Chapter 32
Voren
“You are even quieter than usual,” Dreven says, drawing my attention away from the Devourer masquerading as a cloud. “What have you seen?”
I draw in a slow breath before releasing it. He knows me too well.
“Her death.”
“Again.”
It’s not a question. It doesn’t need to be. He knows my power. He knows what I see.
“It changes,” I say, keeping my voice low enough that Nyssa doesn’t hear us over the drumming rain. “But the result remains the same. I see her light go out. I feel the cold settle in her bones, permanent and absolute.”
Dreven’s jaw tightens. The shadows in the corner of the room sharpen, reacting to his spiked temper. “How? Is it the Judge, or what it will demand?”
I shake my head, eyes on the cloud.
“Well, that’s something,” he mutters.
I have no more words to say.
Dreven turns his back to me, his shoulders rigid. He hates it when I see things he cannot fight. He prefers enemies he can touch, cut, or kill. Death is not something he can kill.
I look across the room. Nyssa sits on the sofa, her hands wrapped around the mug.
She laughs at something Dastian murmurs.
The sound grates against the vision of her cold, still body currently burning a hole in my mind.
She looks alive. Vibrant. It makes the inevitability of the void harder to stomach.
“You two look cheerful,” Nyssa remarks, glancing between us. “Did someone die?”
“Not yet,” I say. I turn my back on the window and the monstrosity hovering outside. “Just discussing contingencies.”
“I hate that word,” she mutters. “It implies we expect to lose.”
“It implies we prepare for every outcome,” Dreven corrects.
Tabitha sets her mug down on the coffee table with a sharp click. “The Judge will not care for your preparations. It cares only for the balance.”
“Balance,” I mutter. “There is no balance. Nyssa is ruler.”
As if the universe takes that as a personal challenge to that, the air in the room solidifies. It isn’t a drop in temperature or a shift in pressure. It is a sudden, absolute stillness. The rain stops hammering against the roof, though I see it falling through the window. Sound has been cut.
Nyssa stands up, gripping her blade. Her knuckles are white.
The front door swings open. No wind blows in. No rain wets the mat.
We wait, but nothing else happens. At least, nothing they can see.
I narrow my eyes at the figure that floats in, taking a good look around before it fixes its ghostly gaze on me.
“What is it?” Nyssa asks. “Is something there?”
“You could say that,” I reply, not taking my eyes off the spirit of the Aethel. “What do you want?”
She hisses at me. “I want my power back!”
“You can’t have it.”
“Voren,” Dreven asks, coming closer. “Who is it?”
“Aethel,” I state. “She wants her power back.”
Nyssa spins to me, blade up. “She can’t have it.”
“That bitch!” Aethel growls and flies towards Nyssa. I stop her with the power of the Wraith god. Inhaling deeply and relishing the control over this tyrant who made our lives a living hell for hundreds of years.
“Not a chance,” I say quietly.
The words carry the weight of my domain. Aethel screams, a sound that vibrates the window panes but goes unheard by the others. Her spectral form flickers, violently resisting, but she has no choice. She is dead. I am the god of Wraiths. The hierarchy is absolute.
“Where is she?” Nyssa asks, slashing her blade through the space Aethel just occupied. “I want to stab her again.”
“She isn’t close enough to hurt you,” I say, keeping my gaze fixed on the tyrant’s furious spirit. “And stabbing her won’t work. She has no physical form to puncture.”
“Pity,” Dastian mutters, red sparks dancing between his fingers. “I could try blasting her? Does chaotic energy hurt ghosts?”
“It disrupts them,” I reply. “But we need answers before you shred her soul.”
Aethel glares up at me. Her face is a mask of twisted rage, the beauty she prized in life stripped away by the bitterness of her end. “I answer to no one,” she hisses. “Especially you, Voren.”
“You are dead, Aethel,” I remind her coldly. “You only answer to me.”
Tabitha steps forward. She looks at the empty spot where Aethel hovers. “If the former ruler has manifested, the barrier between the living and the dead is thinning. The First Law is pulling threads from every direction.”
“Where did she come from?” Nyssa asks, “Where do dead gods go?”
