Page 83 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

“You are correct,” Danai says. “However, we have been watching you as of late and have determined that knowing your bloodline sooner is of immediate importance.” Her gaze glints with an emotion I cannot name, but it makes me uneasy.

Despite my dread, I lift my head slightly as Azai moves around and stops just inside my periphery. He—along with the other Gods—takes up against one of the six pillars that circle the room. Overhead, a glass skylight illuminates the room in foggy morning light.

“Do you know what this is?” Makeda is the next to speak, gesturing to the stone chalice at the center with her long, shapely arm.

I shake my head. “I don’t.”

“This chalice is formed from the stone of Ortus Island,” Tryphone’s low baritone slides over my flesh like a thunderous rage. Every nerve ending in my body goes taut with expected pain. Yet, when nothing happens—neither pain nor pleasure—my muscles do not ease. “Ortus is the symbol of our benevolence in this world,” he continues.

Benevolence? I bite down on my lip to keep from responding even as bile and disgust fill my mouth, coating my tongue with the too-thick sense of deceit.

Liar. I want to scream the fact in his face, but I don’t. I simply nod and watch him, waiting for him to continue.

Tryphone doesn’t disappoint. “The Island of Ortus is made up of the darkest stone in existence,” he states, those wickedly intelligent eyes of his searing into me like a brand to my very existence. A shiver moves through me. Ara twitters, the sound of her little fangs clacking together in fear and unease slipping into my mind before I can cut it off and remove the connection. I can’t fault my spider Queen for her caution. I, too, wish I were anywhere but before the God King.

My body is tense, poised as if ready to either take flight or fight for my survival. His eyes glint with knowing, but still, he keeps talking as if the fact that I’m set on edge by his voice is of no consequence to him. It’s as if it matters not that I could turn and try to flee from him at any second … as if the thought of my escape is not one he’s even considered.

Fear is a tasteless rot coating the inside of my mouth.

“Brimstone is where Divinity was formed in this world,” Tryphone says. “And it is from the brimstone that we may conjure the truth of your blood.”

I swallow roughly before speaking. “Without the Spring Equinox?” I clarify.

“Yes.” Tryphone offers no more explanation as his wide hand moves towards the chalice. “Step forward. Now.”

My body moves before I’ve made a conscious decision, my legs jolting into action at the order from the God King. That, more than anything, makes the fear bubbling inside me turn into something molten and festering. His words are cloaked in a Divine power that is a pressure on my spine, pinning me to the action he demands from me and refusing to lessen its grip.

Legs trembling, I step onto the small dais holding the chalice. The closer I draw, the more I see the shards of dark chipped brimstone embedded into the rock of the chalice. The inky black of the stone glints beneath the low light. My breaths draw in short unsteady pants. I stop about a foot away from the open stone chalice and look down into what appears to be a dark watery liquid sitting in the bottom of the basin. There are dips around the sides of the bowl-like opening, and images flash through my mind of men and women being bent over those indentions with their necks facing downward. Gods—female and male alike—each step up to the chalice and silver glints as throats are slit and blood spills forth to fill the basin, frothing as it collides into a mixture of death. Vomit threatens to come up my throat. I swallow it back before lifting my gaze to the man standing directly across from me.

Caedmon’s eyes are fathomlessly dark. Empty. Devoid of life. A beat passes and then he blinks and a light enters those ebony eyes of his again. His chin dips and the fear fades ever so slightly.

It’s okay, I tell myself. I’m alright. I’m still here. I’m not dead. I am not bleeding. It was simply a hallucination. Not real.

Yet, as I turn my attention back to the inside of the chalice, I can’t help but wonder where that strange scene came from. Why it had felt so real in the first place?

This is not how I expected this to happen, I have to admit to myself. When the God Council had first discussed uncovering my God blood heritage I had assumed it would be before many others, in a public ceremony. The privacy of this room and the press of the six God Council members’ individual presences surrounding me have me wondering if it wasn’t all a lie to begin with.

I am not sure if I’m ready to know the truth, but as Tryphone leaves his pillar and steps forward, producing a long wicked looking brimstone blade from nowhere—the dagger invisible one moment and then in his hand the next—my heart pounds with the realization that I have no control here.

Whatever the Gods find in my blood, it will decide my fate … be it life or death.

Chapter 36

Kiera

“Hold your hand over the chalice.” Tryphone’s words are a living nightmare. Not because he brandishes that brimstone dagger with such comfort that there can be no question of how adept he is at using it, but because I do as he says.

Just as my legs had moved without my consent, so, too, does my arm. How can I ever possibly hope to kill this man—this powerful deity—if the mere sound of his voice hypnotizes my body into answering his commands without hesitation?

My arm lifts over the opening of the basin and Tryphone reaches forward, taking my wrist into his grip and turning it over so that my forearm is stretched across the opening. My stomach presses into the edge of the stone and once more images of blood-soaked bodies and dead eyes assail me. I bite down on my tongue until I taste rust and raw meat. My mind is a safe place. It always has been. My haven when I was tied to chairs in the headquarters of the Underworld and beaten for no other reason than the mere fact I needed to understand pain in order to deal in it.

There’s something different about pain when you acknowledge that there’s no real logic behind it. The mind fights to understand, to delve into a way to avoid it in the future and when it becomes clear that there is no reason—no meaning behind the darkest of agonies—it fractures.

Blood floods over my tongue as Tryphone turns the brimstone dagger downward and slices across my wrist. The sharp discomfort of the injury has me gasping aloud, but my arm doesn’t jerk back as it should. It’s held suspended by the Divine ability of the God King standing before me. My breathing comes in ragged pants as sweat beads pop up along my brow and then slide toward my temples. An unfamiliar illness takes root in my stomach as I watch my own blood drip ruby red as it slides over pale flesh, into the stone bowl between the God King and me.

Pain burns against the inside of my throat with each rasping breath I take. I can’t get enough air—as if it’s all suddenly escaped the small room, sucked out by some unseen force. Yet, I’m the only one left with the inability and everyone else continues on—watching this ceremony with cold gazes that speak nothing of the curiosity I know they’re feeling.

Who am I? What am I? Who is my God parent?

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