the ever-welcoming stone floor.
Strangely, my immediate concern is for Avery.
Forget how he got here—who knows what tricks his boss has managed to learn over the centuries.
But crossing the Goddess in their own Cathedral is not, historically, a survivable action.
Run, I want to cry, before the flame takes him too, but I can’t move, can’t speak.
Briefly, I wonder if he struck so true that I’m already dead.
But then the pain comes crashing in.
Oh yeah, I’m still alive.
“Lys!” Nolan calls my name, somewhere beyond my field of vision. All I see now is Tempestra-Innara, face twisted with unimaginable fury. And it’s aimed at Avery. He drops the knife, takes a step back.
He’s dead. Worse, if this was some desperate act to keep my awareness of Osiron secret, he’s too late.
Not to mention that, while the Goddess was kind in allowing me not to show up to my own party a battered mess, all they have to do is complete the ritual and I’ll—well, my body—will be as good as new.
But Avery isn’t afraid, or disappointed. Instead he appears… expectant?
Three loud knocks sound on the Cathedral doors.
The Goddess’s face changes again, disbelief mixing with the prior anger. They aren’t looking at Avery anymore. They are looking at nothing. And then, slowly, their gaze drags toward the doors.
Beyond them, Nolan moves toward us. He shoves Avery out of the way and drops to his knees. Arms wrap around me, lift me up. “Lys—”
“All of you, stop!” Tempestra-Innara throws up one singed hand. “Be still. Be silent.”
Their will is obeyed.
Except by me, who coughs quite painfully, though I can’t exactly help it.
I manage to twist around a little. The doors. Everyone’s attention is on the doors to the Cathedral, now open, one man standing beneath their pointed arch.
Rion is gone. Whatever they’d been holding back radiates now, and there is no mistaking the deity who stands before us.
The Whisperer has come to Lumeris.
“You.” One word falls from the Goddess’s lips, flutters over us, and spreads through the Cathedral like sorcery. People shift uncomfortably, but no one understands what is happening, not yet. Especially Nolan, who is staring at the person he knew as a bookseller with damn near comedic confusion.
Osiron smirks placidly. “Miss me, little sister?”
If I weren’t bleeding out, I would have almost enjoyed the deepening bewilderment on Tempestra-Innara’s face.
“This is impossible. We killed you. Centuries ago, we destroyed you.”
“You certainly tried. And while I was never as powerful as you and the others, I called you into existence. I was capable of making you believe you’d removed me from it too.”
Despite that explanation, the perplexed air in the Cathedral persists. At least until Avery’s voice cuts in, crowing with reverence: “Osiron returns!”
That does it. The spell over the spectators breaks. There are cries of surprise. Of disbelief.
I feel Nolan go as still as death. There’s fresh betrayal in his eyes as he realizes that I knew. His mouth opens, but before he can say anything, the Cathedral doors slam shut again.
“You thought you destroyed me,” the Whisperer says.
“I sent an assassin after you. Now, I can no longer hide, and neither can you. No more feints, no more games, Tempestra. This time, one of us is going to get it right.” Something begins to flow from Osiron—water, I think at first, until it reaches the arches and begins to rise.
And spread. Within seconds, stone webbing covers every archway, closing off the galleries above—with my blood brethren behind it—as well as every avenue for retreat.
It’s impressive, but against Tempestra’s consuming fire? I almost expect the Goddess to laugh. But they have not moved, and I sense, in whatever lingering connection we still have, unease. Fear.
I understand. Avery wasn’t too late; he intentionally interrupted the ritual. Already fading, Innara’s flesh has been weakened further by their own power’s destruction of it during its transition to me. Now is the time to strike a fatal blow.
Nolan understands too, lowering me to the ground and reaching for his sword.
Though it hurts like hell, I grab his arm. “Don’t.” I say it quietly, as if anyone is paying attention to us. “You don’t have to.”
The furrows in his brow deepen. “You’re wrong.” Good old dependable Nolan. Loyal to the end. Then his expression softens. “Stay alive, Lys.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m staring up at the damn ceiling, nearly crippled while the most epic showdown in well over a century is about to begin.
Figures.
Suddenly, Avery appears. His hands hook under my arms and lift, dragging me away from the growing commotion.
If Osiron got Avery into the Cathedral, there must be other heretics here too, ready to fight, as absolutely futile as that seems. Nolan could cut a dozen of them down on his own.
