Chapter 23
Nyssa
Iwake to Dreven hovering over me. He’s a silhouette in the street light, all sharp edges and quiet intent. I blink and push upright with a groan.
“How long?” I rasp.
“Three hours, fifty-eight minutes,” he says. “I gave you longer than we should have. I’m merciful.”
“Debatable.” I swing my legs out of the bed. Everything inside me hums—calmer, anchored—but the Crown curls in my bones, the serpent unravelling from its slumber.
Dreven’s gaze skims my face. “Food. Tea. Then we go.”
“Okay.” I scrub a hand over my face, stand, grabbing my blade.
In the kitchen, Dastian passes me a fresh tea with zero commentary. He just meets my eyes and nods, and that’s somehow worse.
“Coil’s tighter,” Voren says. “We need to move.”
I drain the tea, grab a slice of toast, and chew like it’s fuel. “Right. Let’s box a monster.”
“Before we go, we think the Devourer has taken over Tabitha,” Dreven says.
I freeze. “When?”
“Hard to say. But let’s assume it knows everything.”
“Is that why she pulled us out of the Pantheon yesterday?”
“Possibly.”
“Then we dismissed her,” Voren adds. “It is not going to be happy.”
“So how do we avoid it pulling us back out again?” I ask with a frown.
“You tell the Pantheon realm that no one recalls you.”
“I tell the realm?”
“You are its ruler,” Dreven reminds me with a smile that is less happy and more sinister.
“Ruler in name only,” I point out. “It doesn’t know me.”
“It will. When we get there, inform it of its duty to protect you.”
“I have a small concern,” I say, moving on rapidly. “The ex-First slayers were the ones who sealed the Pantheon to begin with. What if they do it again while we are inside?”
“The problem with that is that you will be immortalised and will never die,” Dastian says. “The slayer line will never pass on, and they will never get a chance to rebuild their syphon if the magic can’t find you.”
I gulp. “You think they are rebuilding it?”
“Without a doubt.”
“And they can’t do that if they lock us in the Pantheon?”
“No.”
“Okay.” I feel somewhat reassured. I’m still not one hundred per cent convinced, but it will have to do.
I can’t go there worrying about the door slamming shut behind us.
I grab my boots and shove them on, pulling the laces tight.
“If they lock the door, at least I won’t have to worry about paying rent in BlackFen Edge. ”
Dastian offers a sharp, jagged grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “That’s the spirit. Nothing like eternal damnation to save on the cost of living.”
“Remember,” Voren says, taking my hand. “Command the threshold. It belongs to you.”
Dreven opens his arms, and the world simply dissolves.
We arrive at the crypt, on the lookout for Tabitha or The Order. It is pitch black, dawn still hours away.
The air is thick enough to choke on, smelling of damp earth and ancient magic. I walk toward the fissure, my boots crunching on the grit. The crack in reality is pulsing—a jagged line of black-gold that swallows the dim light of Dreven’s presence.
“Tabitha isn’t here,” Voren murmurs, his breath hitching a frost-pattern against the dark. “Neither are the others.”
“Doesn’t mean they aren’t watching,” I say, stepping up to the edge. My palm is itching. The snake coiled around my soul stretches, a cold ripple along my ribs that tells me it’s ready for a homecoming. I don’t bleed on it this time. I don’t ask.
I reach out and touch the air at the centre of the rift. The heat from my chest surges down my arm. I don’t shout; I don’t even whisper. I just think.
The fissure shudders. It stops its erratic pulsing and widens, becoming a doorway instead of a wound. I can feel the realm on the other side sensing me, shifting its focus like a giant eye turning towards a light.
The shift is smoother. No vertigo, just the sudden transition from Irish damp to the thin, grey silence of the Pantheon. The fog is waiting, but it doesn’t press. It bows.
“No one pulls me out of here without my say-so,” I murmur, feeling like an idiot.
The air around us ripples in acknowledgement. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
“Good enough,” I mutter, though my skin still feels like it’s being watched by a thousand eyes I can’t see. The grey expanse of the Pantheon feels different this time. Less like a graveyard and more like a predator holding its breath.
Dreven’s hand rests steady on my lower back. “Keep tight, Nyssa. Don’t let the light bleed.”
We move deeper into the murk. The architecture here is a fever dream of marble and pillars that stretch into a sky that doesn’t exist, and stairs that lead to nowhere.
I keep my hand on the hilt of my blade, the cold metal a grounding wire.
The snake in my soul is practically vibrating, its consciousness merging with mine in a way that makes my head throb.
Nothing is where it was before; everything has moved.
“This way,” I say, pointing toward a massive archway that looks like it was carved from a single, giant rib.
As we cross the threshold, the air changes. It’s no longer thin; it’s heavy, smelling of ozone and old, wet iron. We aren’t alone.
“Heads up,” Dastian murmurs. “Company’s coming.”
From the shadows of the archway, a line of several creatures show themselves.
