Chapter 40
SORROW
Vyrus grew tired. Reaching within, he grasped his crimson heart, tore it apart.
With his life ebbing away, he selected the most beautiful piece, set his light, his dreams, his hopes into it.
Alas, the toll was great and the God descended into a fever.
When he at last awoke, Evella stroked his hair.
And as she smiled, he knew he would never again create anything as beautiful as the Goddess before him.
— THE HISTORIES AND PROPHECIES OF THE STAR-CROSSED GODS. CHRONICLES OF VYRUS
The world cracked back into a shaky existence.
A jarring scream filled with pain brought me back from blissful oblivion.
Blinking, the temple, the whole fucking world, stubbornly refused to form.
My trembling fingers fumbled for my damp skirts, twisting and clutching the coarse material as I fought back the panic that tore at every fibre of my being.
The dark spots across my eyes had blossomed, the edges of what I could see more frayed and shattered than ever.
Blind.
I dragged cloying air into my lungs. Anything to fight the scream bursting out. My sight, my forever slipping sight, had finally waned and panic gripped me, ripped me apart with claws of Vyrium.
I couldn’t even curse the Goddess.
‘EVELLA!’
‘Vyrus?’
My question was lost as the God screamed the name of the Goddess he’d loved once more.
The empress giggled. ‘I do so love a reunion.’
The volcano roared. A mirror to the God’s agony. How had Vyrus gotten here? I blinked, desperate for my eyes to grasp something, make sense of how he’d gotten here.
Why he hadn’t simply eviscerated Delphine?
Evella whimpered next to me, and my hand scrabbled through the haze, threading my fingers with hers.
‘You’re a very scowly God,’ Delphine crooned. How did she still stand? He was a God? A God? ‘But I suppose you are prone to be a bit vengeful.’
I froze as the columns shook, rocks pattering, crumbling, braced for something to slam into me.
‘How dare you. How dare you stand in my temple and—’
The very air froze as she slapped the God.
‘I’m rather vexed with you, vengeance,’ she hissed, my hammering heart almost drowning out her words. ‘Look what you’ve done. Look. You killed all my favourite Anomalies. My brothers. Did you kill my Musa? I needed him. Look. Even my—’
Vyrus roared, and I closed my eyes as the mountain crumbled and the first flakes of ash settled against my lids. The ground beneath warmed painfully.
‘I’ll tear you apart.’ His voice slashed through the temple. ‘Throw you to the stars. Burn you for eternity for what you’ve done to her. How? How did you know?’
I dragged in a shattered breath as the empress laughed.
Delphine hummed, a hymn from the days when I’d giggled with Matthias in the pews of Bronzehold’s chapel. A hymn of the Gods. Their thrones held aloft by ropes of starlight and dust.
‘They sent me on tour, to the Southern lands, in search of a husband.’ She hummed again, flipping the heavy pages of a book in time to her off-key melody.
‘I tried to become an Anomaly. Found an old woman in a side street more than happy to tattoo Vyrium onto me. She deceived me. Lied to earn my hard-won coins. She was the first to fall. When the Vyrium buried all I was, rotting my clever little mind, I slaughtered my family, danced with their corpses. Ransacked each and every holy place on this festering planet. Temples, chapels. Teeny, tiny shrines in homes. Desperate for your secrets. To keep a hold of the life slipping away. Do you know, vengeance, if you get some clever alchemists to melt down Evella’s sacred shields, mix it with boring old iron, you get Evellum.
’ She sighed, as though she were as tired of this as we were. ‘Kept me alive.’
‘You were on the right track, Mr Vyrus. Your only failure was your lack of conviction. No determination to see the task through to the end. But I suppose that’s what love will cost you.
The secret, my vengeful, little servant?
Destruction. She despises destruction and I personified it.
Reforged myself into the one weapon she could never ignore.
So I razed her world. Tore and wrenched, biting and spitting till finally she could bear it no more.