And yet… Osiron didn’t come off like a deity about to fight a losing battle…
Dammit. This is no time to be on my back. I push past the pain, rising into a sitting position. Avery helps me with the rest; a moment later, I am on my feet, even if it feels like I’ve left half my blood on the floor. But I’m standing, ready, and—
Face-to-face with the blank red masks of the Cineri.
“I’m not dead yet,” I blurt. Ridiculous, but the only reason I can think of for them to have made their way to the front of the Cathedral, to me, instead of rushing to the Goddess’s aid.
“No, you’re not,” says Avery. Then: “Now, quickly!”
He’s not speaking to me. The Cineri tear off their masks, revealing faces filled with resolve. With purpose. But it’s not until I see the vials in their hands that I see where Osiron’s blow is really coming from.
That lying bastard. The Green God’s blood was supposed to be all that was left, the last of the… No, wait. It was the last of Arcadius’s blood. That’s what Osiron said. They never specified further.
One by one the heretics drink, blood darkening their lips before they rush past Avery and me, the change already coming over them.
Avery leans me against the wall. We are still closer to the apse than I like, the boundary of golden bones only a few arm lengths away, but partially sheltered by a thick column.
“Your boss could have been a little clearer about how many intact reliquaries he found over the years,” I say bitterly.
Exactly how many more exist is a question I’m rather curious about, but survival first, details later.
I can’t see clearly past the column, to whatever is happening between the devoted and their deities.
The Goddess is weakened, yes, but… “It’s not enough… What if they aren’t enough?”
“Then you will be.” Avery’s palm opens to reveal another vial. “With a little help from the Storm Goddess.”
At first, I can only blink. Then, a laugh, cracking up out of my throat, bringing with it the taste of blood and bile. “Vengeance has a sense of humor, I guess.”
“Did you really think we’d let you die for no reason?”
I recall Emmaus’s wounds, and how they healed so quickly. “Same plan, different execution?”
“Not the word I’d use, given the circumstances.” Avery presses the vial into my hands. “Now, quickly, before—”
A brutal thud cuts off the rest and Avery drops to the ground, a white-robed figure looming behind him.
Caius.
He grips a spine of blood-spattered stone, a bit of Osiron’s handiwork turned impromptu club, chest heaving up and down with the exertion of the fight. For one blisteringly frigid instant, we lock eyes. Then the moment cracks, and his gaze drops to the vial.
I close my fingers around it. Turn. And run, fueled entirely by a new rage.
Avery…
I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. I don’t even consider where I’m going.
All I can do is move, slipping between the pillar and the wall, darting around the threshold of golden bones, doing my best to ignore the growing gray haze at the edge of my vision as I struggle to pull the stopper from the vial—
Something hits me in the small of the back with the force of a cannonball.
At least, that’s what it feels like as I go sprawling, colliding with the wall of the apse.
I gasp, lungs emptied, bits of gold flashing in my ruptured vision that eventually resolve into femurs and ribs scattered across dark stone.
And then into a pair of feet, crushing smaller pieces of bone beneath their heels as they approach.
Shit. My hands. They’re empty.
Which is the reason Caius doesn’t bother with me, passing by where I wheeze thickly, being pulled under a tide of my own blood. Because that’s worthless compared to what sloshes around in the vessel he plucks from the field of gilded debris.
He examines it, and then me. “This is your weapon?”
I don’t respond.
“Nothing clever left to say?”
I open my mouth but can’t quite make Not while choking on my own fluids, you fuckwit come out. What I manage is a feeble “Don’t.”
“This was what you were going to use to murder our blood mother?” Caius leans over me and grabs my hair, snapping my head up.
I look out upon chaos. The heretics have managed no more control over their stolen power than Emmaus, now only vaguely human forms composed of sickly green miasmas, like the sky before a tornado.
Some rage at Tempestra-Innara, who is still standing and surprisingly vigorous, half engulfed by the power of their divine flame.
Others, fully feral beings now, tear through the gathered clerics.
A few of my blood brethren have broken Osiron’s barriers and are confronting the deity, who is making an impressive show of fending off both the Chosens’ blades and their sibling’s power.
I can’t tell who is winning, only that this is a battle on the edge, ready to tip in either direction.
Caius’s grip tightens. “If this is enough to defeat the Goddess”—he hisses each word into my ear—“then it is enough to save them too.”
He releases me, and I remain upright just long enough to watch him unstop the vial and drink.