“The void. Somehow, she has clawed her way back.”
“She always was powerful,” Dreven says. “Mother. If you can hear me. We need you to leave. We are kind of in the middle of something.”
I give him a look that speaks volumes. “You really think that will work?”
He shrugs. “Anything is worth a try once.”
“True,” I say with a nod. “That, however, just annoyed her. She is trying to claw your eyes out. Listen up, Aethel. You know the Devourer is up there, waiting. How do we kill it?”
“Does she know?” Nyssa asks, lowering her blade and moving closer.
Aethel laughs. It’s a jagged, scraping sound that vibrates in the ether but fails to disturb the air in the room. She floats there, translucent and hideous in her malice, looking between me and her son with pure disdain.
“You think you can kill him?” she sneers, drifting closer to Dreven, though he doesn’t flinch. “He is the end. He is the hunger that eats gods. You cannot kill entropy, boy.”
“Him. Interesting. We boxed him once,” I point out, tightening my metaphysical grip on her essence until she winces. “We can do it again. Or we can erase him.”
“And yet he is up there, floating around waiting for the opportunity to strike.”
“She isn’t being helpful,” I tell the room.
Nyssa looks frustrated, swinging her blade through the empty air again just to vent. “Tell her if she doesn’t start talking, I’ll find a way to make her afterlife miserable.”
“I think she is already doing a fine job of that herself,” I drawl.
“Make her talk,” Dreven demands. His shadows are agitated, sensing the hostility of his mother even if he can’t see her clearly.
“I am trying,” I snap. “She is stubborn. It runs in the family.” I turn my focus back to the dead queen. “Listen to me. If he eats the realm, he eats the afterlife too. That means you cease to exist. Gone.”
That wipes the smirk off her face. Self-preservation was always Aethel’s strongest trait.
“He wants his crown back.”
“He wants his crown back,” I say to Nyssa before turning back to Aethel.
“He can’t have it,” Nyssa and I say in unison.
Nyssa clears her throat. “But what is the relevance of changing his pronoun?”
“Its can’t usually be killed. Hes can,” I say.
“But we assumed we would destroy it, so what has changed?”
“Destroy is different to kill. You said yourself this thing is getting more sentient, more intelligent. It is, he is, possessing people. Not one or two, but thousands, learning. Gleaning.”
Nyssa locks gazes with me as the knowledge that had just come to me, arrives with her as well. “We kill him when he possesses someone.”
“Precisely.”
“Not quite,” Aethel snaps. “Fragments mean nothing.”
I narrow my eyes at her.
“What did she say?” Nyssa asks.
“She says fragments mean nothing.”
“So, we need the entire thing to possess a creature so we can kill it. Well, fuck. Like this wasn’t already impossible!
” She growls and throws her blade at the place where, I assume, she thinks Aethel is floating.
It was a good aim. It sails through Aethel’s face and straight into Dreven’s clapped hands before it buries in his chest.
Dreven flips the blade hilt-first, offering it back to her with a look that sits somewhere between amusement and a warning. “Careful, slayer. Someone could get hurt.”
Nyssa snatches the steel back, glaring at the empty space where Aethel floats. “If she had a face I could actually hit, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“You missed,” Aethel sneers, drifting closer to me, her spectral form vibrating with glee. “Pathetic.”
“She missed because you don’t exist,” I remind the dead queen, shoving my will against her spirit until she flickers like a faulty bulb.
“Focus. If fragments mean nothing, we need him whole. And if we need to kill him while he possesses a creature, we require a vessel that won’t disintegrate the moment he enters. ”
Tabitha stiffens, her gaze snapping to mine. “There isn’t a vessel in the mortal realm capable of holding the Devourer. Even a god would burn out in seconds.”
“Then we build one,” Dastian suggests, though he looks less than convinced by his own idea.
“Or we find the one thing he wants more than the realm,” I say, looking at Nyssa.
The realisation hits me with the heavy, final thud of a coffin lid.
He doesn’t just want to eat her. He wants to wear her.
She holds the Crown. She holds the light.
She is the only container strong enough to hold him without shattering, thus bringing him back to life.
He doesn’t want to devour worlds; he wants to rule them.