It was in Yepana. Her very pretty temple.
She blazed in, roaring, all gilded and do-look-at-me-and-fear-my-retribution.
’ She giggled. ‘I ripped it straight from her chest. She was so full of ire and arrogance, she forgot about her own protection. It was pitifully simple. Oh, Gods, how you would have loved her expression. I’ll commission an artist to capture it.
A triptych of damned Gods. Evella. Vyrus, and in the centre. Me.
‘But…’ She giggled, and I shivered at the sound of a blade trailing down the marble. ‘I still didn’t know what to do. All those experts. All those secrets. Then, I discovered something rather interesting. And finally, buried under a floorboard in Asmar’s halls, I discovered a book of secrets.’
I shook. Glesni. It could only be Glesni.
‘Enja’s secrets.’
Vyrus grunted, as though he’d been kicked. I closed my eyes, fought back the tremors at his pained rasps.
‘Those rather pretty hearts of yours, the ones that give you all that power, they’re keys, God. Keys to immortality. I swore Evella would finally listen. Rue the day she ignored my pleas.
‘If I can ever understand this bloody book.’
My heart skipped. The book. The bronze-flecked tome placed on the lectern. If she couldn’t understand it, then we stood a chance.
I gasped as Evella tugged my hand. ‘My sweet Sorrow. My child. The… the balance…’ She forced her whispers through her shattered breaths. ‘You fight them. Still fight.’
A low moan rolled through her. ‘Your gifts were never meant to live apart.’ She laughed, a broken, dying sound.
‘The Vyrium showed me your soul, showed me who you were, my beautiful Sorrow. Knew you had the fight, the strength to bear my strongest gifts. Like you and your king, they can’t exist when they’re fractured.
They… they are the light, the dark, blade and suture.
Joy and grief. You need both. Don’t…’ I closed my eyes as her breath stunted. ‘Fight…’
The Goddess dragged in a long breath, exhaled. The gilded shimmer fracturing the shadow across my eyes dulled.
‘Evella?’ I whispered, my eyes closed as Delphine continued her humming. I tugged the Goddess’s hand and she slipped, a dead weight against my shoulder.
‘No,’ I whimpered. ‘No.’
Vyrus roared, cutting short my sobs. For a shattered heartbeat, I thought it was his grief, but then Delphine cackled, the wet sound of her dancing footsteps echoed as a wind tore through the temple, and dust, ash, acrid and cloying smashed into me.
‘I knew you’d come to your temple, Mr Vengeance. Just like her, you wouldn’t let me destroy it.’
A lone tear rolled down my cheek. A chasm, a void of despair, opened in my chest. With my hands bound, Evella dead and Vyrus a thrall to Delphine, I had to accept that I’d never leave this temple alive.
‘It’s here.’ Delphine’s voice broke as Vyrus moaned and I cursed her for stealing what little sight I had. ‘Two hearts, the blood of a Deviant. The key to binding the hearts. With the words, those words, I’ll ascend.’
I recoiled as something clattered. Delphine moved around, clumsily, humming while the world rolled. The mount trembled as though ire tore through it, a mirror to the pain of the God it was named for.
Why had the God come? Alone. With no allies.
My unseeing eyes snapped open as I realised…
If Vyrus was here, then…
‘Matthias,’ I half-whispered, half-sobbed his name.
Fingers, their shape, their warmth as familiar as my own heartbeat laced with mine and my chest cleaved.
‘Shh,’ he whispered. I slipped slightly, desperate to see him, the panic threatening to consume, as I realised I never would again. If she noticed, though. If that abomination knew he was here… ‘Shh, love. We’re getting you out.’
We. My wolf was here. I dragged in a shattered breath, rubbed my fingers against his skin. Focused on the ridges, the warmth.
Those I loved the most, my husband, my damn wolf may never leave this isle. But I’d use my final breath to make sure the fucking empress wouldn’t either.