Page 2 of Vanquished Gods

Or the time Sion told me that true hunters should toy with their prey.

No one else in this cottage seemed particularly concerned that Sion had butchered my father in the forest years ago.

If Lydia thought I was willingly bringing a ten-year-old boy to their kingdom, she was out of her mind. Leo didn’t need any more nightmares.

Maybe our food was bland, but at least we weren’t knee-deep in gore.

Hugo frowned at the letter, his handwriting a barely legible scrawl. “Lydia said Sion thinks he needs your powers, as it happens. He thinks you can help him defeat the Pater.”

The problem was, whenever I used my lethal magic, it only made me crave death more. It turned me into a monster. Using my magic meant sacrificing my reason completely.

“If I killed a thousand people at once, I’d never recover my wits. Tell the crow,” I went on, “that I’m not going to let Sion use me as his weapon. I don’t trust him, and I never will. We’re staying here, in this cozy cabin, and we’re going to lead a perfectly normal life in the woods. We will make food, and hunt, and we can even have a birthday party for Godric next week.”

I smiled brightly.

“With a sway and a grin, she caused quite a stir,

The whole village now dreams of an arse like hers.”

Godric’s voice boomed off the rickety walls of the tiny cottage.

I turned, casting a look around the cozy space. Sure, it was a bit of an odd setup. Hugo had washed his clothes earlier,and he was sitting in a blanket he’d wrapped around himself while they dried. Leo sat crammed under a window, scowling at the fireplace. Furniture, dried rushes, and beds filled every inch of the house. And Godric never stopped singing his wildly inappropriate songs.

But the cottage had its own charm, too. Sunlight poured in through diamond-paned windows onto four tidy beds, and I’d been decorating every surface with wildflowers. I’d woven baskets to gather fruit and nuts. Really, it wasn’t much worse than living in the barracks, where we’d started.

We just had slightly worse food.

I grabbed a basket, my stomach rumbling. “Right, you lot. I’m going out to look for berries.”

“Thank you!” said Hugo.

I slipped into my leather shoes. My feet crunched over the dried rushes as I crossed the rickety floor, and I pushed the door open walk outside. From the oak boughs, birds chirped, and sunlight ignited their leaves. At the beauty of the forest, I was even more certain this was a reasonable place for a little boy to grow up, safely protected by three nice adult humans who didn’t drink bloodorburn them on pyres.

I hurried into the forest, the shade of the trees cooling my skin, and inhaled the scent of earth and moss with each breath. If I could find a good clearing, it might be the best bet for raspberries or strawberries—or maybe some gooseberries in the shade of the oaks.

I had no idea what we’d do in the winter, but we’d just have to figure that out later. Maybe hunting, drying the meat to get us through, and the boys were reasonably good at fishing. If I could pick enough berries, we could make some jam.

Yew boughs arched over me, their leaves shot through with sunlight. Such pretty trees, even if they were ancient symbols of death. They were said to grow from grief and sorrow, fromskeleton bones, and that they covered crooked gravestones, shielding the dead. I believed it. Ten years before, a young yew had grown from the place where Sion killed my father, where his blood had fed the soil.

From a yew branch, a raven cawed at me, frantic, drawing me back from my musings. I wondered if he could sense my death touch. I flexed my gloved hands and hurried away from the tree.

Hunger carved through my stomach as I walked. We clearly needed more than just nuts and berries and the occasional fish. When I got back to the cottage, I’d set to work on making a spear.

At last, the forest opened into a clearing, and my heart quickened at the sight of bright purple raspberries as hunger carved through my gut.

I pulled off my glove on my right hand to pick them. Plants seemed to be the only thing I could touch without killing them. Sadly, I couldn’t just stuff my mouth with these because Leo needed nutrients more than I did. I licked my lips anyway, imagining how they’d taste.

As I plucked the berries, I couldn’t stop thinking of Maelor. I had all the company I needed in the cottage. Maybe far more than I needed, in fact. But my mind kept wandering back to Maelor, missing him.

What would he have been like before he’d turned into a vampire? I could almost picture him when he was alive—in love with the sounds of words and the colors they evoked as he wrote, enraptured by the lush blue of the sky and the sunlight on the grass. Enthralled with his daughter, Pearl, before she died.

As I picked the berries, I pricked my finger on a blackberry thorn, and a streak of red ran across my skin. I popped it into my mouth, tasting the salty tang of blood.

Our curses had really twisted us, hadn’t they? The vampire curse, the death-touch…in Maelor’s case, it had stolen his soul, cursed him with an insatiable blood-hunger that forced him tokill to survive. In mine, it had turned me into a walking poison. Someone who couldn’t even hug the people I loved.

I could imagine a world without the Order, without magic, where I’d meet Maelor in a clearing just like this. I’d rest my harmless hand on his beautiful face…

A twig snapped behind me, jerking me from the daydream. I spun, heart pounding. A man stood only a few feet away, stepping from the shadows of the clearing. Once, someone like him would’ve been a complete mystery.

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