“Water, Air, Fire, Lust and, huh,” Dastian says in surprise. “Ambivalence.”
“There’s a god of ambivalence?” I ask with a snort.
“There is, and he is looking a little rattled.”
“Dreven!” The one whose hair is on fire calls out. I’m going out on a limb and assuming he is the god of Fire. “Aethel is dead, things are changing. Something comes.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I thought you fled when the door was unsealed,” Dreven says, stepping forward. I’m happy to let him converse, seeing as I don’t have a fucking clue who these gods are, where they went, why they are back or whose side they are on.
“Meaning?” the one that looks like a fish out of water gurgles.
“Meaning,” Dreven says, his voice low, lethal, “that while Aethel is gone, the throne isn’t empty anymore.”
I shift my weight, trying not to look like I’m vibrating with enough raw power to level a small cathedral.
The god of Fire stares at me. His eyes are like heat-distorted tarmac, flickering with a nervous orange light.
Beside him, the god of Ambivalence shrugs, looking like he can’t quite decide if he should be terrified or go for a nap.
“This?” Fire scoffs, his flames spitting. “This is a mortal. A slayer.”
“She is the Queen of Wraiths,” Voren says, his voice a glacier cracking. “And the Crown of the Pantheon chose her. Unless you’d like to test the edge of her blade, I’d suggest you find a more respectful tone.”
Ambivalence god looks like he’s finally picked a side. Fear. It’s a good look on him.
“Queen of Wraiths,” Lust, definitely Lust, purrs, her breasts practically falling out of her dress. “There is no such thing.”
“I wish you were right,” I say. “However, here I am.”
“And why are you here?” Voren presses. “As Dreven says, you all left.”
They shift uncomfortably until Air decides it’s his turn to speak. “We did leave. We were locked up for centuries by her kind.” The hiss of the wind is chilling. “We were called back from the four corners of the earth. Something is coming.”
“And you don’t know what?” Dastian asks.
Water shakes her head.
“The Devourer,” I state. “It’s sniffing around, eating realms. But we have reason to believe it has stopped and taken on human form. We are here to call it and box it.”
“You intend to trap the unmaker of worlds?” Fire asks. “You are mad. All of you.”
Ambivalence sighs, a sound like a tyre deflating. “It seems like a lot of effort. Dying is easier.”
“Not today,” I say. The snake in my soul uncoils, sliding icy scales against the back of my ribs. It hates the chatter. It wants the silence of the hunt. My voice drops, borrowing that awful, cold authority again. “Clear the corridor. If you aren’t part of the walls, you’re in the way.”
Lust looks me up and down, licking her lips nervously. “And if we refuse?”
Voren smiles, the temperature plummeting until frost patterns creep across the obsidian floor. “Then you become part of the mortar.”
Air swirls in a panicked eddy, knocking into Water, who looks ready to dissolve into a puddle. They exchange glances—fear winning out over pride.
“How do we help?”
“You don’t. You step back and let me do what I came here to do.”
“Or you can leave again,” Dreven says. “The choice is yours.”
“This is our home. We were called back.”
“You shouldn’t have left in the first place.”
“Noted,” Lust murmurs, eyeing up Dastian like she wants to do a bit of devouring of her own.
“Hey,” I snap, clicking my fingers. “Eyes on me, bitch.”
She slides her gaze across with a lazy smile. “Possessive.”
“He is mine. You want him, you fight me for him. You will lose.”
“I am a goddess.”
“And I am the goddess, so try me.”
Lust’s gaze flickers. She takes a half-step back, smoothing her silk dress with a pout that’s more petulant than fearful.
“No need to get all territorial,” she murmurs, though she breaks eye contact first.
“Move,” I tell the assembly, keeping my voice flat. “Unless you want to be bait.”
Ambivalence is the first to shuffle aside, muttering about how he wasn’t sure he wanted to be here anyway. The others follow, parting like a reluctant sea. They vanish into the fog, smart enough to realise they are out of their depth.
We stride past them, deeper into the gloom. The air grows heavier with every step, the scent of ozone and ancient dust clogging my throat.
“That was unexpected,” Dreven muses.
“That was annoying,” I counter.
“No, he’s right,” Voren says. “Why did they really come back?”
I frown. “You don’t believe they were called?”
“Oh, they were called, but it was for more nefarious purposes than they are letting on. The fact is, they don’t know, but I’m starting to figure this out,” Dreven says.
“Do I want to know?”
His gaze meets mine and somehow turns even more serious. “The Devourer needs them here to feed on the realm. Without them, it can’t. They are missing pieces.”
“Okay, this thing is getting more sentient by the minute. It was supposed to be this big, black void that had no thought other than to consume.”
“Precisely. It is being fed, and it is growing more intelligent. It is growing back into what it was.”
“The Wraith King.”
“Only a thousand times more terrifying and powerful,” Voren adds, which does not help.
“And it wants its Crown back, am I right?”
None of the gods answer me, which is all I need to know about how correct my assumption is.